How Equipboard Started

General question to the mods about how Equipboard came to be? Just curious.

The short answer is gchiaren and I were curious about what Jack White was using to get his tone. We didn't like the answers that came back on google at the time, and wanted to build something better than a buried forum thread with a "my friend is roommates with his guitar tech and says..." type answers.

It started almost as a blog. But then more and more people started contributing and the community has been forming as we've been building features to open it up more and more. (Thanks to everyone here!)

that's actually a really cool story.... you need an 'about' tab next to 'forum' where you share that story in detail instead of it being a 'buried forum thread'. I think people would like to hear that and it would be good PR.

So how long has it been since this site started?

Once we're asking questions; How does Equiboard support itself? I don't know anything about these things, but I'm assuming it cost money to have a site?

I reckon that once you've bought the domain, as long as you're building it yourself, with a free piece of software it should be costless, though some of the site's features might require some paid for software, and a ittle amount of money, for them to be added. Just guessing though. And there's no legitimate staffing.

The very first page (again, it looked totally different back then) went up in March 2013.

We should definitely do that. It is cool to me that people are interested.

Damn.. just two (and one half) years ago? Doesn't feel that long, but EquipBoard has come a hella long way.

Yeah, you're exactly right. We pay a several thousand per month for everything. That includes servers (we have about 500,000 visits/month to equipboard now), and third party software services (like algolia for our search and embedly for showing youtube embeds) which all adds up with several million pageviews per month.

I wouldn't call us profitable at this point but we make money with affiliate links, mostly from our articles (like the best fuzz pedals, how to choose a chorus pedal, etc). That means when someone reads reviews about a product on equipboard's article, if they then go to amazon or guitar center directly from us and buy that thing, we make a small % of that sale. It doesn't cost the buyer anything.

Thanks! ...And we still have a super long way to go to make this what we want it to be. We've learned a ton along the way (often what NOT to do). We have had ideas that we worked on that didn't pan out like we hoped and we still have a lot to work on to fix bugs and build things the community is requesting.

Little things that sound easy take us a while to actually build out. Some examples we have requests for now are 1) continuing to make editing easier for all the things 2) adding a previous section for gear that an artist doesn't use anymore 3) finding a way to better categorize things 4) mapping out signal paths... you get the idea. We'll keep trying to improve it.

All things considered, I'm super happy the way the community is evolving and growing. Just in case you guys are curious, Equipboard is currently growing at about 15% per month. :)

By the way, (and sorry I missed this yesterday) thanks for being a member for 1 year and 1 day now!

Wait, has it really been that long? Thank you, but i'm a bit shocked. It just doesn't feel that long (probably because my first submission was 4 months after I registered?).

Yeah, you joined December 07, 2014 at 8:22 pm. Time flies when you're having fun! :)

I always used to think to myself when trying to find what gear someone used why someone doesn't make a site for it. Then a few weeks ago I discovered the site and was like hell yea this is badass. It's a awesome site and glad I can find someones gear effortlessly

Thanks, man! Glad you found the site.

I always used to think to myself when trying to find what gear someone used why someone doesn't make a site for it. Then a few weeks ago I discovered the site and was like hell yea this is badass. It's a awesome site and glad I can find someones gear effortlessly

I wish something like this had existed when I was cutting my 1st recordings, struggling to figure out how to get classic sounds.... when I was green it was a lot of financial investment and groping around to get sounds

So that is why you got all that experience with tons of gear!

These days we have it so easy with youtube, online forums, this site etc. I've been watching a lot of videos and reading a lot of reviews etc really trying to choose what pedals and amp I want to get when I have the cash. Also the quality of cheap guitars is damn good compared to say 30 years ago and theres a lot of choice these days too

So that is why you got all that experience with tons of gear!

yup, about 15 years of recording experience on both sides of the glass before there were many resources for how to set your marshalls for classic tones! after that I had amassed a lot of knowledge and things also got easier with the internet gear explosion.... before then I had to purchase and fiddle around inscessantly

and also because I am a nitpicky lunatic when it comes to electric guitars and synths

It was literally the same as the site was made for me. I was looking for Jack White's gear.