Its Turkey Day in the USA... what's the biggest turkey of an instrument or piece of gear you've ever owned?!

I'll start: Aardvark direct pro Q10, this was ostensibly a solid 1u, PCIe based interface with a killer word clock for the time sold at a great price. USB and Firewire interfaces were in their infancy and going PCI offered much lower latency, which was cool, although the Q10 offered direct monitoring through the mixer app. Its main drawback was that there were no gain controls, so you had to keep the mixer app open in order to adjust gain or switch from mic to line. I used to just set her to line level, setup my monitor mix and use outboard mic pres, so for under a grand per unit (they could be daisy chained up to 24 analog and 8 spdif inputs) it was quite a value. What made it a turkey was a lack of driver support, and even with a mac you needed the drivers to get the mixer app! You couldn't do anything without that, and they were always an OS or 2 behind until one day the company just folded up and restarted under the name Antelope Audio! If you didn't want to stay on an early 2000s mac OS version or win XP your interface was bricked despite it still being a decent converter and clock well into the next decade. Aardvark sold tons of these but there was almost no support even before they closed up shop. TOTAL TURKEY

It's not my turn to host, so I have a lot of free time to $h!tpost this year!

Hey Jim! My Hannah Montana guitar was a real turd. I spent more money trying to make it playable than the guitar cost with no luck. I hold on to my gear, but ultimatimately gave that turkey away. Cheers! ~m

I had a Gibson Nighthawk... not my thing at all. I bought it on eBay and it smelled heavily of smoke. From that point on I saw the importance of listings having "smoke free home" lol

(for the record I have nothing against smoking, I just don't want my instruments to smell like it!)

I had a Gibson Nighthawk

That's a really cult model like the marauder. Not many people bond with the nighthawk.

That's a really cult model like the marauder. Not many people bond with the nighthawk.

Ok but... I kinda want a Marauder 😝

That's a really cult model like the marauder. Not many people bond with the nighthawk.

Ok but... I kinda want a Marauder 😝

I teched a marauder once, gibson could not do a bolt on. I had to make a shim... also the nut was screwy. It's a really badly made guitar

Hey Jim! My Hannah Montana guitar was a real turd. I spent more money trying to make it playable than the guitar cost with no luck. I hold on to my gear, but ultimatimateky gave that turkey away. Cheers! ~m

That turkey feels unsurprising... on the other hand I see the appeal of getting on stage with a hannah Montana guitar...

I’ve yet to have any guitar that I considered beyond saving, but certainly some that weren’t for me. Happy thanksgiving everyone @gchiaren @michael @jimmarchi1 @hashimoto @pkennethk @shiba_inu_jedi @edgedancer etc.

My turkey: Studiologic SL-161 MIDI controller back in the early '00s.

Probably a decent controller, but I'll never know, as the one I bought brand new never worked right.

This thing had a great Fatar keybed with aftertouch, but it never worked for more than a few days/weeks at a time. I'd call/email with Fatar (who owns the Studiologic brand) and they'd have me to take it to some authorized warranty service center in Burbank, CA, where some dude would keep it for a month or 2 -- only to give it back still not working or only functional for a few more weeks. Each time it got it back it was missing more screws and creaked, rattled, and moaned more than before. Rather than just giving me a new keyboard after the first fix failed, they joylessly kept at, giving me a new theory or excuse each time (bad logic board, loose wires, etc), it until I finally gave up and binned it.

Fatar supplies decent keybeds for most other major keyboard manufacturers, but I now avoid anything they bring to market themselves. I hope others have had a good experience with Studiologic products in the 20+ years since?

Epilogue: A year or two after I gave up on that SL-161, I ended up working for M-Audio, back when HQ, R&D and warranty service was still all done out in Irwindale. M-Audio repair techs would just scrap and replace any midi controller with a problem that couldn't be quickly diagnosed and fixed. Sure it seemed kind of wasteful to have a trash bin overflowing with partially-working MIDI keyboards at the end of each week, but it was a necessary sacrifice for making sure customers stayed happy(ish) and didn't go through what I went through.

I’ve yet to have any guitar that I considered beyond saving, but certainly some that weren’t for me.

I've always been lucky with guitars too...

Happy thanksgiving everyone @gchiaren @michael @jimmarchi1 @hashimoto @pkennethk @shiba_inu_jedi @edgedancer etc.

back atcha, hope your long weekend's been great so far!

y'know, I always stayed clear of studiologic... my logic (pun intended) was that controller and synth companies buy their keybeds knowing that fatar makes a great keybed, they don't even bother trying to top them so can fatar really make a better controller or synth? there's way more to it than a keybed. I flirted with a studiologic sledge purchase but ultimately decided not to get one because I felt worried the keybed would be the best made part...

y'know, I always stayed clear of studiologic... my logic (pun intended) was that controller and synth companies buy their keybeds knowing that fatar makes a great keybed, they don't even bother trying to top them so can fatar really make a better controller or synth? there's way more to it than a keybed. I flirted with a studiologic sledge purchase but ultimately decided not to get one because I felt worried the keybed would be the best made part...

I checked Reddit to see what the Studiologic warranty experience is like in 2025. Sadly, the anecdotal evidence on-hand sounds very similar to what I went through 20 years ago. All warranty work is through dealers or local distributors only. More than a few people reported being stuck with a Sledge that is bricked or otherwise troubled, warning others to stay clear.

Happy thanksgiving everyone @gchiaren @michael @jimmarchi1 @hashimoto @pkennethk @shiba_inu_jedi @edgedancer etc.

Thanks @sprucebringsteen! I hope you're getting some time to relax and/or chill with family.

Now amps is a different story, my first amp was a tiny Rogue bass amp (maybe 5 watts) with a two prong power cable and a constant hum that was about the same volume as any other output. Got it with a great Korean Strat I still have, need to play it more often. Also had a Fender Mustang II I blew the speaker in when I was 15 and some real duds as far as pedals go.