michael's forum posts 562

No problem! Sorry for the problem. Not sure why it happened. There is a band called Blackhawk, but I didn't get the error, so let me know if you run into it again in the future.

Done. https://equipboard.com/brands/blackhawk_amplifiers

That's odd. I wasn't able to replicate that. Let me know if it happens again.

Is this okay? Or would you like the word "Amplifiers" appended? https://equipboard.com/brands/blackhawk

Okay, I have added it here: https://equipboard.com/brands/palmer-germany

Although the brand page is called Palmer Germany since /palmer was taken, I've made it match anything with just Palmer in the name.

Hope that helps, and sorry for the inconvenience!

It looks as if a user joined with that name, and our structure currently conflicts with that.

I'll go around on the back end and add it. Sorry for the bug!

Yeah, that's our fault.

Long story short, we've never made a hard rule about product naming. At the start of Equipboard, we didn't even have product categories, so including the category in the name was helpful. With the introduction of categorization, we've shied away from that convention to avoid redundancy. We also populated our database based on multiple other websites that all have different naming structures.

The default is what the manufacturer calls it on their website/product catalog. If the name contains one superfluous word its fine, Boss DD-3 Delay. But if it's Boss DD-3 Delay Effects Pedal, that name can be shortened.

If there is conflict between the manufacturer or various retailers, I would default to the longer or more complete name in the hopes that including it would help people find what they are looking for when searching Equipboard.

Should equipboard.com/items/electro-harmonix-nano-pog-polyphonic-octave-generator-guitar-effects-pedal really be "Nano POG Polyphonic Octave Generator" when only "Nano POG" is printed on the pedal, and should equipboard.com/items/electro-harmonix-micro-pog be "Micro POG" when "Micro POG Polyphonic Octave Generator" is printed on the pedal?

In my opinion, both of these should include "Polyphonic Octave Generator" because that is not a category, but that term is specific to Electro-Harmonix and would help people searching out the pedal on Equipboard (or new people who don't know what POG stands for). Both the Micro and Nano have it on their EHX official pages.

You guys are right. Here you go: https://equipboard.com/c/univibe-effects-pedals

Ovation guitars also seems to be a an appropriate CATegory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E450d_6GxGA

Purrfect recommendations.

https://media.giphy.com/media/glmRyiSI3v5E4/giphy.gif

The answer is kind of ambiguous. I think the reason is it really depends on the quality of the content you are adding.

This recent Gear IQ update has tried to align the actions that add value to the site with more points. We've removed or reduced points for things that people either weren't doing or were taking advantage of (100 points to add a profile pic, or link your soundcloud, etc). We've also tried to incentivize some new actions like recommending gear, even though we're still actively working on the feature.

Right now, those crosslinks may not look that important, but as we improve categorization, add tagging features, and open the site up more and more to input, we see a lot of potential in using that data to actually really help people in their gear selection.

To your point, ten points may be overly generous at this point given the time involved, but we hope it becomes a more central piece of the site going forward. Cross linking (and soon tagging) will likely be central to us building out a good personalized recommendation engine.

Quality is also a hard thing to incentivize, and a truly well documented spot is worth many "they use it" type submissions.

Anyway, what do you think? We're definitely open to feedback and suggestions.

Does the Land Devices HP-2 fit into reputable clone? https://landdevices.bigcartel.com/product/hp-2

Will this sound significantly different than the Fuzz War? I like it, my only complaint is the large form factor, but the Harmonic Percolator and clones all seem to be in oversize enclosures also.

Thanks for all the advice. :)

At some point, it'd be fun to just give you a mission, like make me a pedaltrain nano max board that can give me tones like Led Zep, Tres Hombres, etc. I'm clearly out of my element in knowing the characteristics of why I like the fuzz I do.

What tonebender style pedals that don't cost an arm and a leg do you recommend?

Okay, so that seems to jive with what I'm reading on the v2 fuzz war.

Thanks.

I've never played with a tonebender, but to my ears this is less squishy than a muff, at least in my amp.

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZmxSWqg1_kg/V3_peCj_LdI/AAAAAAAAD5A/-ArwD6S6HY8FeRI99UoOKu0c_sjz9jtFQCK4B/s640/DBA%2BFuzz%2BWar%2BII.png

Okay, I'll have to get some tools later.

So if this is based on a muff and has generic components, why does it sound so different to my ears? Is that the circuit if not the transistors? Am I imaging it?

In other news, why is this thing so big? I feel like I just opened a bag of Lay's potato chips and it's half empty... and taking up my valuable pedalboard space.

Okay, I don't know many of those words.

Here's what it looks like.

https://imgur.com/a/LDJ56gl

Do I need to flip the board or is this enough info to find out which schematic is correct?

I will tonight. In the meantime, I found this. https://pcbguitarmania.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Death-By-Fuzz-II.jpg

Seems this guy modded it slightly though.

The Death by Audio Fuzz war ™ is a monster but V1 was basically turn it on and make some noise. Because with seven transistors there was no ‚low gain‘ and no ‚slightly settings‘ so DBA made a second version and went back to the roots by keeping it closer to the all mighty and well-known Big Muff ™. They added some germanium diodes for aggressive clipping and away more radical tone control that has a little bit of a wah feeling to it. In my personal build, I added a momentary footswitch to pad 1 and 2 of the tone control potentiometer for some intro riffs with no treble at all. Even know what it’s based on this is a pedal you not just add to your collection in the shelf and I can’t wait to hear you guys riffing with it.

I've read conflicting things about what circuit it is based on, but I can't find a better fuzz for my setup than the DBA 3-knob Fuzz War.

Why is that? Anyone played one and know what's inside?

1. Not yet, but they will be soon. We're going to be rolling out an updated Gear IQ system soon. It's long overdue!

2. Mods can delete for the time being. However, this is just the initial phase of this feature. Eventually, we want voting, tagging, etc which will make recommendations more useful and will dilute any bad data.

I know that's a joke, but that is actually helpful. It makes all the difference between some good overdrives and the best overdrive for my specific situation. That's what I want to move toward.

Some more experiences that inspired this thought for me.

I was looking for a brighter drive since my amp is kinda dark, my tube screamer sometimes gets mushy depending on the guitar and tone knobs. Anyway, I read through a buuuunch of forums, and there were contradictory opinions and no easy way to skim the article and come up with a summary list where I could start to investigate based on my own budget, brand prefernce, whatever. Frustrating.

Also, I just bought a new five guitar stand. I was trying to find a nitro safe stand. I went to sweetwater, GC, Amazon, manufacturers websites and found contradicting information. It was infuriating, and I spent longer than I want to admit finding a simple studio stand that wouldn't eat up my Gibby's finish. I emailed my Sweetwater rep, who finally told me I was good to go. Which is cool, I found my stand, but now that info is lost to the ages. If I could, I'd quickly make a nitro safe EB page, throw my stand in there for the next bloke and posterity.

These are some of the random thoughts that led to the origin of these ideas.

Doesn't the "Related Items & Pairings" carousel make that redundant? How would they differ?

They are similar, but I view them as complementary to making the information more useful. So if I make a page for tubescreamer style pedals, it could start by getting it's data from the carousel, but it would have other methods of exploration too. I also think not all screamers are created equal, so a voting mechanism and filters could help you find the ones for your specific needs.

"Thousands" might also clutter the recommendations. It might be better to keep each item to one megathread, or at least as subsets of overarching recommendation topics.

But I think getting more specific is what our gear guides need to be more useful. I like our current reverb guide, but there are big differences between the reverb pedals, even if they are all recommended. I'm totally cool with (and prefer) a solid sounding one trick pony where shoe-gazer people want an all out ambient BigSky. Why not make guides that are more specific? Essentially, that would be the megathread (best reverbs for shoe-gaze), and links to it would be included on tags on the item page.

Maybe a filtering system could be added so people can pick which items they wants suggestions for?

Yes, exactly. I think this is why Equipboard's current category pages suffer. I may want a particular type of reverb, but filtering is not possible. I think the more granular we get, the better the info will be. Imagine if we could use make stuff like show me [reverb pedals] for [indie rock] or [low watt amps] for [blues].

But it's listed as "Had" on your page! Did you take a break from it?

Oopsies. Fixed. I use my own personal page for testing, so I do things like move items around from one list to another or testing the save process and this one fell victim. :) Still love it. Sounds great at 18V and have no plans to sell it.

So part of what got me thinking about this was the knowledge you have. The other day, you wrote out a well informed response to someone asking for what PAF style pickup would work well in their SG. Over the years I've seen you do the same with everything from channel strips to amp circuits to hard clipping overdrive pedals. Right now, I think this info goes into forums, and it gets lost.

Check this out as an example. Here's what I see when I search for "best overdrives for blues junior"

https://imgur.com/b3ilo8R

This isn't ideal. I have to go read each one of these sites multiple threads and decipher everyone's opinion and try to see who has similar tastes or knows what they are talking about.

What if I make it possible for Jim to make a page about his favorite overdrives for the vox ac30? And other people could vote on your additions and add their own? I could quickly get a summary and we could add filters so that people could very quickly get to the point of what they care about. Genres, manufacturers, even chips and components eventually. So I could filter by things like germanium vs silicon, etc. That page could very quickly become the best resource for to answer that question.

But yeah, I still love my Talisman. I'm a man of simple taste, and this works for my Zeppelin, ZZ Top, etc. music where the focus is on the dirt. It's replaced my Bassbreaker's onboard reverb.

Thanks to everyone for their thoughts and ideas.

Here’s where I think Equipboard could improve. I would like to leverage all the knowledge of Equipboard to make it more personal and useful.

Thanks to you all, we are the best place to find “who plays what”. I think to get to the next level, we need to build on that to be more useful to more players.

What if we structured our data and introduced tagging systems so that we could crunch data and create community generated pages that answer specific problems?

There is a lot of knowledge in this community, and I think we could come up with a better system than forums for highlighting it. The pages would be dynamic, so anyone could suggest products to include, and there would be an up and downvoting system.

Imagine a page styled like this, but for “plate reverbs for vox ac30 style amps”. https://www.producthunt.com/e/remote-apps

So for example, we would create thousands of dedicated pages like “best overdrives for blues”, “best PAF style humbuckers”, “best nitrocellulose safe guitar stands” and they would live forever and change over time.

These would all be linked to the item pages so that people could easily see which products are in what lists.

Also, if we bring in the ability to tag and self tagging (for example, Michael is a guitarist that likes lo-fi rock and blues), we could make some really interesting pages based on personal preferences. Roles, genres, styles, types of products, you name it.

Ultimately, I think this would make Equipboard way more interesting and better suited to solve individual’s problems. After building a database of connecting artists and gear, this would turn our attention to making interesting connections among the gear that is easy to contribute to and explore.

What do you guys think?

I know we’ve done this before, but it’s been a while and I’m itching to get radical with the site.

So, what ideas do you have to improve Equipboard? Everything from small incremental improvements to big wild crazy ideas, let’s hear ‘em!

I guess I don't understand the question. I doubt a $20,000 guitar is 100x better than a $200 guitar in the way that a $2 million Ferrari is not 100x better than a $20,000 Honda at most capabilities.

But there is also some truth in "you get what you pay for".

If people have the ability and it brings them joy, I say go for it.

Really? I thought that was the typical clean sound that would work.

Anyway, listen to Jim. He knows amps.

Roland JC-120?

Wow, that AC4HW sounds legit. Do you like it more than other small wattage options like a tweed champ?

Nice playing by the way.

I'm just impressed you made a 6 minute demo video for it! Nice work.

Also, you just joined Reverb in 2021?!

The Squier Affinity series is pretty good for the price if you're looking at new options.

I wouldn't say that. I think there is talent involved in playing and performing songs. Sure, it's a different talent that writing songs, but to me it is talent nonetheless.

Does this work? https://equipboard.com/items/arturia-microfreak-vocoder-edition

No problem. Done!

The website looks better, but they got rid of their posts mentioning Equipboard!

Done.

Agree. Deleted.

Okay, thanks for keeping the bug reports coming everyone! We are currently working on the backend architecture for how to add artists, but will do a round of bug fixes soon (end of this week or next) to solve these issues.

Yeah, this issue bothers me as well. We'll fix it soon.