Catalog your music gear

Turn a pedal over, or look at the back panel of a synth. The label there gives you the model, often a model number or revision, the country it was made in and a serial number. Cataloging your music gear on ctlgs starts with that label.

The music gear catalog holds 7,421 pieces of gear from about a thousand companies, and one click adds any of them to your collection. The condition, the serial number and what you paid can wait until the unit is on the bench in front of you.

The catalog is half of the old Gearogs database, split into hi-fi for playback and music gear for making music, as what happened to Gearogs explains. Start with the gear on your desk.

Find the model you actually own

Every entry in the catalog is one model of gear, with the companies behind it, the years it was produced, the country and whatever specs people have filled in. Revisions and reissues get their own entries, because you want to know which one is on the stand. The ARP Odyssey made in the United States from 1972 to 1981 is one entry, and its notes go through the Mark I, II and III with their model numbers. The full-size Odyssey FS Rev1 Korg built in 2017 is another, and so is the Behringer Odyssey from 2019. All three say Odyssey on the panel.

Country tells entries apart too. The Big Muff Pi is in the catalog twice, as the US original and as the Russian one, which its notes say was the last Big Muff made in Russia.

So when you add a unit, match the model number and the country on the label against the entry rather than the first result with the right name. Nearly 5,000 entries record a country and 2,600 the years produced. The Minimoog Model D lists 1970 to 1975, 1977 to 1981, and the run that began in 2016.

Record the unit

The site calls each thing you own a copy. For gear that means one unit with one serial number. Adding a copy opens a small form you can skip and come back to. The fields are the ones a collector cares about:

• Condition, graded Mint, Excellent, Very good, Good, Fair or For parts. Condition grading explained says what each one means.
• Notes, for anything that belongs to your unit rather than the model: the serial number, a service date, a replaced slider, the original box, a mod from the 1990s.
• Location, purchase price and date acquired. These three are always private, whatever privacy setting your collection has.

You can also add fields of your own to the music gear catalog, as a line of text, a yes/no or a list of choices. The serial number can have a field to itself, with Original box as a yes/no beside it. Only you see them.

Two units are two records. A pair of the same mixer gets two grades and two sets of notes, and the model's page lists both in a row you can drag into any order.

Your wantlist

Beside the collection button is a wantlist button. It sits on the model too, so you can own the Korg Odyssey and still want the ARP, or an original TR-909.

Your collection page

Your collection lives at one address, across every catalog. The gear in it shows as a grid you can search, filter by condition or location, and sort by title, date added, date acquired or condition. It exports to CSV, private fields included when the collection is your own. Collections and wantlists covers the lists in full.

Shelves are separate from the collection. A shelf is a list you make and publish, in your own order, with a note on each entry, and it can hold things you do not own: every Minimoog from the Model A to the 2016 reissue, or the pedals on your board in signal order. See shelves. When you want to part with a unit, mark it for sale from the copy itself. Selling from your collection explains how.

When your model is missing

The big names are mostly there. Synthesizers and effects are the largest groups, about 2,000 entries each, then drum machines, DJ mixers, mixing desks, samplers and microphones. A boutique pedal, a limited colour run, a regional model or a recent revision often is not.

Anyone signed in can add one. Copy what the label says: the model as printed, its model number, the country, the years produced if you know them, and the company as brand or manufacturer. The function says what the thing is, with a detail if one helps, the way the TR-909 is filed as Drum Machine, Rhythm Composer. A colour or regional version of a model already in the catalog can be filed as a variant of it.

If you had a collection on Gearogs, it can be attached to your new account. The reasoning behind all of this is in what you own, down to the copy.