We built a music gear deals tracker - want your feedback

Hey everyone,

We just revamped our equipboard.com/deals and wanted to share it with you all since you're the community that would actually use it!

What it does: Equipboard already tracks buy links across Sweetwater, Guitar Center, Thomann, Amazon, and other major retailers for every item in our database. We're now surfacing price drops automatically - when something drops in price at any store, it shows up on the deals page. You can filter by category (guitars, pedals, synths, drums, etc.), filter by store, and sort by biggest dollar or percentage drop.

Why we built it: If you've ever tried to hunt down deals and low prices across multiple stores, you know it's a pain. You'd have to check Sweetwater's DealZone, Guitar Center's sale page, Amazon, Thomann, etc. separately. We figured since we already have the pricing data flowing in, why not put it in one place?

A few things to know:

• Prices come from store feeds and are updated regularly (usually nightly). Occasionally a deal may no longer be available by the time you click through - that's the nature of price tracking.
• Equipboard is community-curated, so you may occasionally see a duplicate listing or an item linked to the wrong product. If you spot something off, let us know
• This is v1. We have ideas for where to take it but want to hear from you first.

What we'd love to hear:

• Is this useful? Does anything feel off or confusing?
• What would make it better? More filters, price history charts, alerts?
  
• Any categories or stores we're missing?
  

Check it out: https://equipboard.com/deals

Appreciate any and all feedback!

Stellar feature, my one question is, will the number of stores grow, and if so do we plan to partner with any smaller stores?

Great question! We'd love to work with any store - big or small - as long as they offer a solid experience for musicians. The way our deals page works is different from traditional editorial roundups where someone manually hunts down deals (which is why most deals pages go stale).

We ingest product feeds directly from retailers, which is how we're able to surface price drops automatically and keep everything current. So the main requirement for adding a new store is that they can provide us with a data feed we can work with.

If there's a store you'd like to see included, let us know. We're always open to adding more.

where do you get off doing something so useful? imagine trying to save us all some money...

it looks pretty good, but i never used the old one, so i wouldnt know. but you should fix the fact that it disappears behind the search bar on Safari for iPadOS.

image: https://ibb.co/Mkq5XN8F

First impression: "It's a good thing I'm incorruptible and can't be seduced by blowout sales."

10 minutes later: "The MiniMoog Model D is $1000 off at B&H?!? Where's my credit card?!?"

A few observations:

1. The search box only searches the items currently shown onscreen, not the entire domain of items. E.g. All Categories > All Stores > search for "Fender". Result: only 2 Fender items are returned.

2. Pressing "Load More Deals" breaks any search terms currently active. E.g. Search for Fender, then press "Load More Deals". Result: the items loaded are not Fender items.

3. Resetting the Store filter is awkward. Filter results by just a single store, like "Thomann", then go back and try to add another store or reset back to all stores. Result: your only option is to uncheck that one store and hit apply, which resets the Store filter, but I wasn't sure what was going to happen when I unchecked the only option and hit Apply. Maybe I'm the only one that found this to be an odd interaction pattern?

4. There's currently some bad data when you filter by All Categories > All Stores > Biggest % Drop. The first couple results returned show $100 Fender strings and $20 Line 6 amps... those prices/sales don't really exist.

1k off? oh man, how many model D variants am I going to die with?! MUST RESIST

that said, I was eyeing that trigon for under 400, might be interesting, might be too much like my mopho x4, dunno, but I embrace all synths by dave smith

Hey pkennethk - really appreciate this.

Great report. We shipped fixes for #1, #2, and #3:

1. Search now covers all deals, not just what's loaded.
2. Load More preserves your active search.

3. Store filter auto-applies, and there's a Clear link so you don't have to awkwardly uncheck your way out.

4. We did some manual cleanup. But bad data can slip through for two reasons: a buy link gets matched to the wrong item, and sometimes the store's own feed lags behind what's on their site. Less of an issue over time, but expect some noise. We have some lightweight AI that tries to determine whether a buy link from a merchant matches correctly to the product on Equipboard, I'm thinking we can lean a little harder on that 🤔

Thanks for the thorough report. Keep it coming.

ps. How's that Model D treating ya 😂

Its great , as German I can choose Store: Thomann look for what I want like Effects choose a cheap one and then go for it.

Thanks for the quick fixes gchiaren!

I was trying it out last night and its incredible now!