Never sell your tools

Well.....I was just about to start archiving some old audio tapes. I have had these tapes for years, but never did anything with them. In order to start doing something with them, I have to record them into Sound Forge as .wav files. But before I can start recording to hard drive, I have to prove the performance of the audio chain for: level, noise, distortion, and frequency response. Since I had sold a lot of my audio test equipment pieces a few years ago, (thinking I wouldn't need them anymore) I thought I could trust some free digital tools I had downloaded. Wrong! When I set this stuff up, the frequency response of these tools was so bad as to be unusable! So, now I've got to stop for a few weeks, until I can get a new set of audio tools whose calibration I can believe. If I can't believe the calibration of the signal chain, I will not be able trust that anything I record to hard drive, is exactly the same as on the original tape. The moral of the story is: once you have a set of tools that you trust, never sell them. If necessary store them. Sooner or later you will need them again. Also, never be tempted to compromise quality. If it doesn't fit, you must quit.