[Feature Request] Era / Year that Artist Had Gear

One thing I would absolutely love to see implemented onto the site would be the ability to list the era in which artists were using their gear; for example, Prince has an insane amount of gear on his EB page, and trying to decipher when each bit of gear/ instrument was used is a nightmare! Having the ability to log "First known use" or "Date owned" on a piece of gear would be so helpful; that way, people who are using the site for research can sort by year or date and have a chronological list of when gear was used.

Let me know if this is something that is doable / desirable.

That's an excellent suggestion. @Michael

+1 Y'all already know I'm a fan of this idea.

Oh mad! I completely forgot I made this request already! Glad to see that the sentiment is still the same hahaha

I love that we both used Prince as an example... "great minds..."

Are you working on any new music, Finley?

Let me know if this is something that is doable / desirable.

This is definitely doable, and it sounds like the community wants it, so we're all ears. The challenge is to standardize the data - as in like how we structure it on the backend - to where it's specific enough and useful for users, but also widely applicable to a lot of artist/gear submissions?

So, how should we standardize it? I'm leaning towards "Dates Owned/Used" since that can be a year, a decade, or a span (and it encompasses "first known use" right?).

So it could be 1978. Or 1970s. Or 1970-1978.

As per this idea I think the specific artist eras are hard to scale across artists (I mean, relatively few artists are iconic like Prince and have eras people talk about). But one thing we have thought about is pulling album data, and then you could select what albums the gear was relevant in.

Thoughts?

As per this idea I think the specific artist eras are hard to scale across artists (I mean, relatively few artists are iconic like Prince and have eras people talk about). But one thing we have thought about is pulling album data, and then you could select what albums the gear was relevant in.

Thoughts?

Great to have you on the thread, Giulio. Thanks for chiming in.

Using albums as a proxy for a date range makes a lot of sense to me. Even in that Prince example you linked, most of the eras are anchored to just 1-2 albums.

I mean, I can't tell ya exactly what date Jason Newsted joined Metallica off the top of my head, but I know ...And Justice for All is the start of the Newsted era. So the concept seems pretty intuitive.

Would adding an album/era/date-range tag to someone's already-approved submission trigger the need for a re-review? Or would we instead be adding gear submissions TO the album/era/date-range tags available for a given artist?

...orrrr could we just search EB for an album profile/entry, and then see what artists/musicians/producers/gear are associated with that album, as sort of a new nexus/search vector on the site?

I like referencing albums.

This is an awesome idea.

I love that we both used Prince as an example... "great minds..."

Are you working on any new music, Finley?

Exactly! 🤝

I am indeed, the grind never seems to end, I im hoping that I will have something to drop next year

Let me know if this is something that is doable / desirable.

This is definitely doable, and it sounds like the community wants it, so we're all ears. The challenge is to standardize the data - as in like how we structure it on the backend - to where it's specific enough and useful for users, but also widely applicable to a lot of artist/gear submissions?

So, how should we standardize it? I'm leaning towards "Dates Owned/Used" since that can be a year, a decade, or a span (and it encompasses "first known use" right?).

So it could be 1978. Or 1970s. Or 1970-1978.

As per this idea I think the specific artist eras are hard to scale across artists (I mean, relatively few artists are iconic like Prince and have eras people talk about). But one thing we have thought about is pulling album data, and then you could select what albums the gear was relevant in.

Thoughts?

Fantastic! Im so glad that you are onboard!

Without being pedantic, I think that it would be beneficial to have both the year ('Date Owned' as a suggested heading) and album ('Albums Appeared On' as a suggested heading).

For example, with Daft Punk, there are bits of gear that we know they were using in 1998, but weren't known to be used on any of their released projects. As such, for something like that, just a 'Date Owned' would suffice.

Sticking with the Daft Punk example, for their SP-1200, that could have 'Date Owned' to indicate when they were first known to have obtained it (I think it was 95 off the top of my head), and the 'Albums Appeared On' would be - Homework & Discovery.

I don't know if this would cause confusion or issues when it comes to ordering, but let me know if this is doable!

Regardless, either one of the two fields would be incredible to see! Thanks

As per this idea I think the specific artist eras are hard to scale across artists (I mean, relatively few artists are iconic like Prince and have eras people talk about). But one thing we have thought about is pulling album data, and then you could select what albums the gear was relevant in.

Thoughts?

Great to have you on the thread, Giulio. Thanks for chiming in.

Using albums as a proxy for a date range makes a lot of sense to me. Even in that Prince example you linked, most of the eras are anchored to just 1-2 albums.

I mean, I can't tell ya exactly what date Jason Newsted joined Metallica off the top of my head, but I know ...And Justice for All is the start of the Newsted era. So the concept seems pretty intuitive.

Would adding an album/era/date-range tag to someone's already-approved submission trigger the need for a re-review? Or would we instead be adding gear submissions TO the album/era/date-range tags available for a given artist?

...orrrr could we just search EB for an album profile/entry, and then see what artists/musicians/producers/gear are associated with that album, as sort of a new nexus/search vector on the site?

If assistence is needed in populating historic / popular pages, more than happy to chime in on those pages that I have some knowledge on (Daft Punk, Jai Paul, Prince, Charlie Puth etc.) even if its just to test the functionality.

Without being pedantic, I think that it would be beneficial to have both the year ('Date Owned' as a suggested heading) and album ('Albums Appeared On' as a suggested heading).

This is what I'm leaning towards as well. I can't think of any issues it would cause, since it's optional metadata and, if available, is interesting. I think it makes sense to separate dates used/owned versus albums used on and not conflate the two (there absolutely could be overlap, but they're two different concepts as finleygomez illustrated w the Daft Punk example).

If Equipboard is to be the place where tone and gear geekery knows no bounds, the addition of this metadata makes a lot of sense to me!

As far as this goes:

Would adding an album/era/date-range tag to someone's already-approved submission trigger the need for a re-review?

It's a good question and we're open to suggestions. What do you all think? Could even be some sort of hybrid, where if your GearIQ is high enough it doesn't trigger a re-review? 🤔 Just thinking out loud here...

If Equipboard is to be the place where tone and gear geekery knows no bounds, the addition of this metadata makes a lot of sense to me!

If the goal is to go harder at the gear geekery than anywhere else, then yeah: letting the Finleys (and me's) of the world get forensic with date(s) owned metadata will definitely further that goal.

Would the intent be to tag the earliest known date they used the item? The span of years? both?

@Finley: do you have a sense of how you would you want to list the date metadata for the first 10 or so items on Daft Punk's profile? Would it just be the year they were first known to use the item?

Re: Ablums

With albums/releases it seems pretty straightforward: Equipboard > Kurt Cobain profile > "Releases" section > filter by "Bleach"

Crazy ideas time: would an album ever be something one could search for on Equipboard? E.g. A user searches for "nevermind" and the first hit is the Nevermind album complete with album art? You click that album entry and you're taken to a page that shows you Butch Vig, Nirvana, and each member of Nirvana are associated with that album? Maybe the page even shows you the most popular gear tagged as being used on Nevermind? Do people think about albums/releases when they think about "how do I get that sound"?

Would adding an album/era/date-range tag to someone's already-approved submission trigger the need for a re-review?

It's a good question and we're open to suggestions. What do you all think? Could even be some sort of hybrid, where if your GearIQ is high enough it doesn't trigger a re-review? 🤔 Just thinking out loud here...

I think it would be great to keep an approved submission approved if someone is just adding info vs. changing info.

The gear IQ threshold as a way to limit re-review sounds fine by me.

I am indeed, the grind never seems to end, I im hoping that I will have something to drop next year

Definitely let us know here in the forum when you have something new up. I've always enjoyed your tracks.

I love that we both used Prince as an example... "great minds..."

Are you working on any new music, Finley?

Exactly! 🤝

I am indeed, the grind never seems to end, I im hoping that I will have something to drop next year

Where can I hear your old music. I feel like I missed the boat somehow.

Would the intent be to tag the earliest known date they used the item? The span of years? both?

I think span of years of gear owned would be a bit tricker to cover, especially if its something that gets dropped then picked back up again throughout the artists career (I.E. Artist uses a guitar from 1976-1981, then starts using it again in 2005-2010, as a hypothetical example) I think it could "muddy" the info a bit if submitters were to put the span as 1976 to 2010, as it wouldn't really be that accurate. I hope this makes sense!

@Finley: do you have a sense of how you would you want to list the date metadata for the first 10 or so items on Daft Punk's profile? Would it just be the year they were first known to use the item?

I would populate as follows:

• If its gear that they haven't been pictured with (Live photos, studio photos etc.) I would populate the 'First Known Use' as the date that they mentioned it (I.E. Date of interview, date of magazine article etc.)

• If its gear thet have been pictured with, It would be the date of the photo (If its a photo from one of their live shows) or guesstimate of the year of photo (If its a studio photo with no concrete date)

Once I get back from work I could give you a more in-depth breakdown of what the dates from the 10 first items on the Daft Punk page would look like with reasoning behind it to see if everyone is in agreement with how some submissions could look like

Re: Ablums

With albums/releases it seems pretty straightforward: Equipboard > Kurt Cobain profile > "Releases" section > filter by "Bleach"

Crazy ideas time: would an album ever be something one could search for on Equipboard? E.g. A user searches for "nevermind" and the first hit is the Nevermind album complete with album art? You click that album entry and you're taken to a page that shows you Butch Vig, Nirvana, and each member of Nirvana are associated with that album? Maybe the page even shows you the most popular gear tagged as being used on Nevermind? Do people think about albums/releases when they think about "how do I get that sound"?

Love this idea btw, I think having a specific 'Albums' page for big albums like Nevermind, Purple Rain, Dark Side of The Moon, Thriller, Hotel California, Brothers In Arms etc. etc. would be fantastic! I think it would also be a great source of traffic to the site too.

I love that we both used Prince as an example... "great minds..."

Are you working on any new music, Finley?

Exactly! 🤝

I am indeed, the grind never seems to end, I im hoping that I will have something to drop next year

Where can I hear your old music. I feel like I missed the boat somehow.

https://finleygomez.com/ - All my links should be there! Thanks for your interest! :)

Once I get back from work I could give you a more in-depth breakdown of what the dates from the 10 first items on the Daft Punk page would look like with reasoning behind it to see if everyone is in agreement with how some submissions could look like

Ok so:

• Alesis 3630 - Dec 1996 (Seen on Homework & Discovery) [Source: Daft Punk Unchained 1996 Live Footage]
• Juno-106 - Feb 1996 (Seen on Homework & Discovery) [Source: Photo from Daft Punk Live @ L'Espace (Leave Earth)]
• Mutronics Mutator - 2002 [Source: Official Mutronics site from 2002]
• Moog Minimoog Voyager - Apr 2006 (Seen on Alive 2007) [Source: Photos from Coachella 2006 live setup]
• E-mu SP-1200 - 1996 (Seen on Homework & Discovery) [Source: Can be heard on Homework. First seen Jan 1997 - Photos from End Club live set]
• TR-909 - Nov 1993 (Seen on Homework & Discovery) [Source: Can be clearly heard on The New Wave and Alive, which was recorded in 1993]
• Roland S-760 - Sep 1996 [Source: Photo from Daft Punk Live @ Le Zenith]
• Ableton Live - Apr 2006 (Seen on Alive 2007) [Source: Mixmag article from 2007]
• TR-808 - Sep 1995 (Seen on Homework, Discovery & Human After All) [Source: Photos from Daft Punk live @ Back 2 Basics]
• Boss MT-2 - Evidence is not solid enough to give an exact date + proof link is now dead

I like your voice. 'You're ephemera' is like 2 different style EPs stuck together. Definitely not what I was expecting. Gotta get some more work done, I'll have to listen to the last couple tracks later. I wasn't expecting a modern pop/RnB record going in so it was a pleasant surprise.