gchiaren's forum posts 789

To be clear, I think it's a valiant effort! I love it when community members are vocal and really make it known they want something changed. It definitely influences the road map on our side of the house. We want to make Equipboard to serve the best interest of you guys & gals, after all :)

I just think sometimes things might have unintended bad side effects, that's all. I want to point out that we might be seeing a bad side effect now w the "duplicate" marked guitars.

Also would love to hear ideas on how we could solve this issue more long-term. I agree that there needs to be some way to consolidate variations of the same item under an umbrella of some sort... but it's a tricky thing to solve! :)

Happy Monday everyone :)

I wanted to bring up something regarding making edits to items. Some of you more experienced Equipboard members have been trying to solve the issues of having a lot of variations of the same base item on the site, particularly guitars. One solution has been to change the name of certain guitars by adding "Duplicate" to the end of the name - for example, a Fender 1966 Stratocaster is renamed to Fender 1966 Stratocaster Duplicate because the notion is it belongs under the umbrella of a single Fender Stratocaster. I want to discuss why this is not a great solution at the moment.

You see, items on Equipboard don't stand alone. When they have pro artists and community members associated with them, you edit the name as it appears on those Equipboards. We've had a few users write in upset that Josh Klinghoffer is shown as using a Fender 1966 Stratocaster Duplicate, which makes no sense to someone coming across the page for the first time.

It's not as simple as just merging EVERY SINGLE Fender Strat into a single item. When it comes to artists, it's important to know the little details, like year, color, and special appointments. I do agree that having seven versions of a Fender Telecaster Deluxe is not a great idea, but as of now, it's better than getting rid of color and year detail for the artists that use it.

This is an issue that we have to solve together as a community long term, and will probably require some coding and structure changes by the Equipboard staff. :)

TL;DR: Don't just stick the word "Duplicate" to the end of item names to mark them as duplicates - that confuses lots of users!

Haha oh, my. Nice detective work! ;) It makes me cringe looking at our early "design" work... and I use that term loosely!

To answer the question of why there are relics of fishermen and chefs... the original mission was to build Equipboard for music gear, since that's what Michael and I know and love. We posted the site to reddit, and noticed there was some pretty strong interest in people having an Equipboard for other things - sports, and more niche stuff like hunters, fishermen, celebrity chefs, etc. After some time, it became apparent that having all those things really diluted and littered the site, and made it more confusing for new users. So from then on we focused on making this be the best place to go to for researching artists and music gear.

So we still have non-music pro pages, but they are mostly hidden from view. They get a small amount of traffic from Google, so we keep them around just for fun. Hopefully that explains some things! :-D

how's the 325 treating you? can I con you into working on my EB-wide collaborative song project?

http://equipboard.com/forums/general/topics/internet-colaboration

Yes! You're gonna have to give me a bit to catch up on that monster thread ;)

Sweet, thanks for weighing in Jim, I agree w you.

Whoever submits this one, would be cool to grab a screenshot of the comment rather than just link to the youtube video for proof. You can use a service like imgur to easily upload the screenshot, grab the .jpg (or .png) URL to the image and use that as proof on EB.

Oh, man. If it's legitimate, that's a great source. I'd be open to hearing other Equipboarders' opinions on if this is acceptable proof or not.

There is indeed a Dave Scott credited with engineering/mixing on that record. He's got a Google Plus page, but it doesn't really reveal much. Here's his LinkedIn, I was trying to see if I could connect his two accounts, but no such luck. In the photos it all looks like the same guy.

I would be inclined to count this as legit proof... anyone else have any thoughts?

https://youtu.be/qTwAoFR4DuM?t=1m22s

Happy New Year everyone! So grateful for all of you, and the opportunity to work on Equipboard. Make tons of new music in 2016!! :)

you got the 325 lust from the guy from Kings of Leon, right? please tell me you got it for less than a current Gibson dot reissue. Until he started playing one they were a cheapie with no vntage value, a purely Norlin model. Cool, but not worth much scratch and not collectible. used to see 'em under a grand all the time. I hope you paid no more than $1500

Kind of. :) All my favorite artists use some kind of hollow/semi-hollow, and while I love me a 335 I was drawn to the lesser known ones, ES-345, ES-355, ES-135... and yes, I started looking into the ES-325 because of Caleb Followill of Kings of Leon. I didn't really want it for collect-ability purposes, it was more that I fell in love with the idea of it over time. That rich walnut grain, the slim neck, the mini-humbuckers, and the imperfections of those built in the early 1970s. An early-70s ES-325 in walnut finish was the one I kept going back to over and over in my mind. I finally found the one, here she is:

http://i.imgur.com/bvvhEy1.jpg

Sweet, thanks for posting! Leave a review if you've played with it :)

http://equipboard.com/items/u-he-protoverb-1-0

With the year drawing to a close, I thought it'd be fun to jot down some things that stood out for you in 2015. Three categories come to mind that would be fun:

1. Favorite gear (new or old).
2. Favorite artists (could be newly discovered, or old favorites you came back to).
3. If you go out to see live music, your favorite shows.

I'll start.

1. Fav gear

In the guitar world, I obsessed over vintage Gibson hollow and semi-hollow body guitars, culminating in my recent purchase of a 1972 Gibson ES-325 that I've been hunting for. In the electronic music world, I'm very impressed by the Roland AIRA line. I played with a friend's TR-8 and loved it.

1. Fav artists

Guitar based: I listened to a ton of Interpol, and discovered Paul Banks' solo stuff which I really like. Foals, Noel Gallagher, and Kings of Leon were also in heavy rotation.

Electronic: Mat Zo and Porter Robinson continued to get lots of action. Also live sets from Dirty South. Oh and Arty, I enjoy all his stuff. Odesza and Slow Magic were probably my favorite two discoveries.

1. Fav live acts

Mutemath, Damien Rice, Arty, and Odesza were the best shows I attended this year.

Hey out of curiosity, is Thomann Germany's biggest "big box" online music gear store? Or does all of Europe shop at Thomann?

In the US, we've got Musician's Friend, Guitar Center, and Sweetwater as big online retailers. When it comes to showing where to buy gear, Equipboard doesn't do a great job (yet) for anyone outside of the US.

What would be the best experience for Europeans? Thomann? Amazon UK/DE/IT/etc?

This might be immature but we can go to his board and post random gear that he doesnt even have

I vote nay... might open up a can of worms! That would be like defacing a Wikipedia article... it's just not good form 😏

OP? (Idk what that means) I'm sorry if that means me and I may have insulted your family... it's more or less the language I kinda got adopted into by my surroundings

OP is Original Poster.

I agree with Jim, I would rather not overload the place with rules and regulations. I like the community feel that has sprung up in the forum, and occasionally there will be issues we have to confront since Equipboard as a whole is still a fairly new site.

ridwan, no worries man, I think this is just a good thread to be reminded of common sense type stuff. And no, don't worry there are no age guidelines for EB :-D

Thanks for chiming in on this everyone.

Yeah, it's definitely not the first time someone that's not a "pro" creates a pro artist profile for themselves, and submits a bunch of gear to it. We don't really have a mechanism to prevent that at the moment.

We do have some guidelines on what it means to be a pro artist. Just for reference, here they are:

• They have a Verified Twitter account
• They have a verified profile or Page on Facebook
• They are covered/interviewed by one or more legitimate media publications (e.g. Rolling Stone, Guitar Player, Billboard, Future Music)
• They have a catalogue of music releases (if on a label, preferably on a somewhat well-known label)
• They have toured, and there is existing proof of this
• They have a very large social media following *

• They are an influencer in a specialized channel (e.g. a YouTube personality with followers in the 6-7 figure range)

• this is not always a great signal, since social media followers can be purchased.

We probably need to place these guidelines in a help section of Equipboard, and maybe even at the bottom of the Add a New Artist form. If you all think we need to revise these in any way, shape, or form, we are totally open to suggestions! We love building Equipboard with you guys' help, after all it's all about the community.

Luckily, it's not a huge deal right now if people like the guy ridwan pointed out make themselves a pro. There's a bit of a built-in safeguard. Pro artists on Equipboard are sorted by popularity based on algorithms we come up with (this includes things like total number of page views, page views on a recent block of time, number of follows, etc). I can go create a pro page for myself, gchiaren, right now but since nobody is searching me, it won't really be surfaced. If anything, my reviews might litter the "Pros Using This" section of an item. It's a lot like Wikipedia in this way, where any member of the community can create pages, but if the Wikipedia page doesn't make sense or isn't needed, it never really surfaces anywhere.

I can take care of deleting that SINAVALIKHANI guy's Equipboard, his comments/reviews add little or no value unfortunately.

And finally, perhaps we should come up with some basic forum guidelines just so there are no personal attacks on people. Equipboard is a pretty international community and I understand sometimes there's a language barrier, but some language might cross a line. If you all find some "behavior" guidelines on a forum that you like, I'd be happy to borrow those and institute them here.

Thoughts?

Merry Christmas everyone :-D

I got a new special lady, a guitar I've been hunting down for quite a while... will post details, pics, and of course a review soon!

has anyone noticed that the worse the band is, the more likely the members are to take their shirts off on stage?

Hey now Red Hot Chili Peppers are pretty great :P

Hmm just thought of something that could be fun. We recently did a roundup on the best hardware drum machines. Ever considered picking one up? Not sure what genre(s) you produce, but watch some videos on the Korg Volca Beats, or a Korg Electribe ER-1. Something like this would only take up a tenth of your budget, and could unleash some serious creative potential.

Man Maschine Studio vs Akai Touch is a tough one. I'm loving what I'm seeing about the Akai Touch, it's super sleek.

NI Komplete Kontrol and Akai Advance are keyboards, as opposed to strictly pad controllers... I see you have an Akai Mini mkii, is that sufficient keyboard for you? If you feel limited by keyboard size, then I'd upgrade keyboard for sure before I got a new pad controller.

Are you just interested in getting into production with an MPC style controller? Or do you use one currently?

I was gonna suggest that you need headphones but I saw you use Audio-Technica ATH-M50s/LE on your Equipboard :)

haha so bait. much click. 😆

but yeah that's soooo bad.

In my defense, I only wrote Imgur . com in the sentence. I have no idea why all that appeared.

Ah shit I think I have autolinking enabled on the forums, which is why it did that with the imgur link. That's kind of annoying, I'll have to fix it. Apologies!

And you're on Equipboard posting about it, so this is officially an Equipboard baby... meaning it will be born with so much GAS

😁

(couldn't help it. i'll show myself out.)

Whoa, congrats!!

Yessir. Pianist for many years.

I literally just found out this website exists and I love it! I made my profile, added all my gear to the equipboard aaaaaaand everything is just a jumbled mess of gear. Can I put my gear in categories like on the artist pages (guitars, amps, effects, etc.)? My OCD is going crazy right now!

We actually get a lot of requests for that! We're gonna work on it. You're right, member Equipboards need to be organized like pro artists. Great gear collection by the way! :)

Wanted to share this with you guys, thought it was very cool.

http://i.imgur.com/t5PnPMi.png

deadmau5' studios are all gear paradise, he has so many toys! It's awesome that he noticed the Equipboard community's hard work 😄

(here's the link to the tweet)

I was doing some more thinking on item categories and I think we need a Computers & Peripherals item category. I would propose the categories under that to be:

• Desktop & Laptop Computers
• Smartphones & Tablets
• Computer Components
• Hard Drives
• LCD Monitors
• Keyboards, Controllers & Mice

There are many desktops, laptops, iPads and iPhones on Equipboard, and nobody quite knows where to categorize them. I think if we're able to place them in the Computers & Peripherals category, then on artist pages we can add a section for them (something like "Computers & Accessories") instead of those getting filed under "Other Gear."

Thoughts??

what about a category for "amps that will change your life" ?

Hah! Instead of a category that should be a tag, and only you have access to it 😏

Good questions.

jim - We can always go deeper :) To make the changes this time around, we had to add a fourth tier of categorization. I don't want to overwhelm people adding gear to EB with a ton of levels of depth right up front. I propose we take this next step to improve the item database, and then go even deeper in a next round.

starguitar - Thanks! We made some stuff up ourselves based on Equipboard site usage, but mostly used Musician's Friend categorization as a model. We evaluated at a lot of music retailers, and decided MF's categorization looked pretty solid.

Hi all! We've heard your feedback and decided to (hopefully) improve item categories. I'll summarize the changes here.

Previously, guitar amps and effects were under:

• Instruments Accessories > Guitar & Bass Accessories > Effects
• Instruments Accessories > Guitar & Bass Accessories > Amplifiers

Based on your feedback, you didn't like that! So now, the top-level category will be called Amplifiers & Effects, and the categories under it will go much deeper (all the way to the type of effect pedal, like Looper Effects Pedals, and Delay & Reverb Effects Pedals. You'll also notice amps are split up into bass amps and guitar amps, with deeper categories for amp heads, cabinets, combo, etc.

On the recording, studio, and electronic music side of things, you might recall this category:

• Studio Recording Gear > Computer Recording

Well, we got rid of Computer Recording because it was kind of stupid to be honest, so now Audio Interfaces is directly under Studio Recording Gear. Also, Keyboards & Synthesizers is now Keyboards, Synthesizers & MIDI and includes MIDI Controllers (which is further split up into MIDI keyboard controllers, MIDI pad controllers, and more).

Hopefully this is an improvement! Reply to this thread and let us know what's cool and what still sucks. 😀

https://media.giphy.com/media/6OLa5kBWBvF4c/giphy.gif

I know, isn't it?? I was first made aware of it by Caleb Followill of Kings of Leon (I'm a big fan). I later picked one up at a music store in San Francisco, and it felt so so nice to play. I should have bought it there and then, she's the one that got away.

Nice, sounds like you're gonna have a fun holiday :)

I'm on the lookout for a vintage Gibson ES-325. I need to find just the right one, we'll see if it happens in time for christmas. Other than that, I'm eyeing Native Instruments Guitar Rig 5 Pro. I need to do a thorough comparison between that and other guitar amp simulator software out there before I pull the trigger.

Nice!

Musician's Friend is doing 15% off any single item with coupon code CYBERMONDAY. Details here.

rasputin, you know what I would do if I were you? Go to YouTube and search for "Sytrus tutorial" like so:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sytrus+tutorial

Then, pick the videos that got the most views, and follow along. You'll seriously be surprised at how much progress you will make in sound design in a short period of time. It CAN get complicated, but the basics are pretty easy to grasp!

I've never used Sytrus, I'm a big fan of Sylenth1, and for the longest time I was playing with only presets and tweaking knobs randomly. Eventually I followed some Sylenth1 sound design tutorials, and it rocked my world. I was able to make almost any sound from scratch.

Dunno if this helps but maybe you can study how it is made in Massive in this video, and try to recreate it in Sytrus?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHWqJHs-OiY

EDIT: Here's what I found from someone that tried to recreate it:

Try a low saw wave with a fast attack and decay, and some low pass filtering. Put a downward sloping envelope on the LP filter and you'll be almost there.

It looks like the first three items have incorrect categorization, and the fourth one (videos) needs to be deleted. Is this correct?

Not sure I understand. Why ironic? Do you mean they are incorrect?

Post a youtube video of theirs?

Hey all,

I'm trying to figure out if there's a bug we need to fix.

Curious if anyone that follows Hardwell on Equipboard receives 5 of the same email when he has a new gear update.

I follow him, and each time I get a Equipboard Gear Update - Hardwell email, I get five copies of that same email. Is this just me, or is it happening to anyone else?

Thanks!