gchiaren's forum posts 789

Good catch. We'll fix and keep you updated.

EDIT: Okay I think it's fixed try now!

Also, is this EB's way of telling me I need a new profile avatar? This black-out has been happening (on Safari) since last round of changes to Related Items.

Hah, nope. It's a technical thing, where images are loaded kind of after the page content loads, it's a way to make pages faster. Looks like there are a couple spots where we forgot to do so, thanks for catching that!

Might have been a little bug, it should appear shortly. Post again if there's still an issue and I'll take a look!

Hah very nice!

Videos are here for the recommended alternatives!

• You can see I added a couple to some of the alternatives to the Pro-Co RAT.
• And here's an alternative to the Elektron Digitone.

What's cool is you can use YouTube's "t=" parameter to start the video at a certain time. Useful, because many comparison and shootout videos deal with lots of gear.

Let me know what you think!

We even stayed on-topic for once.

Lol sorry dudes, been slammed working on the site, a mix of infrastructure stuff, new features, rethinking old ones...

Anyhow back to synths. You have given me so much to think about. I'll tell you what my two strongest contenders are at the moment:

Korg Minilogue XD: I think this little guy might have everything I want/need. It sounds good, looks good, is very tweakable/accessible, 4 note polyphony is nice, the sequencer is nice... it can even get kinda percussive which would be cool to sequence some drum loops and jam along on guitar. It just has that immediacy & fun factor that I think I would love, and the price is so good for what you get.

This one's a bit out of left field, but Elektron Digitone Keys. The synth engine is awesome, and the sequencing capability is amazing. Can see myself sitting down on the floor, guitar setup on my right, Digitone to my left, sipping on an Old Fashioned, throwing together loops and arpeggios and getting lost in some soundscapes. What gives me pause is it might not check the "ease of use" box... not sure I wanna get out of my flow and bury my head in the manual anytime I wanna figure out how to do something...

Wow this thread lol

1. From here on out they'll be known as Alternatives.
2. They're moving further down the item page, as a proper section.
3. The alternative items will show a price range when possible, so you can quickly scan what costs what when considering alternative gear.
4. We'll be adding the ability to add a YouTube video to support the claim that one item is an alternative to another. For instance if I wanted to claim that the Strymon Sunset is a high-end, similar sounding alternative to the Ibanez TS808 Reissue Tube Screamer, I could submit this video along with it. The video will then be able to be played alongside the item "card." I'm personally pretty stoked about this, since there are so many useful shootout and vs. videos out there!
5. Alternatives will be upvotable, so there is some sense of what people agree with more and that will rise to the top.
6. Like gear submitted to pro artists, these will be editable by everyone, and they will have versioning to keep track of changes (and so there's a paper trail).

Step 6 is now live. Steps 4 and 5 are coming very soon.

Let's say $1000, give or take.

Thanks for the kind words!

I just have the question if we can use the youtube links to refer an instrument or effect for a specific tone in a song or even an album?

Hmmm... I'm not sure the best place for that would be in the alternative items. The idea here is to submit YouTube videos that help show that one item is very similar to another. So any type of gear shootout, this vs. that, comparison, etc.

What you are talking about would be using a YouTube link as proof of submitting gear to an artist! Although in most cases just that is not enough. There needs to be a visual that the artist used that gear, or mentioned it in an interview, or a social media post, etc. Does that make sense?

Hi all, wanted to share some updates to the community-recommended similar items. We'll be rolling these out in phases:

1. From here on out they'll be known as Alternatives.
2. They're moving further down the item page, as a proper section.
3. The alternative items will show a price range when possible, so you can quickly scan what costs what when considering alternative gear.
4. We'll be adding the ability to add a YouTube video to support the claim that one item is an alternative to another. For instance if I wanted to claim that the Strymon Sunset is a high-end, similar sounding alternative to the Ibanez TS808 Reissue Tube Screamer, I could submit this video along with it. The video will then be able to be played alongside the item "card." I'm personally pretty stoked about this, since there are so many useful shootout and vs. videos out there!
5. Alternatives will be upvotable, so there is some sense of what people agree with more and that will rise to the top.
6. Like gear submitted to pro artists, these will be editable by everyone, and they will have versioning to keep track of changes (and so there's a paper trail).

Items 1-3 are live right this moment. 4-6 are coming soon... :-) Lemme know if you have any thoughts, feedback, or questions!

Here's an example of an alternative I submitted to the Boss Waza-Air headphones:

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

would it be possible to get a notification when someone I'm following posts a review?

I get a notification for every picture they post, why not gear reviews too?

Good idea, I'll make it so.

Great vid. I love mau5 for keeping it real. I think you two would be friends.

Do you need the minimum 8 notes of polyphony that your old synths had, or are you looking to pick up both some mono and poly options?

Poly! I have a piano background and my best ideas usually come when playing chords.

I'm assuming we're talking self-contained products here

Yes

how important is patch storage to you?

Preferably yeah, but not critical.

Ok Jim here are the rec's I'm extracting from you:

• Early Juno (but which ones exactly?)
• Korg Polysix
• Dave Smith Mopho x4
• Dave Smith Prophet '08
• Dave Smith Prophet REV2
• Korg Prologue
• Novation Peak (but no keyboard here)

If I were to steal an artist's setup I'm pretty obsessed with Amtrac's music, in terms of polyphonic keyboard synths he looks to have a Moog Little Phatty Stage II, Korg Minilogue, Sequential OB6. What are your thoughts on those?

Chill wave, chill hop, indietronica, IDM, extending to progressive house

Hey all, need your opinion. What hardware synth would you say is firmly in the "respect" zone, but also is the easiest one to get into, tweak, and get some great sounds out of? I'll hear out some vintage options, but preferably out of the current crop of modern, available synths.

By easiest to use I mean WYSIWYG - what you see is what you get - provided you know a bit about synthesis, you don't really need the manual to wade through pages and pages of confusing menus.

Go!

(to give you an idea of my past synth experience, I've previously owned a Nord Lead 2, Roland JP-8000, Korg MS-2000R, Virus C)

Thanks for the steps to replicate, that's helpful. I'll take a closer look at what could be going on and report back!

edit: btw you guys inspired us to change (hopefully improve?) the rate & review process slightly. Now it prompts you to star rate first, before even showing the review form fields. Hopefully that's less confusing to people, and implies that you can star rate without necessarily having to write a review right then!

Ah yeah. It's a bit confusing but the star rating saves in real time, as soon as you click any star. No need to hit Post Review button!

You should be able to change your star rating by following the steps you outlined. You are saying you went to the item page, clicked on the aggregated stars, which takes you to the "Write a review" page right? From there, you should be able to change star rating (whether or not you write a review). That is bugging out for you?

The journey for most users starts with curiosity about artist gear (so the artist page and proof page), and then naturally flows to the product pages. I would say a good 60% spend time jumping from one pro they like to another. Around 20% start with a product in mind and go from there (though this is increasing as of late). The rest is a mix, like the gear guides, home page, etc.

Thanks for the kind words & feedback!

I like the 3-prong value proposition, and the order in which they are currently placed. As a too-much-time-here person, this priority rings true.

Glad to hear that. I think we could do a much better job of delivering on value proposition #3, the one about getting good deals on gear. In fact, that's a change to the site that is coming up very soon. I spoke about it a bit in this forum post.

I don't know if I've ever signed up for something, regardless of FB, Google, Twitter ID-integration, without first getting a really good sense of what I'm signing up for.

That's great feedback. For a long time, the bread and butter of the site has been associating gear with pro artists, though that process isn't exactly lightweight since the proof and explanation require some level of thought & care. As the site evolves it's becoming more about helping people find kick-ass gear, pro artists or not. And in that sense you can contribute by adding your own tagged photos of gear in the wild, writing reviews, recommending related/complementary gear, etc.

How would you propose quickly giving people a sense of what they're in for?

Hey everyone!

Home page got a bit of a facelift. Not a major feature, but hopefully it highlights what we do a little better. You have to be logged out to see it (or open up an incognito/private tab).

What do you think? https://equipboard.com

CONGRATS! On all the things :) That's some pretty sweet unique gear. Excited to see your video reviews.

I meant this. I’m not sure of what to call it.

Oh yeah! We just call those "item category pages" :) But great memory, we did do that for a hot minute. It just felt incomplete so we rolled it back. But yeah, we'll bring it back much better than before hopefully.

How would gauges like this be determined? Would it be derived from aggregated reviews like on Leafly and Amazon?

That's the fun is figuring out how we will do that! I can see it being a blend of using tech as much as possible, and a community component like reaching back out to anyone that has reviewed things and asking to fill in or tag some subjective tone words.

And jim... dude so sorry. :( I didn't mean to hit a nerve or take a stance. I just like how that particular website uses data + community and used it as an example.

there's genre specific gear, I'm against this idea generally, sure a grunge act wouldn't use a juno, but wow, I use my chorus echo on everything in different ways... a valley dynamite for example is universal and the tubescreamer is a handy pedal for anything from blues to metal... the best pieces are only limited by your thinking

Totally, I get the spirit of what you are saying. But let me put it this way. Say you were to partake in a mind altering substance. Most people will tell you the experience is very subjective. Totally depends what frame of mind you're in, who you're with, your surroundings, etc. Having said all that, isn't it kind of amazing that you can look up something like this? Imagine that for music gear. That's kind of our ambition here. Not trying to tell anyone what to do or how to live with their gear... but providing something beyond what you get from a Guitar Center page.

Ah, but what if the original is cheaper?

Not necessarily always about that. I'm one of those weirdos that think inanimate objects have a "soul" haha. I LOVE the Pro Co Rat. But the Big Ear Woodcutter has this small-batch kinda thing that I love about it. Same with a Behringer synth that's trying to sound like a Moog... and a Moog itself. But hey, it's different for everyone, and that's kind of my point. I want the niche stuff to have a super useful page on Equipboard... as well as the common tried-and-tru stuff.

What's wrong with that? ;)

Nothing! In music gear there's no right answer.

By the way, I'm pretty sure that when I submitted Joe Satriani's it was still a valid link.

All good :)

If anything, I will recommened Satriani's love songs. Top notch.

I'll have a listen. I saw G3 in concert. Mad respect. Just saying, some pages have artists that just don't influence me. So how else can Equipboard pages be super useful?? That's the thought exercise here.

What you're describing sounds similar to a Sweetwater product page. That might get annoying for people who just want to scroll to their favorite artists.

I'm not saying put that section above artists. But maybe the top video should get placement in the main gear image carousel? Just something to show me Equipboard has pretty cool videos.

Yes please! I remember when one could see this in the item navigator.

Hmm not sure what you mean by item navigator, but glad you're on board with the feature. We're gonna move towards a design like this (ignore the actual contents it's just dummy data, it'll make more sense in real life)

The review section and forums are useful for that already

Kind of. Some review sections are, if you're looking at the items that generally have the most artist usage. Those have gotten the lion's share of the traffic over the years, and thus get the ratings, reviews, etc.

I personally love more niche gear. I'd rather own a boutique clone than the tried and true original. And I don't think I'm alone, or we'd all just have the most basic ass gear setup (or a digital do-it-all multifx thing). But look at this item, which I'm considering buying to test it out. This page is kind of underwhelming to me. Hate to say it but I don't super care about the 2 artists that use it. There's 1 review which is decent but I can probably find more reviews on other sites.

The videos section is pretty decent... but I proposed to Michael what if we move videos further up, like in the main image carousel? That way you can have one playing to hear the gear as you're scrolling around on the page (someone earlier mentioned listening to gear demo vids in the background... I totally agree)

Furthermore, personally I'd like more info on price upfront. Like, hey Equipboard, save me some clicks. We have the pricing data - how much is it new, lowest and highest used prices on Reverb - why not surface it?? I personally love knowing what % off getting gear used versus new is. I suspect we all do some kind of calculation in our head ("ok I can save this much getting it used... if it sucks and I resell it it's worth about this much... oh damn but on Amazon the price is decent and I'd get it tomorrow..."). Equipboard can TOTALLY do a lot of this work for you.

And (hint hint something we're working on as we speak) ... what genres do people that use this gear make? Not just the pros, but users like you and me. 6 ppl saved the item I linked to above... what type of music do they make?

Things like that would really up my personal enjoyment of that specific lackluster product page. Anyone agree? Disagree?

Is there any way you can link us to the image in question? If it's on your computer, are you able to upload it to an image sharing site like Imgur?

I've noticed it too. We wrap embeds in the forum with a "wrapper" that makes them look good across devices. Meaning, the embedded imgur, Tweet, etc looks good on mobile, tablet, desktop etc. But yeah, I am noticing it adds a huge margin above the embed. I'll look into it and get back to ya!

Thanks man, I don't wanna litter the forum with bad rec's, feel me?

We have a Squier Affinity Tele in the Equipboard office (the white one with the Equipboard sticker), which I think is the bottom of the range and the quality of that instrument is surprisingly decent. The Classic Vibe is one of the nicer Squiers if I'm not mistaken, so your observation doesn't surprise me at all. Do you plan on messing with your Squier at all? Changing electronics, etc?

As of the last day or so, you may have noticed your GearIQ looks a little different. We've recalculated everyone's point score on the site based on an updated set of rules, which you can see here. It's been years since we updated GearIQ, and the site has changed substantially, so a refresh was definitely past due.

You can also click on your own GearIQ in the top navigation bar to see a breakdown of how you got your points.

There are breakpoints at 50, 100, 200, 300, and 500 which give you more privileges on the site (these are subject to change of course).

An electric catar, of course. Electric because the strings are more gentle for a cat's paws. As far as amps go, I would plug into a Meowrshall.

I'll show myself out.

What are the checks and balances in the system?

Great question PK. Recommendations are in Pending review status until a mod or admin approves them. Pending ones will appear in the slider/carousel after approved ones.

We purposefully didn't want to over-engineer the checks and balances at least initially. They will likely need to get more sophisticated as more people use this feature and it takes shape.

We're excited to launch a new feature on Equipboard that represents a step we're taking in helping musicians find awesome gear. We call it curated similar items, or community gear recommendations.

Just like you can submit the gear a pro artist uses, you can now submit gear that's related to other gear. What do we mean by related? Similar sounding, a cheaper alternative, a boutique or higher-end alternative, a mod, a limited edition version, or simply a great pairing!

Here's a quick demo where I suggest the Vox DelayLab as a suitable alternative to the Line 6 DL4:

https://gfycat.com/anxiousassuredinchworm

What's cool is that your recommendations will also show to readers looking at their favorite artists' gear. For instance, if someone was looking at what delay/looper pedal John Mayer uses, further down the page they can see options to achieve a similar result. We hope this is especially useful to help musicians find alternatives to gear that's discontinued or prohibitively expensive.

Looking forward to hearing your feedback, and seeing your gear recommendations! 🤙

Same here, spent a lot of time figuring out what power supplies can fit under my Pedaltrain NANO MAX. I'd love to whip up a list on Equipboard for that that can live forever.

Instead of wading through 7 gear slutz threads from various years, it would have Equipboard's relatively modern design language, list out the relevant products, each "upvotable" by the community and each with little speech-bubble type comments from anyone who wanted to chime in a personal experience, kind of like when you're reading up on movie reviews on Rotten Tomatoes:

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

How'd you squash it?

Here's my idea: Bulk submissions.

Great idea. Say less. At the very least, when you make a submission, at the top it should say "submit another item to [artist] using the same source" - and this would pre-populate the artist, source, and perhaps even your notes from the previous submission so you could go in and edit them accordingly.

Thanks for the awesome input miguel_angelo.

"Gut shots" tab that users can upload their pedals/amps circuitboard pics. At least I love googling those, and it's the first thing I do when I buy new gear.

I think these would belong in the gear photo gallery, but we need to probably add the tag "gut shot" so that people are aware that's a perfectly valid type of gear photo to submit. Agreed? ...btw is that the official gear nerd terminology? Would everyone know what a gut shot is?

Maybe improve "description" tab by adding basic specs to all products - current draw, voltage, battery operation, bypass, release date, dimensions.

Yeah good idea to split out specs from the description.

The "tech corner" sounds interesting as well, sharing schematics, trouble shooting, gear maintenance, etc.

Where would this live in your opinion? In the forum? On the item page?

Lastly, I would love to browse by category. One of the features I like most on Pedalboard Planner app it the ability to search a pedal by Type and Brand. Sometimes I'm looking for a new delay pedal or a compressor or whatever, and I just go on the app, click "search by type" and choose from the dozens of different types (delay, compressor, octaver, phaser, chorus, etc) hit one of the those and bam, hundreds of delay pedals I never seen before. Also amazing would be to sort this search not only by type of effect but also by size/format, analog/digital, psu only or battery only.

We currently do have this, but what I'm hearing is that it needs to be WAY better and I 100% agree. Right now we couple categories like "Delay & Reverb Effects Pedals" but they need to be split. Filtering by brand also needs to be done, as well as filtering by other specs.

One thing I'm specifically interested in is what would make a product page on Equipboard undeniably awesome?

Imagine you opened up a music store online. You'd have to think long and hard how you differentiate yourself from the Guitar Centers of the world. Sweetwater kinda has the customer service angle, GC is a name familiar to most and offers physical store locations all over, etc. If you opened up your own online store, given MSRP is enforced in many cases with music gear, why would people shop from you instead of them?

We're thinking about that a lot at Equipboard, though from a slightly different angle. We're not a store per se, we're a community-built resource.

I hope this is not hubris of me to say, but I think Equipboard's the best place on the web to see what pro artists use a product, and how. And that matters to many musicians - it's a hugely endorsement-heavy industry - but it's far from the only thing that matters.

You know how before you watch a movie you almost always check sites like IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, or Metacritic? Their aggregate scores have become pretty important in the landscape of film releases.

Well, we wanna be that stop you need to make before shopping for music gear. So, I'm very curious to hear what would make the Equipboard product page a must-see destination for any gear you were interested in? 👀

EDIT: For anyone confused, by Equipboard product page I mean this:

• Korg Minilogue
• Strymon Volante
• Yamaha HS8 Studio Monitor

I think we need a manuals library... sometimes old gear manuals disappear into obscurity as hard copies are lost by owners and websites are rebuilt by businesses so if someone has a PDF we should host it....

I dig it. Most things on Equipboard needs community contribution to scale, so are you imagining a section on item pages - around the description perhaps - where a community member can upload the PDF manual? I guess there would need to be some minor level of verification (or at least a way to report bogus PDFs).