Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Guitars, Amps and Effects => Topic started by: dobbins on April 04, 2010, 11:45:24 AM
-
I have become so frustrated at the lack of impartial gear reviews I don't know where to turn. My experiences...
Online
- Harmony Centra et al - Either, 10/10 OMG I luv it!!!!! or 1/10 piece of s*** - so no point going to these
- Fourms such as this - fair and well reasoned due to the number of responses, so worth a look, but doesn't help me if I'm looking at other brands of pickups, or guitars other than from where the forum is from.
Mags
- Total Guitar - Good tabs and I have a subscription, though I am seriously questioning this because everything is metal (which I like, but not BFMV and Lostprophets) and Slash (who has become a signature gear whore). Every gear review seems to be rated 4/5, or occasionally 3/5 or 5/5, funny how no terrible guitars cross their pages.
- Others mags such as Guitarist are good but have less tabs, and when I do pick up seem to have gear mostly out of my price range; although the journalism is better than the aforementioned.
Other?
Where do I go for good reviews or am I destined to ask questions to strangers over the interwebs?
-
I found that youtube can be ok for gear reviews. Premier Guitar do some good stuff as well as Pro Guitar shop/store what ever it's called.
-
You can filter out the nonsense reviews on H-C.
Skip the ones with all 10's and all 0's.
Read the reviews of experienced guys. Preferably the ones who play in a band.
Notice the gear: Skip the ss Crate owners, skip the ones with a long FX-chain or use a digital multi-FX device. Also skip reviews from snobs who only have expensive, boutique and or vintage gear.
-
Every gear review seems to be rated 4/5, or occasionally 3/5 or 5/5, funny how no terrible guitars cross their pages.
Others mags such as Guitarist are good but have less tabs, and when I do pick up seem to have gear mostly out of my price range; although the journalism is better than the aforementioned.
As a manufacturer who has had stuff reviewed - here are some obvious reasons
1)If I sent a guitar to be reviewed I would damn well make sure it was up to snuff
2) I would also have spoken to the editor and agreed if there was a serious issue or problem with the guitar , they would ring me to discuss it and return the guitar rather than go ahead and write a bad review.
I may lose out on a review but the last thing I would want is a horrible review because something went wrong with a guitar
Also the last thing the magazine wants is bad blood with a manufacturer - the guitar industry is too small a goldfish bowl to be all pissy with someone else in it, & the magazine would rather do that than maybe lose me as an advertiser in the magazine.
Now if I was a major advertiser like Fender/Ibanez etc -= then it would be even more serious financially from a loss of advertising point of view . But that doesn't mean that Fender /Gibson/PRS get a fee ride because they spend a lot with the magazine - the magazine wants some critical merit & reputation.
Also - the more grown up magazines do cater for more experienced players - maybe who have a bit more spending power and as such they tend to review higher end gear.
I find that Total Guitar is almost aimed at players with ADD, so that all interviews and articles are "bite sized" rather than in depth. Whether that is because of low attention span of their readership or just an editorial style decision I dont know, but it hasn't been of such great interest to me from an advertising/review point of view as my guitars may be out of the price range of most of it's readership
-
You can filter out the nonsense reviews on H-C.
Skip the ones with all 10's and all 0's.
Read the reviews of experienced guys. Preferably the ones who play in a band.
Notice the gear: Skip the ss Crate owners, skip the ones with a long FX-chain or use a digital multi-FX device. Also skip reviews from snobs who only have expensive, boutique and or vintage gear.
Yeps - almost what I was about to answer. I'd also tend to give more credit to reviewers that have had the reviewed gear for long enough. FWIW, they usually tend to be more honest and balanced in their appreciations.
Once your bullshitee detector and bozo filters are well tuned, there are interesting indications to be found. The main point here IMHO is not necessarily whether the guy liked this piece of gear or not, but _why_ he liked (or disliked) it, given his background, tastes, playing style, etc.
Other interesting indicators IMHO are whether the reviews are mostly consistent or not, and whether there's some recurring, known reliability problem.
Youtube, as Stevpage mentioned, can also help sometimes. Here again there's a lot of junk, but I sometimes found it to be helpful, specially wrt/ stompboxes and amps.
-
The funniest reviews are the metal heads reviewing a vintage style instrument.
-
The only "reviews" you ever need are the videos by Phil X :lol:
-
Unfortunately Phil X doesn't review new stuff :(
Look at Gearmandudes reviews of pedals - its like the School of Rock approach to reviews
-
The funniest reviews are the metal heads reviewing a vintage style instrument.
:mrgreen:
-
To Feline, I agree with everything you say, however, as I said before pretty much everything has 4/5 so how does that help the consumer especially in a direct comparison group test? This reminds of the phrase: if everything is special then thats another way of saying nothing is special. And Woe betide if they ever fault the mighty Fender or Gibson. I just would like objectivity which seems to be nigh on impossible to get. I mainly get Total Guitar for the gear but I've just become fed up, I should definately move on to the more higher class guitar porn in other mags :D
Ratrod, you're right too, HC does have its uses but even if the mark is between 2 and 9, most people don't want to admit they bought something cr@p. Plus if everyone rate everything 10 what can I do?... apart from accept it really is that good.
-
as far as magazines go - you have to read the full review, the stars are pretty much meaningless but you should get an idea of whether the guitar may be for you or not from what they actually write about it.
Total guitar hasnt really done great reviews for a while though - far too short. Guitarist is better but i dont enjoy reading them like i used to - lots of guitar shop mythology present in those reviews and the descriptions of sound sometimes verge on meaningless cork sniffing drivel.
best bet is to actually try gear to be able to put things in context. the reviews are helpfull as part of a big picture
-
I find that Total Guitar is almost aimed at players with ADD, so that all interviews and articles are "bite sized" rather than in depth. Whether that is because of low attention span of their readership or just an editorial style decision I dont know
XD haha very nicely put.
-
I find that Total Guitar is almost aimed at players with ADD, so that all interviews and articles are "bite sized" rather than in depth. Whether that is because of low attention span of their readership or just an editorial style decision I dont know
XD haha very nicely put.
I couldn't agree more. Coming from a magazine journalism background, my best guess for the reason would be that it's an editorial style decision, caused by the editorial team believing their readers have a short attention span!
As far as reviews go, I've always found the reviews in Guitarist quite good tbh - they're very detailed and well written. HC is a bit hit and miss, and I've often found I get tired of wading through all the badly-written cr@p just to get some basic information. I do agree that Youtube is quite good now - Guitar World put a lot of their review stuff on there, which is very handy, and some of the reviews from non-pros (for want of a better term) can be decent.
-
The funniest reviews are the metal heads reviewing a vintage style instrument.
it's the same for anyone reviewing anything which doesn't suit their style of music...
-
Every gear review seems to be rated 4/5, or occasionally 3/5 or 5/5, funny how no terrible guitars cross their pages.
Others mags such as Guitarist are good but have less tabs, and when I do pick up seem to have gear mostly out of my price range; although the journalism is better than the aforementioned.
As a manufacturer who has had stuff reviewed - here are some obvious reasons
1)If I sent a guitar to be reviewed I would damn well make sure it was up to snuff
2) I would also have spoken to the editor and agreed if there was a serious issue or problem with the guitar , they would ring me to discuss it and return the guitar rather than go ahead and write a bad review.
I may lose out on a review but the last thing I would want is a horrible review because something went wrong with a guitar
Also the last thing the magazine wants is bad blood with a manufacturer - the guitar industry is too small a goldfish bowl to be all pissy with someone else in it, & the magazine would rather do that than maybe lose me as an advertiser in the magazine.
Now if I was a major advertiser like Fender/Ibanez etc -= then it would be even more serious financially from a loss of advertising point of view . But that doesn't mean that Fender /Gibson/PRS get a fee ride because they spend a lot with the magazine - the magazine wants some critical merit & reputation.
Also - the more grown up magazines do cater for more experienced players - maybe who have a bit more spending power and as such they tend to review higher end gear.
I find that Total Guitar is almost aimed at players with ADD, so that all interviews and articles are "bite sized" rather than in depth. Whether that is because of low attention span of their readership or just an editorial style decision I dont know, but it hasn't been of such great interest to me from an advertising/review point of view as my guitars may be out of the price range of most of it's readership
Much truth in this
I've never seen a review that was really scathing, so I have to conclude that either
- The stock has been cherry picked
- The reviewers are inclined to give more favourable reviews or qualify and rationalise flaws to keep manufacturers sweet so they dont lose advertising revenue.
Either way it means that they arent to be trusted.
I've done HC reviews, but only for things that I did think were exceptional, so mine are pretty glowing, but are in depth and descriptive, not just "Its awesome!!!!111!!zorz!" (I have a couple of reviews on amazon where I thought either the product could do with one for people like me looking for balanced info, or I had a different perspective to what was already there, and they're more balanced, since the gear wasnt as awesomezorz).
All told user reviews that are level headed and sober by informed and experienced players are the best - the horse they're likely to have in the race is convincing themselves that what they paid for is good, and if you can spot the guys seem to have genuine reasons that something deserves its good or bad review, then those are the ones that I pay the most attention to.
In the world of user reviews its the ones I pay no attention to are folks that are 'doin it wrong!' and the honeymoon reviewers; people slating their new £2000 guitar, or saying how amazing it is, through their marshal MG or saying that their EMG equiped guitar is no good for blues, or people that just use value terms (great, good, cr@p, etc, blah blah) without any real description.
-
Much truth in this
I've never seen a review that was really scathing, so I have to conclude that either
- The stock has been cherry picked
- The reviewers are inclined to give more favourable reviews or qualify and rationalise flaws to keep manufacturers sweet so they dont lose advertising revenue.
Either way it means that they arent to be trusted.
C'mon - it makes sense that a manufacturer would make sure a product was up to scratch if an influential magazine was going to revue it and expose it's merits or flaws to a wider public- if your band was playing an important showcase gig - you'd rehearse a bit first wouldn't you.
In truth I make sure every guitar that goes out plays well - and that is probably true of most small makers who care about what they do.
I think on the second point the magazines have to be sensitive and constructive in any issues or points that they raise when criticising a product. If they wrote a review that just said it sucks nobody would be happy, so wording is important - or checking with the maker to see if they got a duff one perhaps
-
Oh, I'm not blaming anyone for doing it like that - If I were a manufacturer I'd make sure that everything I send for review were as good as it can be (and everything I sell for that matter edit - and something you can generally be more assured of with small builders anyway; not so much mass produce) and I'd look after my revenue sources if I were running a publication
I'm just saying that that being what happens, I dont see the reviews as representative of the stuff youre likely to pick up off the shelves or get through your door if you order a random one off the net.
-
To a certain extent, reviews can only ever be a generalisation. I have two or three guitars that I feel are on a par with each other, but I'll go through phases where for weeks one is a definite favourite. Then I'll pick up one of the others, and all of a sudden it will feel fresher and more interesting than it did when I was playing it day in day out. The same for amp settings - sometimes I want the familiar, and sometimes I want a change. What we all really want from our instruments is creative inspiration - and that depends as much on the context of your day's playing (mood, what you played yesterday, what sound you've got in your head today) as it does on the instrument itself. Our reviews of our own gear might change from week to week.
Added to that, what you get for your money has improved no end over the last 20 years, especially at the budget end of the market, hence the average review range being 3.5-4.5 stars. There's a lot of gear that might not be to your personal taste, but there's less that's actually definitively bad. There are certainly quality control issues (at all costs, but mostly with cheaper gear), but trying out the guitar or amp before you buy should avoid the majority of these.
I guess what a well written review is there to do is give you an idea of which pieces of gear might be worth checking out; from there it's up to you. And if you really like something that hasn't had good reviews, who cares? You're the one playing it, and the most interesting music often comes from people using gear in an unorthodox fashion. The other reason for reviews is so that we can live vicariously, by reading about expensive kit we know we'll never own but that we can still dream about. It's up to you whether that floats your boat or not.
Paul.
-
Added to that, what you get for your money has improved no end over the last 20 years, especially at the budget end of the market, hence the average review range being 3.5-4.5 stars.
I don't buy that. If computer magazines reviewed stuff based on what stuff cost 20 years ago, there'd be an uproar! Stuff IS better value now, so that's a given. We still want to know what the best stuff is, compared to what's available now, not 20 years ago.
-
Every gear review seems to be rated 4/5, or occasionally 3/5 or 5/5, funny how no terrible guitars cross their pages.
It's difficult though, because there really are very few truly terrible guitars nowadays.
A scale of 1-5 or 1-10 is pretty arbitrary. For a start, when they give a mark out of 5, presumably that's always with reference to other guitars in the same price range. If you measured everything on an "absolute" scale, then maybe a Chinese Squier is a 1/5 compared with a Collings or something, but that makes the Squier sound bad - which it isn't.
You could define 5/10 as "average", then mark up or down from there - but it seems unfair, since we normally expect 5/10 to mean "just about acceptable". In fact most new guitars at any price point are well made, use decent components and are pretty well set up - more like a 7+/10.
I think the key is to ignore the "at-a-glance" star ratings and concentrate on the details of the review.
-
I feel there are three good sources, (still need BS screening). Self testing, peer reviews on gear forums, trade rags.
I hit a Guitar Center 2 to 3 times a month and plug in everything interesting looking. Check out new equipments fads. See what the fuss is all about. Friends in bands are good for longer term evaluations of gear. Some are total 'fan boy' types that love anything with the latest cool brands. Have to apply a derating factor to their comments.
I like to be in various forums and ask for a 'compare A to B' type questions. You guys have helped me with that on this forum. Great forum here with experienced people, informative answers, and various styles of playing represented.
Guitar rags are OK for equipment specs, but for reviews I hold them at arms length. It is also good for me to keep in mind they are comparing like equipment in a certain price or quality band. An excellent quality review of a 350 guitar would mean much less than a very good review of a 2000 guitar when compared to peers in a similar price band.
The old '30 Day No Questions Asked' return policy is one of my favorite forms of gear review.... 8)
Best Regards,
Softail
-
I thought the point of gear reviews in magazines and whatnot was a form of not-so-stealth advertising, akin to product placements in movies.
-
that's what they read like, anyway :lol:
-
Got my May edition of Total Guitar through the post today. Lo and behold, out of the 11 products reviewed, 9 got 4/5 and 2 got 5/5! I really didn't see that one coming...
-
my 0.5 euros.
ratings are useless, reviews are a bit more interesting... i don't care if a neck is GREAT or 5/5 - it's all highly subjective, but if it's flat like my abdomen was some year ago or chubby like my abdomen is at the moment... (let's say an ibanez wizard against a gibson 50) a kid just focused on shredding in front of the mirror (without clothes, of course) could rate 0 my favourite neck and yet be of some use if he tells me why!
-
Magazine reviews are a good way of getting product recogniation, but from my experiences talking to a couple of people who work for magazines, they are v-v-v-v-ery careful how they word their reviews to avoid using any negative language.
One consequence of this is that you end up with a Lake Wobegon type situation where all the gear is "above average", which of course can't be the case.
-
Lake Wobegon?
But agreed.
How come computer magazines don't do that, then? I mean, I only occasionally buy one (normally when I'm buying a new PC, just to get reaquainted with them), and they slag stuff off merciliessly all the time. Bigger industry, is that it?
-
It is almost a truism in the magazine publishing business that your real customers who must be kept happy are the advertisers.
The readers are an afterthought.