Are there categories or specific items of AV gear that you consider okay, at least less risky to buy used, either to save a little or because they offer something not found in the newer versions?
ASKED BY · Brody Hefner · NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK · 18 SEP 2026 · ▶ 00:34:29
Vintage analog processing gear like classic reverb units is acceptable if you have two units and they're serviced; used consoles from reputable dealers are preferable to private sales.
Used electronics are fine if you can repair them; avoid anything with moving parts, and be cautious of bad capacitors common in equipment from the 1970s era.
Grip gear like vintage Apple boxes remain unchanged in size and quality; avoid used gear with many moving parts like DAT recorders, and watch for bad capacitors from the 1970s.
Summarised by AI from what the panel said. Watch the moment for the full answer.
From the transcript.
Machine-transcribed, so it may contain errors. Every timestamp opens the episode at that second.
34:15You also get on our mailing list so you can see who's going to be on the show every day, but also you get links to get into our Discord, get into our After Hours. It runs 24-7. There's a lot more to Office Hours than just the show, so go to officehours.global.com and join. Next question. All right. This one's from Brody Hefner in New York City, New York.
34:34Are there categories or specific items of AV gear that you consider okay, at least less risky to buy used, either to save a little or because they offer something not found in the newer versions? Picks 240. Alexander? Yeah, well, that's one piece of hardware example that always comes up on this show. And other people have mentioned other products like certain vintage sound device mic preamps slash field recorders, that kind of thing.
35:02it depends on the device I have no problem using vintage gear as long as I preferably have two of that item and I know they've been serviced for example you commonly see people you will see engineers front of house engineers for example that's just one example that have a hybrid digital analog mixing setup so they'll have a digital console but they might send some of the audio
35:29to outboard analog gear for processing. You know, I still see, you know, classic Lexicon PCAM 70s or 90s, those old reverb units, but, you know, those things are 30 years old now. So, you know, you probably want two of them. You probably want to make sure that they've been, you know, for something that's 30 years old, the caps and the capacitor and the caps in the power supply and any other capacitors
35:57that are in the signal path should have been replaced. The unit should be serviced. It should have a service tag on it so you know the date that it was last service. Have a backup because if you're relying on it, you know, if something goes down, you need a way to have some kind of redundancy. A lot of people will have some way of bypassing the signal path if it's going through some
36:20piece of gear. For example, like if I had audio going through a piece of vintage gear, I'd probably want to set up some kind of routing bypass on my console so that if something happened in an instant I could just press a macro and reroute audio so that I didn't have no audio for a show. So that's one specific example just for audio. I don't know about other people. You know, I've
36:43bought older consoles. As long as it's bought from a reputable dealer, I don't like to buy too much privately. But if it's from someone who is going to give me a warranty that's going to be there to back it up and I know they've tested it thoroughly, I'm more inclined to trust that over something I just found on Facebook Marketplace, which I probably won't use, you know, unless there's like
37:06virtually zero budget. And I've, you know, have a conversation with a client and say, look, you know what you're getting into. Like I'm shooting a podcast and you don't have budget for nice cameras. I'm going to buy used cameras, but just know I'm buying used cameras. So if this goes down, it's on you. Like you're going to have to fork out the dough for a better camera
37:25to immediately replace it. So, you know, just know what you're getting into. For Fenwick. Yeah. So Brody's talking about saving money. I think there's a little difference between buying old and used and buying vintage. You're buying vintage because that great old mic has a great sound. I'll tell you the one thing, grip gear, quite often grip gear. When I was designing the tallmakers. I wanted to confirm that they matched Apple boxes. And I went to a friend's
37:56house who's a lighting company. And this is like a 40-year-old Apple box. And after I made the tallmakers, I checked them against vintage Apple boxes. Identical size. It was awesome. They're exactly the same. Also, if people don't know this, Justine Zarek loves a tallmaker. I just need to say that. Courtney. Okay. Yeah, I usually don't buy used gear unless I'm looking for a challenge.