Equipboard Improvement Ideas

I know we’ve done this before, but it’s been a while and I’m itching to get radical with the site.

So, what ideas do you have to improve Equipboard? Everything from small incremental improvements to big wild crazy ideas, let’s hear ‘em!

bump... you should sticky this

bump... you should sticky this

Good idea, stickied.

I'll start. I think the community gear photo gallery is amazing and criminally under-exposed. We quietly added the ability for gear photos to be tagged, and it looks like most folks have been using that so now we can tell what's a pedalboard setup, what's a studio pic, etc. We can use that to disseminate those photos on more portions of the site. You're looking at Billy Corgan's Big Muff? Tycho's Virus synth? Cool, how about some beautiful pedalboards and studio setups from the community further down the page where you can admire and learn what other gear people are using with their Big Muff & Virus?

I'll start. I think the community gear photo gallery is amazing and criminally under-exposed. We quietly added the ability for gear photos to be tagged, and it looks like most folks have been using that so now we can tell what's a pedalboard setup, what's a studio pic, etc. We can use that to disseminate those photos on more portions of the site. You're looking at Billy Corgan's Big Muff? Tycho's Virus synth? Cool, how about some beautiful pedalboards and studio setups from the community further down the page where you can admire and learn what other gear people are using with their Big Muff & Virus?

I haven't yet made purchase decisions based on the gear photos but tis coming.... I have made layout and wiring decisions. Its a great way to get ideas about ergonomics when your space was maybe thrown together and sloppy before you saw how tidy and well thought out other people's working environments are.

EDIT: some people's home studios really shamed me into cleaning up my covid-space.... and also has me hounding my best friend to cean up the mess in south philly, not just the video-studio section where they shoot live streams.

I think we need a manuals library... sometimes old gear manuals disappear into obscurity as hard copies are lost by owners and websites are rebuilt by businesses so if someone has a PDF we should host it.... even new stuff we should store manuals if its ok with the manufacturer because when that gear is discontinued who knows how long the manufacturer will host the PDF manual? And software too, sometimes you open an old plugin you like, hit the help button and you get a dead link. Developer is gone. Domain cancelled, manual lost forever.

Really great stuff stays in service long after the creator has moved on.

I think we need a manuals library... sometimes old gear manuals disappear into obscurity as hard copies are lost by owners and websites are rebuilt by businesses so if someone has a PDF we should host it.... even new stuff we should store manuals if its ok with the manufacturer because when that gear is discontinued who knows how long the manufacturer will host the PDF manual? And software too, sometimes you open an old plugin you like, hit the help button and you get a dead link. Developer is gone. Domain cancelled, manual lost forever.

Really great stuff stays in service long after the creator has moved on.

This a very good idea. I have a similar idea in mind for old ads.

This a very good idea. I have a similar idea in mind for old ads.

this is great, before surfing the web a person could just go into the EB Ad section when looking to verify an endorser

I think we need a manuals library... sometimes old gear manuals disappear into obscurity as hard copies are lost by owners and websites are rebuilt by businesses so if someone has a PDF we should host it....

I dig it. Most things on Equipboard needs community contribution to scale, so are you imagining a section on item pages - around the description perhaps - where a community member can upload the PDF manual? I guess there would need to be some minor level of verification (or at least a way to report bogus PDFs).

yeah, something like that where there's a downloadable PDF manual

I mean, who would forge the manual to a 70s compressor? c'mon, no one is that low

we need like a tech tips corner.... it could range from soldering technique to pedalboard power supply selection to mixing tricks.. and analog corner, forpeople who think a computer is just the new tape machine? maybe not.. kepex expander/gates and why they're cooler and more fun than any plugin? you and your patchbay, the routing romance.

One thing I'm specifically interested in is what would make a product page on Equipboard undeniably awesome?

Imagine you opened up a music store online. You'd have to think long and hard how you differentiate yourself from the Guitar Centers of the world. Sweetwater kinda has the customer service angle, GC is a name familiar to most and offers physical store locations all over, etc. If you opened up your own online store, given MSRP is enforced in many cases with music gear, why would people shop from you instead of them?

We're thinking about that a lot at Equipboard, though from a slightly different angle. We're not a store per se, we're a community-built resource.

I hope this is not hubris of me to say, but I think Equipboard's the best place on the web to see what pro artists use a product, and how. And that matters to many musicians - it's a hugely endorsement-heavy industry - but it's far from the only thing that matters.

You know how before you watch a movie you almost always check sites like IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, or Metacritic? Their aggregate scores have become pretty important in the landscape of film releases.

Well, we wanna be that stop you need to make before shopping for music gear. So, I'm very curious to hear what would make the Equipboard product page a must-see destination for any gear you were interested in? 👀

EDIT: For anyone confused, by Equipboard product page I mean this:

• Korg Minilogue
• Strymon Volante
• Yamaha HS8 Studio Monitor

there's a lot of 'what the pros use' but not always much why or how at this point... which is tricky

Hey guys. I think manual links on the product page is a great resource.

Besides that, other ideas:

• "Gut shots" tab that users can upload their pedals/amps circuitboard pics. At least I love googling those, and it's the first thing I do when I buy new gear.

• Some kind of pedalboard planner mini app - although that already exists at https://pedalboardplanner.com - or maybe some size comparison feature.

• Maybe improve "description" tab by adding basic specs to all products - current draw, voltage, battery operation, bypass, release date, dimensions.

• The "tech corner" sounds interesting as well, sharing schematics, trouble shooting, gear maintenance, etc.

• Lastly, I would love to browse by category. One of the features I like most on Pedalboard Planner app it the ability to search a pedal by Type and Brand. Sometimes I'm looking for a new delay pedal or a compressor or whatever, and I just go on the app, click "search by type" and choose from the dozens of different types (delay, compressor, octaver, phaser, chorus, etc) hit one of the those and bam, hundreds of delay pedals I never seen before. Also amazing would be to sort this search not only by type of effect but also by size/format, analog/digital, psu only or battery only.

Cheers and keep up the great work.

(Note: I'm busy and haven't read any of the other posts above except the first one.)

I was actually just going to make a post on a similar subject.

Here's my idea: Bulk submissions. You know where you find a photo of an artists guitar collection or pedalboard or something where there's about 10+ items in the photo? Insted of submitting them seperatly, one at a time, I suggest a seperate submission category where a user makes a list of some sort and it'll submit items in bulk (excluding any items that are already on the artist's page). the user can also make a text that applies to all of the items, e.g. "here we can see ______'s pedalboard, the pedals are from left to right...", or something like that.

Feel free to criticize or suggest something on this idea, I'm always open to feedback.

Here's my idea: Bulk submissions. You know where you find a photo of an artists guitar collection or pedalboard or something where there's about 10+ items in the photo? Insted of submitting them seperatly, one at a time, I suggest a seperate submission category where a user makes a list of some sort and it'll submit items in bulk (excluding any items that are already on the artist's page). the user can also make a text that applies to all of the items, e.g. "here we can see ______'s pedalboard, the pedals are from left to right...", or something like that.

Feel free to criticize or suggest something on this idea, I'm always open to feedback.

This would be such a time saver.

Thanks for the awesome input miguel_angelo.

"Gut shots" tab that users can upload their pedals/amps circuitboard pics. At least I love googling those, and it's the first thing I do when I buy new gear.

I think these would belong in the gear photo gallery, but we need to probably add the tag "gut shot" so that people are aware that's a perfectly valid type of gear photo to submit. Agreed? ...btw is that the official gear nerd terminology? Would everyone know what a gut shot is?

Maybe improve "description" tab by adding basic specs to all products - current draw, voltage, battery operation, bypass, release date, dimensions.

Yeah good idea to split out specs from the description.

The "tech corner" sounds interesting as well, sharing schematics, trouble shooting, gear maintenance, etc.

Where would this live in your opinion? In the forum? On the item page?

Lastly, I would love to browse by category. One of the features I like most on Pedalboard Planner app it the ability to search a pedal by Type and Brand. Sometimes I'm looking for a new delay pedal or a compressor or whatever, and I just go on the app, click "search by type" and choose from the dozens of different types (delay, compressor, octaver, phaser, chorus, etc) hit one of the those and bam, hundreds of delay pedals I never seen before. Also amazing would be to sort this search not only by type of effect but also by size/format, analog/digital, psu only or battery only.

We currently do have this, but what I'm hearing is that it needs to be WAY better and I 100% agree. Right now we couple categories like "Delay & Reverb Effects Pedals" but they need to be split. Filtering by brand also needs to be done, as well as filtering by other specs.

Here's my idea: Bulk submissions.

Great idea. Say less. At the very least, when you make a submission, at the top it should say "submit another item to [artist] using the same source" - and this would pre-populate the artist, source, and perhaps even your notes from the previous submission so you could go in and edit them accordingly.

Another idea I've had this other idea floating around too, do you think we should we add "Youtuber/Podcaster" as an artist roll?

Thanks to everyone for their thoughts and ideas.

Here’s where I think Equipboard could improve. I would like to leverage all the knowledge of Equipboard to make it more personal and useful.

Thanks to you all, we are the best place to find “who plays what”. I think to get to the next level, we need to build on that to be more useful to more players.

What if we structured our data and introduced tagging systems so that we could crunch data and create community generated pages that answer specific problems?

There is a lot of knowledge in this community, and I think we could come up with a better system than forums for highlighting it. The pages would be dynamic, so anyone could suggest products to include, and there would be an up and downvoting system.

Imagine a page styled like this, but for “plate reverbs for vox ac30 style amps”. https://www.producthunt.com/e/remote-apps

So for example, we would create thousands of dedicated pages like “best overdrives for blues”, “best PAF style humbuckers”, “best nitrocellulose safe guitar stands” and they would live forever and change over time.

These would all be linked to the item pages so that people could easily see which products are in what lists.

Also, if we bring in the ability to tag and self tagging (for example, Michael is a guitarist that likes lo-fi rock and blues), we could make some really interesting pages based on personal preferences. Roles, genres, styles, types of products, you name it.

Ultimately, I think this would make Equipboard way more interesting and better suited to solve individual’s problems. After building a database of connecting artists and gear, this would turn our attention to making interesting connections among the gear that is easy to contribute to and explore.

What do you guys think?

this all sounds great assuming I understand what you're driving at... like the tagging I'm not 100% sure what you mean? but I get the motivation

also, how's that talisman treating you, Michael?