pkennethk's forum posts 2051

I'm also creating some DIY-Pedals from aion, guitarpcb and so on.

Cool. Which ones are you working on?

So please define what excactly is a low quality item / creation before you make these kind of restrictions. And give the users the chance to enhance these items.

What do you mean by "enhance", in this context?

Simply undo this censorship option and add an option to mark / report items with bad quality. Give the reporting users some IQ for the report. I guess that’s that simple.

That's not a bad idea.

I don't think a backlog of flagged items would be very simple.

Per gchiaren:

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.

It's one thing to flag someone's gear entry that was added for the sake of an artist. Like this too-specific entry made just for Tyler Joseph

The conversation for something like this is basically "Thanks, but we're going to remove this because it's redundant relative to other Precision Bass entries in this Artist's profile"

And the user's response will probably be pretty understanding... or, more likely, no response at all.

But there are also a sizable number of items in the database that are people's custom creations: partscasters, custom-enclosure DIY pedals, circuit-bent-synths, etc. People added them because they made them, they own them, and they want to show them off on their personal EB page, which is totally understandable... but these items wouldn't really fit the goals listed above either.

It's one thing for someone to request their custom project be added, and to explain to them, before it's added, why entries here need to be more generalized... it's a whole different dynamic to let someone add dozens of custom creations, and then have them flagged and removed. Nobody feels good about that. Time has been invested to create the entries, users have gotten used to seeing them along side more mainstream entries... I suspect it would get messy.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the stated guidelines/aims of these changes. This is entirely possible.

The current, restricted, gear-add system will need some iterations to smooth out. The system for supporting startup/boutique/direct-sale-only gear and gear from around the world needs to be clear and smooth and not make those types of entries feel unwelcome or less-than... but asking the entire community to interpret a set of nuanced guidelines and then turning them loose to penalize the perviously-inscrutable added items of other users feels like the wrong approach to me... ditto for only giving the power to flag to mods and admins, as having a small number of people chase down rouge entries after they've been added would burn a ton of time that could be better spent elsewhere.

https://equipboard.com/items/drunk-beaver-pedals-fluff

https://equipboard.com/items/drunk-beaver-pedals-fuzz-master

https://equipboard.com/items/drunk-beaver-pedals-heavy-bat

Damn! Great catch! I'm going with Sadowsky. Head stock and tuner style look like a match. Now to figure out which of the many many Sadowsky J-bass clones it actually is...

Thanks for not leaving me hangin', eyesee. Appreciate ya. :)

UPDATE: I've found a fifth Bernie Edwards bass I can't identify, anyone have any leads?

It's a Jazz Bass clone of some kind. Headstock doesn't look like any of the trademarked Fender shapes.

https://youtu.be/x73zbwcEe_4?t=460

I finally knocked Bernard Edwards' profile off the Artists Needing Gear list.

Mr. Edwards now has 5 whole items to his name here on Equipboard... and only one of them is dead-wrong. :D

...aaaand all 5 items are basses: no amps, no speakers, no compressors, no picks, no straps... just bass... pure, direct-recorded bass.

Clearly, I deserve a medal... but I don't think I'll get one.

I'll settle for a hi-five.

... no?...

...anyone...

Moderators don't currently have the power to delete entries. That's at the sole discretion of the Admins.

The best I can offer right now is to mark it as incorrect, so it will filter out of everyone's view. I realize this is a perversion of what "Incorrect" is supposed to represent, but it's a stopgap option if you want it.

Make a new submission using this item:

https://equipboard.com/items/epiphone-inspiration-tenor-acoustic-guitar

The EB Team is still working out policy/tech re: how to support adding rare, niche, boutique, and/or non-retail instruments while still cutting down the number of duplicate and poor-quality items that kept getting added. Thanks for your patience.

Is there any other way EB could improve this workflow without softening the wording around "Completely Incorrect"? I'll keep thinking on it myself, just need some more coffee. :)

Well the other obvious one, to me, would be to allow more people (either all or certain "classes" of users) to edit the item indefinitely. You can probably tell that when I first asked my question here I was sort of expecting it to work that way, actually. I'm sure the 1-hour limit was also established for good reason, but intuitively it did feel neater to me to edit the item rather than create an entirely new submission. There would be no implication that the original submitter was completely wrong, and both them and the editor(s) would be listed as contributors, as with any other edit.

Once a second person has made contributions to an entry, I can understand the original author no longer having the ability to delete the entry, but I don't personally know why/how the 1 hour window for deleting your own entry came about. My initial gut feelings on matter align with yours: I'd prefer to have the ability to delete my flawed entry and/or change the item on anything I originated indefinitely, or for as long as I remain the only contributor.

But there's no one system that everyone will agree is best, hence the point about having clear guidelines. They'd give you something to refer to in case of doubt or a disagreement.

I'm game to help refine/improve the current guidelines. All changes are at the sole discretion of the Admins, full stop, of course... but there's no harm in talking through what the next version of revisions and additions could look like.

Which, by the way, I haven't gotten into here yet... (I feel like I'm imagining all kinds of messy scenario's in this discussion, when the people I've come across here really don't seem all that finicky.)

This is because you're an idiot in name-only. :) Go submit a piece of recently-released gear to a wildly-popular, but long-dead artist... it will get messy.

Ohhhh... I thought people were just being sloppy. I'm kinda glad to hear it's a bug :D

Sorry for taking so long to get back here, been a particularly busy week.

No worries. I've been traveling this week, so now I'm the one taking days to respond.

I think it's fine, now that I know it's the recommended course of action. So maybe the easy improvement would be for it to be advertised more clearly somewhere in the Guidelines.

Once we work out the kinks and streamline the wording a bit (see below), I'll gladly suggest that to the Admins.

The second reason why I was a little reluctant, is that it won't always be your own submissions you're correcting. I'm guessing it will seem harsh to some contributors when their stuff gets marked 'Entirely Incorrect' just so it will be hidden in favor of a more exact ID. This is probably mostly a choice of words thing. The wording on the quality rating drop-down also suggests that option should be used carefully. If an entry has a good source and some useful details in the description, but the item is misidentified... I could argue that is not "100% wrong" or without value, in the sense that the submitter did at least put the item on the map, so to speak.

You make some great points here. Notice I asked for your consent before changing the rating of your submission to "Completely Incorrect", as nobody likes receiving one of those ratings out of the blue... I'm 110% with you on that dynamic. I don't think encouraging users to blindside well-intentioned submitters with red-status ratings is the necessarily the right path... but, to your point, the sequential "1,2,3" way I listed things in my earlier guidance suggests as much.

I'm on the fence re: softening the wording on the "Completely Incorrect" rating. I trust that all those warnings that pop up when you select "Completely Incorrect" are there in response to years of lessons-learned by the EB Admins.

Is there any other way EB could improve this workflow without softening the wording around "Completely Incorrect"? I'll keep thinking on it myself, just need some more coffee. :)

I'd like to know what the preferred way to deal with this type of correction is. Do we just ask someone to edit it? I've noticed other instances where users will create a new submission for the correct item, also leaving the incorrect one in the database. Is that considered an acceptable workaround, and should the older incorrect item then be marked 'Entirely Incorrect' for deletion, or can we request a merge somewhere?

Thanks in advance, and sorry if any of this is already covered somewhere on the site and I missed it.

Great question! I just confirmed the following details with the Admins. This is a snapshot of where things are right now... everyones thoughts on what could/should be improved are, of course, welcome.

1. Once you submit an item to an Artist, you have a 1 hour window to delete the entry or change its item. After this deadline passes, only an Admin can change the item or delete the entry.

2. If an item is discovered to be incorrect after the 1-hour deadline passes, it is recommended that you make a new submission with the correct item. If you wish, you may also request the offending entry to be removed via a forum post. Additionally, you can add a comment to the incorrect submission that links to the new correct entry.

3. If the offending entry described above is rated as Incorrect, it will (as of the very recent Artist page redesign) be automatically filtered from the Artist's profile. So at least nobody is going to see your incorrect entry going forward :).

https://imgur.com/YTiLOyR

Do you want me to go ahead and mark that Pomme entry Incorrect, so it essentially goes away?

Hey there @francismanacis!

How is your search for this bass tone going?

I dug around a bit this past weekend, but no luck yet.

I started with the composer, Jack Wall. Jack didn't have a profile here, so I gave him one:

https://equipboard.com/pros/jack-wall

I'm sure there's a good interview out there re: his work on CoD BO3 that will lead us in the right direction, we just haven't dug deep enough yet.

Maybe someone else out there has some thoughts or a new angle on this one?

Fair point, but as I'm sure you know, some VST instruments that aren't explicitly modular-inspired offer their FX as separate-but-bundled plugins, Such as SerumFX, but I don't know of anyone asking to also list Serum under the FX section. Pretty much anything in the database, that isn't a traditional acoustic instrument, is a fit for more than one category. This category-chafing isn't a pain-point unique to modular-inspired VST instruments.

Would a "Modular Synth Plugins" sub category, as per the earlier screenshot, be a sufficient solution for the time being?

To me, "Instrument", in this context, just implies "anything that primarily makes sounds". I'm sure some of these modular environment plugins allow you to also output MIDI or audio-rate control signals (I sure hope Reaktor, 25+ years old, finally allows people to do this, but I haven't checked in years), but primarily, people buy them to make audible sounds of some kind, be they pitched, percussive, or pseudorandomly-generated baths of pink noise, right?

OK, how do you think things should be arranged/re-arranged so that this new category meets your expectations, but also makes some kind of sense in relation to all the other categories and structure?

Oh I know that someone has to be the first, but it seems to be me, a lot. Cherry Audio Memorymode for instance......massively popular memorymoog clone. I was sure it would be here as it was released weeks ago, but there was no sign of it. Seems every time I buy a new thing, I have to add it myself. I added 4 just today. Blue Cat Late Replies, A.A.S. Multiphonics CV-1 ( which is the modular synth I was enquiring about ), Cherry Audio Memorymode, and Zplane Peel.

These are valuable contributions to the EB community. Thank you!

As for the modular category, they aren't just synths, as i'm sure you know you can make drum machines, samplers, effects etc...in them as well, and there are enough of them now to justify having their own category, because they are quite different. You got cherry audio voltage, softube modular, a.a.s. multiphonics cv-1, reaktor, and VCV will be releasing a vst version before the end of the year, plus others I can't recall right now. If you want to find a modular environment, it's a very specific thing, just as the need for a delay category is different to a reverb, even though a reverb is technically a lot of delays. we also have separate categories for limiters and compressors, even though they are fundamentally the same thing with different ratios, so I don't think it's splitting hairs to have a category for a modular environment.

So you're thinking:

Musical Instruments > Music Software > Plugins: Instruments > Modular Synthesizer Plugins ?

https://imgur.com/9JnYCHu

If I can do a bit of work, so can you ? =P

Moderators can't define new categories here, that's Admin-only at the moment. Is this the work you are suggesting I should do?

As for organizing your own Equipboard, users are allowed to freely re-label and re-categorize the items in their own board as they please. So you can already organize your Equipboard to appear exactly as you wish, correct?

As far as gear you're adding not already being on here, that's how Equipboard has always worked. The first user to add an item that nobody has ever added before is the one to create the new item entry. Was your expectation different than this?

All that said, I too get annoyed when I go to add a piece of gear to a profile, and find that hasn't been added to the database yet, but at least I know that if I'm the one adding the new item, it's going to get a name, category, image, and description that I mostly-like :)

It's still a VST synthesizer. Why is it important that modular-styled VST instruments have their own category? Who would this new category help?

If you're browsing for a hardware synth, someone new to all this could get seriously confused if eurorack stuff was categorized the same as a standalone synth... they could end up buying a module before they know they need a case, power supply, supporting utilities, etc... but the same is not true in the software domain.

I'm not asking rhetorically, I'm just trying to understand the need better.

There aren't enough comics about Alexander the Great.

Killer work on the shadows and perspective!

I'm with eyesee on this one, speaking generally. It's common industry practice to give artists several pre-production prototypes to vet and sign off on before their signature units go into production, so knowing a prototype exists doesn't represent anything unique or separate from the production model in most cases.

I didn't see anything about a prototype of Kerry's amp being used as Softube's development reference in what you linked, but my guess would be that if prototype hardware was used in that situation, it was so the Softube version could go into development well before the hardware version of Kerry's amp went into production... not necessarily because the prototype sounded better than the production version... but that's just an assumption.

Now, if an artist went on record saying that they were unhappy with the production version of their signature gear, and started only playing the prototype live and/or in studio, and trashing the production model in interviews... maybe THEN a separate entry for the prototype would make sense, because that would be critical info to have if you're trying to get closer to that artist's tone... but I've never heard of such a situation, ever, really.

2 - A couple of years ago I erroneously added (I was quoting his guitar tech) 'Gretsch Country Gentleman' as a guitar owned by Kavus Torabi, but it's actually a White Falcon. I added a note requesting an admin to change it and it's still in place there, despite another user having flagged it since as 'Completely Incorrect'. Can we please have the ability to edit or remove at least our own site submissions?

+1 on this.

I've made a few bone-headed errors in the past that I'd love to purge. If one creates an entry, and nobody has yet edited that entry in a way that makes them a co-contributor, it would be great to be able to remove it yourself, regardless of how much time has passed... or at least have some sort of clear "request deletion" button/flag you can set. I can imaging a few different technical reasons users can't currently delete their own content, but when you screw up in a way that you can't fix yourself, writing "hey @(admins), please delete this" in the comments doesn't do much to alleviate the shame.

3 - Can we please have some option to merge (or at least suggest merging) duplicate item listings, with a view to standardising them?

https://equipboard.com/duplicate_items

I'm sorry to hear you were in and out of the hospital as a kid, that really sucks. At least it got you hooked up with some of the best comic books ever. 10 year old me is jealous of that library you speak of, sounds awesome.

Makes sense that this was a glitch of some sort, otherwise it would probably still have some contributors listed and I would have been notified of the changes, right?

Exactly. The entry's edit logs only go back 2 months. Every edit anyone had ever made would be in the logs (Artist page > Artist gear entry > Edit This Submission) if entry's data was still in an organic/uncorrupted state.

Good to hear it wasn't anything I did wrong, thanks for the kind words.

No problem. Thanks for circling back, and thanks for the new submission today. :)

I read it when the 1st collected edition hit shelves.

You've got me beat by years. I don't remember buying a comic book until Spiderman #1 (1990) hit the shelves... just saw it at some mom and pop grocery store in the middle of nowhere and was like "What? They rebooted Spiderman? And it comes in a cool plastic bag? I'm in!"... talk about a worst possible time to get into comics... but I didn't know any better, I still enjoyed it. The comic book shops I eventually found still had the superior Marvel and DC stuff from the 80s for sale, and there were always TPBs. There were great things to read in the 90s, of course, but trust me, I had no clue and just bought a bunch of terrible headed-for-bankruptcy Marvel stuff.

Since it's not possible for any of us to submit an item without a source, nor make an edit that leaves an entry source-less, my assumption is that any entry without a source is the result of a technical/backend/database-transition type of issue. I've been hanging out here a few years now, and I've only seen a couple of instances like this out of tens of thousands of entries.

I haven't heard from anyone on the inside re: what happened here in this specific case, but regardless, I'm sorry to see this happened to your entry. All of your other entries are very carefully-crafted and on-point. You put a lot of work and thought into your submissions (thank you, seriously, thank you), which makes the loss that much worse.

Do you know if the source you used for this blue Tele still exists? Any chance you'd be able to edit this submission and bring it back to its former state?

They really hit the nail on the head with pt1 of the DKR movie. It falls off in pt2 but the look is pure Miller/Jansen/Varley.

I'm just happy that it exists, it still has Ronald Reagan in it, and that Zach Snyder had nothing to do with it :).

I suppose one could always do the old fashioned method of getting up each day, looking square in the mirror, and stating "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggon it, people like me!"

Friends or not, this is never a bad idea. :D

Nailed it. I love it!

I was just watching the DC animated Dark Knight Returns the other day, because I'm a super hip and cool person like that. ;)

Coloring the PiP panel to illustrate that they're watching TV in a dark room is not easy, but you pulled it off damn well.

I knew a Suzanne once, and they hated being called Susan.

How do we fix this?

Is there any way we can ask some one to edit them or do we just have to wait?

I updated the KMD Sound Electronics logo to the square one you linked to.

Unfortunately, swapping the photo is the only brand editing power Moderators currently have.

Just to make sure the Admins know what you want, the remaining work to do is:

Change the current brand name (K.M.D) to KMD... and if that is not technically possible, due to some unknown limitation, change this brand's name to KMD Sound Electronics as per the logo you linked to.

Is this correct?

Excellent! ...and the speakers are working, now?

Maybe Targo just wants to split the rental cost with a few folks?

Now, if one wants to simply make friends @ a rehearsal space, I'd suggest getting a liquor license and opening a bar next-door to a rehearsal space. :)

Killer Nick Furry #1 homage, great color.

I mean, if its your only (mostly) analog polysynth? you could get bored pretty fast and it has a pretty clean sound overall and the dirt it produces is not always that swell... but as part of an arsenal its impressive because its fast to program, has a customizable digital oscillator, sports a first rate keybed and excels at squeaky clean CS80 sounds with its own built in effects engine for live use.

Fast to program, fun to play, can do clean CS80 sounds, and the biggest, baddest version is <$1500 street?

Works for me.

Oh good! Glad you're still digging it. :)

its got a real personality that's nothing like my vintage stuff and the keybed is fast and fun

Why, in your informed opinion, did the Prologues fail to become a hit?

People love Korg, and they were on such a roll with the retro-modern analog stuff when they released the Prologues.

only to swap to a 16

Oh good! Glad you're still digging it. :)

I think this guy is mean to contend with the undeservedly reviled prologue8....

Weren't you trying to sell your Prologue8 awhile back?

On paper, if you tried to compare feature-to-feature, I can see how it would seem like a 5-voice Minilogue at twice the price... but, so far, it seems (and sounds) more like a Prophet 5 Rev4 offered at 1/3 the price.

It reminds me of my mopho x4 and the good old 6 track....

Re: Mopho x4, totally. I was hopeful it was multitimbral like the Six Trak, but no... I suppose nobody bothers using multitimbral modes these days anyway.

Sounds like DCOs but its hard to tell, its lush but the attack is pretty immediate and punchy...

It's VCO. Unlikely to be the exact the same oscillators as either the Prophet 5 or 6, but definitely billed as VCO.

I'm pretty sure this is meant to be the successor to the x4 and a contender against the minilogue as suggested by Gchiaren.

It's seems to be taking cues from the packaging of the Minilogue, but I don't see how anything that it literally twice as expensive could be described as a competitor. At this price, it's only a competitor to the Minilogue in the way that every 4-door, midsized BMW or Audi sedan is competing with the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry... or the way every $650 Strat-style guitar theoretically competes with every $1300 Strat Strat-style guitar.

I'm gonna have to hear this thing in person. If the oscillators aren't up to the standards of the Prophet 5v4 and/or 6... I'd rather have a lightly-used Prophet 6 desktop for that $$$$.