Gear Scores. Talk to me.

From the description of this new feature, the Gear Score calc sounds like a mostly-subjective # derived from the observations of 2 people.

Can anyone maybe walk us through how (for example) the Sequential Prophet 6 was deemed to be a 100, but the extremely-closely-related sister-product Sequential OB-6 only got an 84?

Don't get me wrong, I'm intrigued AF. Excited, even. This is a cool development. But as a user/community member, I (right or wrong) instinctually expect some kind of small stake in influencing these scores, as pretty much every other # on the site is something a user can participate in to some degree.

Happy to discuss! We're excited about this development as well, and you may have noticed product pages got a little redesign :)

Firstly, have you read the About the Equipboard Gear Score page?

Happy to discuss! We're excited about this development as well, and you may have noticed product pages got a little redesign :)

Firstly, have you read the About the Equipboard Gear Score page?

Yes. I read that in its entirety. Then I asked my question. There are no specifics mentioned in terms of how you're quantifying quality nor versatility.

I really like the overhaul of the item pages. Congrats on the successful execution of what looks to have been a ton of work!

...but the topic here, specifically, is how you're building those scores ;)

Congrats on the successful execution of what looks to have been a ton of work!

Thanks man that means a lot to us :)

Ok, so this is a somewhat complex question to answer! Firstly I will say, we don't want to divulge the exact equation, at least not yet. Reason being, this release literally went live yesterday, and we are very much in "observation mode" to see what shakes out of it. We toiled over the gear score formula quite a bit, and there was a delicate balance of making it meaningful while at the same time not over-engineering it in round 1.

But as a user/community member, I (right or wrong) instinctually expect some kind of small stake in influencing these scores, as pretty much every other # on the site is something a user can participate in to some degree.

You're exactly right about this, and actually you CAN influence the score. However, since it correlates to a ranking within the category, your participation in rating/reviewing/submitting artist usage to an item does not change the score right away in real-time (otherwise we'd constantly be recalculating rank). Recalculations are done weekly, just so you know.

Right now, members can directly influence roughly between 30 and 60 points depending on the item. Also, we have some omissions which we're actively discussing. For instance, the number of people adding an item to a wishlist currently does not count towards the score, but I'm starting to think maybe it should?? After all, the "desirability" of an item can be a proxy for how badass it is (or isn't)... no?

I can tell you this much about the current calculation. As we crunch numbers from multiple well-known third party sources to make up a portion of the score, I can see that the Sequential OB-6 is hampered by its low activity and number of ratings/reviews on a well known site that shares its name with a type of effect...

I hope this helps! A lot more to come on this, I promise you that :)

Ok, so this is a somewhat complex question to answer! Firstly I will say, we don't want to divulge the exact equation, at least not yet. Reason being, this release literally went live yesterday, and we are very much in "observation mode" to see what shakes out of it. We toiled over the gear score formula quite a bit, and there was a delicate balance of making it meaningful while at the same time not over-engineering it in round 1.

Oh no need to go into exact formula; that's a trade secret, dude! Keep a lid on the equations, please. :)

But as a user/community member, I (right or wrong) instinctually expect some kind of small stake in influencing these scores, as pretty much every other # on the site is something a user can participate in to some degree.

Right now, members can directly influence roughly between 30 and 60 points depending on the item. Also, we have some omissions which we're actively discussing. For instance, the number of people adding an item to a wishlist currently does not count towards the score, but I'm starting to think maybe it should?? After all, the "desirability" of an item can be a proxy for how badass it is (or isn't)... no?

This was exactly what I was curious about. I just wanted some reassurance that the score wasn't 100% cherry-picked data from the Reverb API and/or heavily-biased by the EB gear guide findings... but I have zero problem with either of those sources being a big part of the score.

EDIT: I know the copy in the score the description alludes to multiple sources influencing score, but without any specifics, I came away with a pretty cynical/skeptical interpretation on my initial read-through. After seeing just how many items already have a score, there's no way anyone would have been able to intentionally/directly apply the kind of personal bias I was fearing.

I can tell you this much about the current calculation. As we crunch numbers from multiple well-known third party sources to make up a portion of the score, I can see that the Sequential OB-6 is hampered by its low activity and number of ratings/reviews on a well known site that shares its name with a type of effect...

Yeah, after I posted the question, I went straight to Reverb to see if I could figure out what happenings there could account for the delta. It's kind of shocking that the OB-6 has zero user reviews there right now, given it has 30 user reviews and 46 Artists here.... but whatever, you can't custom-curate every damn score... that's both miserable and unscalable.

I hope this helps! A lot more to come on this, I promise you that :)

It does. Thank you!

Just saw the gear scores, and I have to say I freakin' love it! I also like how it's making the gear categories more prominent, which is making it easy to do some cleanup. I just removed some EQ and compressors plugins that were mistakenly in the Amp Simulator category, so I guess ranking scores will be changing again next week!

But that brings up a question, are some gear pages locked? I can't find the Edit Gear Details link on Amplitube 4 anywhere, and it seems like it should really be in the Amp Simulator category. The Edit Gear Details link seems to usually be next to the Description now, but Amplitube 4 doesn't have a description for some reason. Some other items have it near the top (with the "Want to help? Edit gear details" wording), but that isn't showing up for Amplitube 4 either. Maybe it's a weird corner case with the new layout templates?