gchiaren's forum posts 789

Thanks for continuing to report it, it's helpful in our efforts to fix it. We identified another reason it was happening, and put a fix in place.

By the way, if the error is totally blocking you from using the site, the quick fix is to clear your cookies 🍪 (annoying, I know).

Let us know if it happens again!

I believe we fixed it try now!

We're aware of this and working on it. We upped our security, but in some cases it seems we upped it too much 😬

Appreciate you going into detail, the 520 error page happened to me as well also when logged in, so it looks to have something to do with that.

We put a tentative fix in place, if you could let us know if you run into the error again that would be hugely helpful!

You're correct, there was a bug where it did not distinguish the @ symbol on YouTube links, and that's problematic because https://www.youtube.com/@thewhitestripes is a different profile than if you omitted the @ symbol.

It should now be fixed! But let us know if you still run into issues 😎

https://reverb.com/au/item/87368439-hamstead-redwing-modulation-pedal

You can't add an item to Equipboard using a link like this, because this is someone's individual listing on Reverb of something they're selling.

The Reverb link needs to be the "comparison shopping page" which looks like this: https://reverb.com/p/boss-bd-2-blues-driver. See how it has /p/ in the URL?

The guitars are such a mess on equipboard they're impossible to clean up.

I hear you. Believe me we're trying. AI can help a lot here. We're in the process of "tokenizing" item names such that we can identify brand, model, color, year, and superfluous bullshit. That way on the backend we can have tools that recognize

• 1998 Fender Thinline Telecaster Butterscotch Blonde is functionally the same as
• 1999 Fender Thinline Telecaster Black which is the same as
• My Modded 1997 Fender Thinline Telecaster

Ok 😵‍💫 help me distill down what needs to be done:

• ESP Guitars and ESP should be merged
• Edwards should drop the ESP prefix, but still remain separate from ESP
• LTD should remain separate from ESP, as it functions like Squier to Fender
• "ESP LTD" (or "LTD ESP") guitars should just be labeled LTD where applicable

Did I get that right?

ESP Guitars and ESP should be merged for sure, that's a straight up duplicate it seems. ✅

As far as LTD goes, I'm not as certain, I'll let others weigh in. If it's anything like Squier is to Fender then maybe it should remain separate? 🤔

Weirdly, I am certain that he WAS here because that is how I learned about his Gibson Victory.

That is strange 🧐 Well, I added him again here: https://equipboard.com/pros/franco

Hmm, is the artist you are referring to François Luambo Luanzo Makiadi? aka Franco Luambo?

Johnny Pistols aka Johnny Petrooch I think he plays guitar

Do you mean like, Yes I very much think this item is a key part of Spruce Bringsteen's arsenal ? Is the upvote helpful to reinforce that?

No battery needed.

Portability isn't paramount, but if it was compact that's a plus. I have a soundbar and sub for the TV but that's in a separate spot.

Something like a Positive Grid Spark vibe comes to mind. But I don't really need it to be a guitar amp with effects, which is what the Spark is... but that form factor is cool.

If this had a headphone out, we'd be pretty damn close.

Looking for some advice on my guitar setup. I currently have all my pedals running into a Walrus ACS1 amp sim pedal, which has a headphones output for silent practice. However, I'd like to amplify the sound in the room and also practice along with tracks from my phone via Spotify.

Ideally, I'm looking for a speaker that can handle both the signal from the ACS1 (via aux in) and a Bluetooth signal simultaneously (and sum those to headphones). Any recommendations?

Thanks Jim you too! Hope it was great

Ok, I believe it's fixed! Sorry for the trouble, and let us know if you find anything else!

I hope that this is the right place to ask for some help. I have been trying to add some gear to artists but I keep running into the same two errors: (1) When I select a piece of gear, it still continues to say 'no item selected'. (2) When I try to add the gear submission, the second error says 'commentable must exist'. I'm not really sure what this means.

Any advice/tips is greatly appreciated!

This is indeed the right place! Thanks for the heads up, we'll get this fixed asap and keep you posted here.

I think more than anything I'd just like to see a proper implementation of Dark Mode, that's kinda what I want more than anything

I want dark mode also, we'll make it happen with the redesign. We're upgrading things under the hood, and the new tech we're using plus the new branding standards will make dark mode pretty easy to implement :)

Yup I hear you. We're gonna take a proper pass at page speed as a whole with this upcoming redesign (including image loading speeds). The redesign is a great chance to bring many things to 2024 standards. We'll make sure it's very fast.

It's maybe a little bit far-fetched. I think that each musician should have an archive page. So they can archive their past equipment. If there is a small charge for that, maybe like a dollar month. It'll be worth it. It would be like insurance especially in the case where what just happened to me. I lost equipment.

Sounds like you're talking about your own personal gear/profile page perhaps, not the artist pages where people contribute gear to (e.g. John Mayer).

When you save any gear on the site to your own Equipboard, you're presented with a popup that asks which list you want to save it to. You can choose an existing list of yours, or create a new one. I've seen many users make a Had or Used to have or Past equipment list ... hope that helps!

Mods please add Gibson Les Paul Junior Tribute DC Bass

So, your call. Tell us what is best for the site.

Well, I don't want to burden the Equipboard community on deciding what is best for optimizing for search engines! There are tons of ways we can handle that on the backend.

The best thing would be if Equipboard had 'groupings' for items - as has been suggested in this post and several other times - where we could consolidate things on one main item page but still give variants a chance to exist.

Until that happens, I am ok with variants if they are deemed "musically meaningful" by the community. We will hopefully introduce better ways to consolidate/group items soon, and we can deal with hiding items from search engines that have no value in the form of reviews, artist usage, etc.

one more thing: Since I've been specifically asked in this thread not to add the Ken Multi MOD-SS, I won't. However will the contributing guidleines be updated so they tell people not to add niche products like this?

Good idea, yeah. How would you propose summing up pkennethk's point here? Is the gist of it that if an item only has cosmetic variations from an existing item, and the cosmetic variation is not "special" or notable enough to merit its own reviews, artist usage, etc, that it should not be added?

Users with 500 or more GearIQ can now access the manual item add process.

If you don't yet meet the GearIQ requirements, please use this stickied forum thread from here on.

To maintain a high quality standard of new items added to Equipboard, and to reduce the likelihood of duplicates, we ask that items be added using links to well-known online music gear retailers.

• For hardware that is available new, use a Sweetwater or Guitar Center link.
• For hardware that is vintage/discontinued, use a Reverb link.
• For software or sample packs, use a Plugin Boutique or Loopmasters link.

We realize not every music gear item is covered with the above stores, so use this thread to request niche/boutique items. A mod, admin, or member with the appropriate permissions will check the quality of your request per the Contributing Guidelines, and add it if deemed appropriate. Please use the following format when requesting a new item add:

Mods can you please add

Name: [item name]

Image: [image URL]

If unclear, mention the item's category, e.g. it's a reverb pedal

I got to researching the Epiphone Dot, and unsurprisingly it looks like several duplicates have been created on Equipboard. Check out this search: https://equipboard.com/search?search_term=epiphone%20dot

Can anyone with knowledge on the Dot help sort it out? Even just a little consolidation would help. For instance is the Epiphone Dot a different guitar from the Epiphone Dot ES-335? Should this be a standalone entry? Should the Dot Black Royale be a standalone entry?

So. Idea. How about if gear I want in my collection isn't relevant enough for it's own entry, I can make a small note in my gear page noting that I also own this item. Just a line of text with the item name and an image that is all only visible in my gear page. It isn't clickable, it doesn't have it's own item page, it doesn't show up in search results, it can't be added to other peoples gear pages or to artist profiles.

This is a really good idea. Without getting too technical there are internal things we can do that signal to search engines that a page should not be crawled nor considered for search results. It's our job to deal with this, I won't bore everyone here :)

This has been a great discussion to read, and I think it's clear we need to bring back some way for you all to add things that aren't sold at the 'big' music stores.

I hesitate to build yet another queue that mods have to visit to approve/deny items. There are already several moderator queues and staying on top of those is already a lot!

So how about this - we'll just pick a reasonable GearIQ threshold that shows you are a good citizen of Equipboard, and allow access to the "legacy" add item process. That way, we keep the new way as the preferable method since adding an item via the big music stores gives us a unique identifier (like a UPC or SKU) which helps us internally with data accuracy .... but if you needed to add something more niche/custom, you'll be able to do so the old way.

Thoughts?

Ok here's what happens a LOT that we have to put a stop to.

Someone adds an item that is hyper-specific, like a guitar with the exact year and neck and color or something, or like a pedal they DIY modded and thus make a new entry for it.

Then, they save that item to their Equipboard.

That item is SO niche, it just sits there for months/years and does not accrue any ratings, reviews, artist usage, viable alternatives, etc. Over time, we've accumulated quite a few items like this in the database, and as a business that relies on search engines (like Google) thinking we have a high quality website, these types of item pages are considered "thin" and low quality. Like, they add no value, really.

So in a way, it's our problem, that has now become your problem because you're not happy with our initial solution 😆 But he we're here to collaborate. We have made a lot of changes responding to user feedback, so I'd love to find a good solution together. We're all ears.

Ok, we hear you. We're trying to think of a way to allow more items while at the same time reducing the number of low quality item entries. We'll keep you posted in this thread.

In the meantime, mods & admins can get an item added for you, so you can request it here. Just say:

Mods can you please add

Name: [item name]

Image: [image URL]

First I want to say that I think you are right - allowing products that are only sold at the largest music stores leaves out a lot of smaller boutique builders, and that is a problem we'll need to solve for sure.

The reason behind this decision was to slow down the large number of low quality items that people have been adding every day. This includes duplicates, near-duplicates, and items that are WAY too specific that don't really help the Equipboard database become more useful.

There comes a point where if a product added to Equipboard has no reviews, no pro artist usage, no specs, and no accurate way of tracking price, it actually ends up being a rather useless page. And if you accumulate enough of these, it affects the quality of the site as a whole.

Actually I'm curious, what was your intention for adding this item to the site? Is it one that you own and want to save to your Equipboard? Did you spot an artist using it? Did you intend to write a review?

Ok we rolled the FAQ and contributing guidelines into one page. Behold, the Equipboard Contributing Guidelines and FAQ.

What do you all think? How can we improve this? Is there anything important or obvious we did not cover?

I dig it thanks for the share, I'll throw it on this weekend.

Thank you for the thoughtful message. I completely agree. This is a good time for this, since we're in the process of redesigning artist pages and the way submissions are viewed. Let me know your thoughts on the following ideas:

• The page currently titled Contributing should probably be renamed to How to Contribute, or better yet How to Submit Gear to Artists since "contribute" is rather broad. And it should have up-to-date screenshots.
• We should add a new page alongside it called Contributor Guidelines - do you all think this should be FAQ/Q&A style?

If it is FAQ style, I can see basically compiling and answering questions about edge cases, exactly as knuschberkeks laid out. In fact let me take a stab at these:

Right now I'm in a discussion over this contribution. This is kind of an edge case. In my opinion it should be added to the artist, because the item was clearly used by him, even tho just for promo purposes.

I think this submission is solid and valid, and that is exactly why we made the demo/promo usage tag. I think what will be useful is to be able to filter items on an artist page by these tags. So if someone (like addman34555 in that example who is arguing against it) wants to filter out gear considered promotional or for demos, they can do so.

what if an artist uses a small practice amp for backstage warmup on tour, should it be added?

100% yes. In fact I would argue this is a very juicy sub, since many people are in the market for practice amps and I can see one of their heroes using it being a strong deciding factor. Seeing Tom Morello's backstage practice amp makes me really happy.

What if he just takes a few photos for ads by a brand, but there is no evidence he ever played it. Should it be added?

If it's an obvious advertisement, sure, but I could consider the sub incomplete/incorrect unless tagged with the demo/promo usage tag.

What about sets that contain a specific item. Like this. It contains this, this and this item. So do we add the set to an artist, the individual items, or both?

Hmmmm this is very tricky. I don't know I would defer to you all and go with majority opinion.

What about a guitar that comes stock with a specific pickup. If the artist uses the guitar stock, should we also add the pickup as a separate item?

Kind of a case-by-case basis. I don't see this as incorrect, it comes down to the submission notes being very good and specific. And it helps if it's a pickup in an iconic guitar. Not everyone with a Strat or Tele should have whatever standard pickups are in those as separate items.

Is this a competitor to the Korg Minilogue XD?

Thanks this is amazing. I love DM so much. Actually it goes levels beyond just "love" 😆 A couple of my tattoos are heavily based on Dave Gahan's. I must have watched their One Night In Paris (Exciter tour 2001) DVD over 100 times. DM was the first huge concert I ever attended.

I'll definitely read up on everything you just linked!

Hey t,

I get the frustration about things being in Needs Review status. I'm glad you posted here because that brings attention both to the James Petralli page and the issue as a whole.

If anyone has any suggestions how to get more eyes on Needs Review statuses, I'm all ears.

Anecdotally I've participated in Discogs a bit (a database of artists and their releases/records), and made some edits that were marked as approved by someone a year (and oftentimes more) later. I think this is an issue community-moderated sites face. That doesn't mean it's impossible to improve, of course!

I'm having a hard time grocking the benefit of more than one entry for iPhone, total. If there's a desire to have an Amazon link to each current model for sale, that makes some sense, but other than that, I'm not sure who cares? iPhone vs. Samsung vs. Google, etc would seem to be the significant thing to know about what an Artist is using, but which current iPhone model, specifically, is only relevant for about 18 months, tops... if that.

Nah, it's not for Amazon links. I don't foresee that being a strength of EB, selling phones bc of artist usage. Or even price comparison for that matter. I guess I'm thinking more about user reviews, and genre usage might be interesting. But I think as I type this out, you are right. They could probably all be consolidated to "Apple iPhone (General)" and it would make for a good page, and be fine. Even if someone is hating on their 5 year old iPhone in their Equipboard review, so be it.

Anyone oppose merging all iPhone models?

How do you all think we should handle iPhones? It's a bit trickier because with other Apple products, I can for the most part consolidate down to the primary models they have on their website. But for iPhones, the primary models are pretty granular:

https://i.imgur.com/4NBrn1q.png

But on Equipboard, that leads to this:

https://i.imgur.com/joD5xem.png

Different screen sizes of MacBook Pro should be merged into one, right? My intuition is yes. 13-inch, 15-inch, 16-inch, 17-inch...

Seconded. However, models that are aesthetically different enough might merit separate status.

Exactly yes! And you can see we went that route with the Mac Pro and Mac Pro Cylinder.