The best things you ever bought.

stephen.wood125

Some great answers here! I'm just going to be materialistic. As an engineer, my choices are probably quite geeky.

my Neff induction hob is a revelation and incredibly controllable much more so than gas, I researched a lot because I know cheaper hobs are very hit and miss.

My Festool TS55R Wish I had bought this before the table saws, I probably would never have bothered. I turned 2 sheets of Birch ply into a laminated work bench in a couple of hours and the cuts were so exact I hardly needed to plane the sections.

My house (including finally buying the Ex out) most stability I've ever had in my life, and a decent size double garage for all the tools and toys.

LuttiS

I've spend the last couple of pages trying to think of stuff that i could not actually do without...

In material life i like guitars/music, reading, skate/snowboarding and casual gaming, and have done for many years.

Guitars? I would replace, but if house was burning down i would try to get, but wouldn't be top of the list. The first guitars that spawned a love of guitar playing was bought for me so that doesn't count.. Don't get me wrong, guitars are great purchases but top three?

Books? I've got signed copies of some of my favourite books. If authors i like are doing bookshop rounds/talks i'll usually try and get along, i go see bands so why not authors? One of these times i met Alistair Reynolds & Philip Hamilton and ended up having a long conversation about wind turbines in Llandundo, which in a couple of books i've got an inscription saying something about this, so possible those books are pretty special to me. 

Skating? I have a £20 skateboard that i bought in early 2000's. It's been upgraded/fixed a few times but essentially the same. Has many hours of fun/use, but so has my guitar and don't consider that a top purchase.

Gaming? I have some games on steam, some are good purchases, some aren't. Nothing i couldn't very easily live without. Barely have time for more that half an hour now and then at the moment so noopee..

So that's the material stuff i like in life, and i'm not sure there is anything there that i would call top three evverrrrrr purchases.


What i might consider top though...

My menagerie. The animals in my house drive me crazy. Wouldn't be without them though..

A festival ticket in 2008, probably the last time properly got to spend a weekend with my friends when none of us had real commitments and could still drink without getting a crippling hangover. 

A trip to a nuclear bunker to propose to now Mrs. L

A small toy bunny which i gave to my daughter when she popped out of Mrs. L's birth maw.

ThePrettyDamned

octatonic said:

 Investment properties.

#lifegoals 

ESBlonde

My 68 4 hole marshall 50w amp. I've had it decades and it's still about the best amp I've played through period.

Mattress, we discoverred a local mattress factory/shop and you go lay on all of them to get what you really want. You can even have different softness in each half. Spend a lot of hours in bed so get a good one.

Divorce. Why is divorce so expensive? Because it's worth it!

Honerable mention - Dr Martins industrial shoes. Again many hours in them daily so be comfortable.

quarky

I guess my house here in 2000, where I still live. My house in Poland in 2006 where we spend summer holidays. In both cases, isn't the house(s) itself, but what you get from it. My first house, my own place where I can raise the family, and the place in Poland has been awesome for the experience of spending every summer there with the family too. 

Apart from that, not a lot I guess. Obviously I get a lot of enjoyment out of my guitar, and my (current) laptop (bought second hand off eBay a couple of weeks ago), but materially, I don't think I wold miss anything. 

hywelg

My first proper motorbike. (I'll ignore the Honda CD175 followed by the BSA B25). Kawasaki s3 400 two stroke triple. Shit off a shovel.......

My Arbortech As120 brick saw. Absolutely fucking brilliant if you need to do any work on an old house. Should have bought it way back in 1986 but got it 5 years ago. How I managed without I do not know.

Ceriatone OTS. Bought in kit form, much modded but superb amp now. Wish I was good enough to play it loud and clean instead of dirtying it up with pedals. 

fob

Alnico said:

Emp_Fab said:

You appear to have misspelled 'from'.

I'm not going there for the nightlife.
There's someone important there and I'm going to be with her soon.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but Cilla passed away a couple of years ago - don't know if you can get a refund.

Alnico

fob said:

Alnico said:

Emp_Fab said:

You appear to have misspelled 'from'.

I'm not going there for the nightlife.
There's someone important there and I'm going to be with her soon.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but Cilla passed away a couple of years ago - don't know if you can get a refund.

When she was just starting out at 'The Cavern' whe was a friend of my Dad's and universally loved by everyone in the scene apparently.

It's not Cilla.

Emp_Fab

....and... according to the flight attendants’ section of the aviation forum ‘Pprune’, she was universally despised by cabin crew as their stand-out, number 1 “Don’t you know who I am?” demanding diva of all time.

Phil_aka_Pip

hywelg said:

My first proper motorbike. (I'll ignore the Honda CD175 followed by the BSA B25). Kawasaki s3 400 two stroke triple. Shit off a shovel.......

My Arbortech As120 brick saw. Absolutely fucking brilliant if you need to do any work on an old house. Should have bought it way back in 1986 but got it 5 years ago. How I managed without I do not know.

Ceriatone OTS. Bought in kit form, much modded but superb amp now. Wish I was good enough to play it loud and clean instead of dirtying it up with pedals. 

And with a hinge in the middle, they'd spit you off as soon as look at you when you'd opened the taps up. The frame on the B25 was excellent, you could really stuff those bikes into a bend at silly speeds and they'd still come out the other side.

crunchman

My first car.  An old Peugeot 104 I bought off my brother for £125.  Drove it up all over the place.  The really soft suspension that those old style French cars has was great.  It leaned over so much in the corners that I could get the boy racer thing out of my system at about 35mph.

Lazy J 20.  Pretty much killed amp GAS and saved me a fortune.

Bike in a boot sale in 2003 for £27.  Got me back into cycling again.

Skipped

1. Vispring bed.

2. Home. I was chatting with someone at work and I said: "I love apartments. I love the layout of an apartment but I don't like neighbours. And I don't like "practice amps".  And she said: "What you have just described is called a Bungalow".  
 
3. Les Paul. (The old one)




If the Emp could somehow allow me a fourth selection it would be my "Black and Decker" workbench that belonged to my much missed Dad.

ChuckManual

1) Fender Stratosonic
2) Ethos Overdrive pedal
3) Cattleman's Hickory BBQ sauce
4) Whatever brand of mattress our new one is
5) Every ticket to every Allan Holdsworth show I ever saw
6) Our first house - basement studio, view of the sea, the pittence we paid for it ...bloody marvellous!

hywelg

Phil_aka_Pip said:

hywelg said:

My first proper motorbike. (I'll ignore the Honda CD175 followed by the BSA B25). Kawasaki s3 400 two stroke triple. Shit off a shovel.......

My Arbortech As120 brick saw. Absolutely fucking brilliant if you need to do any work on an old house. Should have bought it way back in 1986 but got it 5 years ago. How I managed without I do not know.

Ceriatone OTS. Bought in kit form, much modded but superb amp now. Wish I was good enough to play it loud and clean instead of dirtying it up with pedals. 

And with a hinge in the middle, they'd spit you off as soon as look at you when you'd opened the taps up. The frame on the B25 was excellent, you could really stuff those bikes into a bend at silly speeds and they'd still come out the other side.

The B25 frame was just about up to the output of the motor, which was dire. The S3 however was a lot better than people give it credit for. Handled better than my mates Bonneville (there was a good reason why the moter often got grafted into a Norton frame) and was improved hugely by english rubber. The H1 500 however was different....... as was the H2.

Grunfeld

Best thing?
A book.  First best thing:
Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking

Hands down, that £5 book saved me over £70-90k in fags.  And more, obviously.

Joint Second best thing?
Columbus SG.  £33.50  1977
I've had a lot of fun playing guitar.  Sill do.  Funnily enough was reminded of this last Friday -- a long, dull gig where you do that thing and drift off... your hands playing music, your mouth singing BVs, but your mind focused on an idea of fascination... and after the gig all I wanted to do was get home and get back to working on the idea when I was reminded, "you play songs... in 15 years you'll be remembering that you used to enjoy playing songs"  Which was a good point. 

Joint Third best thing?
Driving lessons.  I absolutely, totally, utterly 110% did NOT want to learn to drive.  And in London you don't actually need to drive cos public transport is pretty good.  Why the f*ck would I want to drive?
Bloody gf made me do it. 
Didn't get a car for 3-4 years after I passed, cos I didn't want to drive, but yes, she was right. A lot of independence came from it.

Philly_Q

Only one thing really springs to mind.