Gear Reviews (what is the point)

[dobbins]

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?

[Stevepage]

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.

[Ratrod]

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.

[FELINEGUITARS]

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

[BigB]

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.

[Ratrod]

The funniest reviews are the metal heads reviewing a vintage style instrument.

[_tom_]

The only "reviews" you ever need are the videos by Phil X :lol:

[Elliot]

Unfortunately Phil X doesn't review new stuff  :(

Look at Gearmandudes reviews of pedals - its like the School of Rock approach to reviews

[BigB]

The funniest reviews are the metal heads reviewing a vintage style instrument.

:mrgreen:

[dobbins]

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.

 

[WezV]

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

[Ribboz]

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.

[Simon D]

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.

[dave_mc]

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...

[MDV]

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.