Comment by giraffe_lady
6 months ago
It's not particularly expensive for professional music gear, which enough professional musicians use it as that I think I have to consider it that as well. Whatever else teenage engineering sells I don't really have an opinion about but that thing gets serious use by serious professionals so I feel obligated to take it seriously. Compared to a nord piano or a cello or a rhodes or a stage mixer or whatever it's not among the most expensive pieces of gear you will routinely see on a stage.
> ... enough professional musicians use it as that I think I have to consider it that as well.
While not a bad proxy, I would say it is a sufficient but not necessary condition. Especially since many pros have the money to blow on overpriced gear (but perhaps you do too).
My own anecdote: as a kid I wanted to learn electric guitar and, of course being a kid, I shopped with my eyes. My dad bought me a $1.2k guitar. It's still a respectable guitar to this day, don't get me wrong. But if he had instead taken the old electric in the garage (bought for probably $500) and spent a hundred bucks on getting it set up, I would've had a guitar just as good. I know because I dug it out recently and I actually think it is quite nice.
An example to a more extreme degree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klon_Centaur#Legacy
Well the entirety of my music gear is a 1994 p-bass and a mediocre amp I've been running it through since around the same time so I get it.
And yeah a musician friend of mine we have a running joke where we'll say something is "a software engineer pedal." Meaning you see them in the home studios of people who make good money doing something else, while working musicians get by with the nearest Boss equivalent.
I've never used an OP-1, wouldn't know how to use one or evaluate it. But I've been on stage with enough of them to get the sense that, if used fully, they can for some approaches to some styles of music, fill the role of several other pieces of gear that would each cost more than what it costs.
So I think this one is both. It's a software engineer's toy, and it's also a workhorse tool for professionals. Honestly an impressive achievement, not a lot of things end up being both in any discipline.
> "a software engineer pedal."
hah, in the world of photography, we talk about "cameras for dentists" (they often have a little red dot on them)