simfonik's forum posts 201

Is this worldwide or only limited to US and what is the deal with shipping?

Worldwide! Just like our community. :)

Ok, I'm not seeing any prompt to link to a band or anything like that. I've added an artist but can't see a way to associate them with their band...

There isn't a way to manually associate an artist with their bands, yet. In some cases, when adding a new artist we're able to pull in bands using an API and you'll see an option to select the correct ones. That doesn't always find an artist's bands though.

Who's the artist you added? I'd like to see why we couldn't find their band(s).

Welcome back!

I hate to say it, but this might be the first Marvel movie I'm not at all excited about. Deadpool wasn't a comic I followed though, so maybe I just don't get it. The trailer seemed super corny to me, and not in a good Guardians of the Galaxy way.

brand new member, would be nice to win something straight off the bat. You can never have too many CANS

Truer words have never been spoken.

Welcome btw! How'd you hear about Equipboard?

There was some moderator discussion around this a while back. Here's what I posted and we agreed on:

I don't think we should deny these items.

I do agree it would be nice to separate these kinds of items, where someone just does a one-off review and doesn't actually use the item on a regular basis. Since this is a bit of an edge case though, I don't think we can devote our limited development resources on addressing the problem at the moment.

What I propose, for now, is that we tag the items in some way in the submission notes. Perhaps something like:

#product-demo

Doing that doesn't require any development time, and it allows us to find these submissions at a later date should we end up building out a way of separating them from other content on the artist's page.

Living or dead. Together or not. Who are the top 3 you would most like to see?

Here are mine:

Boards of Canada – they're still making music, but rarely perform live and have never set foot in the US for a live performance. If they announced a show anywhere in the world tomorrow, I'd book a flight.

Led Zeppelin – I had a chance to see Page and Plant in the mid 90's and regret not taking it. That would have been a close second for me.

Pink Floyd – I've seen Roger Waters on tour for The Wall and Dark Side of the Moon, so it's close but seeing the whole back together in their prime would be something else. When I saw Dark Side, it was at the Hollywood Bowl and Nick Mason made an appearance, so that's as close as I'll ever get to the whole band.

Who are your top 3?

I can't add the artist Jason Ross, because another artist has the same name. Is there any work around on this, or should I just write: "DJ Jason Ross" instead of just: "Jason Ross"?? He is a pretty established artist on the trance scene, and has several times released on Mondo and Anjunabeats.

If the artist name is already taken, use: Jason Ross (2)

What about the people that don't see this message, what if some random member gets the prize and he doesn't even know? Do we just wait for a response and respond accordingly?

We sent an announcement in last Friday's newsletter. It's also posted to our blog, and we'll be promoting it on the home page, artist pages, and item pages shortly.

If you win, you'll be contacted by email and will need to respond within 48 hours to claim the prize or another winner will be selected.

I have a feeling indie bands from Austin and Seattle are about to become VERY recognized for their gear :)

This is a great idea Sim.

No doubt! :)

Thanks! We thought it would be a fun way of encouraging more submissions.

Does quality of submission count, such as the actual wording in the description?

Wording is very subjective. As long as the submission that's drawn is correct and not something that we would otherwise delete from Equipboard, it would be accepted. We would delete something if it had incorrect notes, or gibberish, so quality does matter to that extent.

Accuracy is paramount.

We’re doing a giveaway for a pair of Sennheiser HD 25-SP II Headphones.

For a chance to win, simply submit gear to any artist in the month of August. Every submission counts as an additional entry, so the more you submit the greater your chance of winning.

Eligible submissions must be made between 12:00AM August 1st and 12:00AM September 1st CST. We’ll pick a winner at random and make an announcement on September 3rd. The winner must respond to our email within 48 hours of being contacted, or another winner will be selected.

Duplicate submissions of gear already on an artist’s Equipboard will not be counted. The selected winning submission will be reviewed for accuracy and quality. If the submission is inaccurate, we will pick another submission at random.

If you have any questions, please just ask.

Good luck!

I dig it. I wish that any time a forum receives a post it would also be in the recent activity log.

Thanks! That could be helpful in exposing more people to the forums.

Better than seeing a long, vertical row of one profile picture. The variation of different gear is a fantastic touch.

Thanks!

Cons?

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

I think some of the pictures should be changed. No disrespect to the people who review these items, but It's generally better to use a generic image of the gear rather than a photograph of the item on your floor.

Same goes other minorities such as black backgrounds, images that are too small, etc.

Yeah, big images with white or transparent background are definitely preferred. Image editing isn't too far off now, so we'll all be able to fix them as we run across them.

We made a change to the recent activity feed today.

Instead of showing the avatars of the people who wrote a review, or spotted someone using something, we're now showing the gear they spotted or reviewed. It should make it easier to see the gear that's being added or talked about now.

In addition to the change, I'd love to hear what you all think about the recent activity feed in general. What sucks, what's good, etc.

I think it's fine for people who are active members on EB to post things they want to trade or sell. I was actually thinking of seeing if anyone was interested in my Arturia BeatStep, since a purchase of the BeatStep Pro is imminent.

Hi guys I would like to ask u which one would u choose and why?? Couse I don't know witch one to buy. I would like to have both of them but i don't have the money and I hope this will help me to choose.

What are you going to be using it for?

I haven't seen a DX7 in good working order for $250 in years... but 800 clams is a lot! The interface better be really intuitive.

Yeah, the price is really off-putting. $250 would be a great price on a DX7. I've seen them in recent years, though usually snapped up before I can get to them. It's not uncommon to see them sit on craigslist for a while around the $300 to $350 range though. I suspect it's people who pick them up, can't figure it out, then sell them off.

Also, that keyboard is pitiful looking! I would expect that an upgrade to the 80s DX7 would be a great Yamaha P-85 style keyboard with realistically weighted keys, good velocity and aftertouch... I want bigger and better, not smaller and more portable.... a bigger keyboard would give more real estate for buttons, sliders, knobs, a nice diplay and jog shuttle... c'mon Yamaha, that looks like a toy.

I'm not a keyboardist, so mini-keys don't bother me much. I understand how they could be a showstopper for someone who plays though.

We recently had a bunch of merge duplicate requests for guitars that I don't think should be merged. I wanted to post here, so we could make sure we're all on the same page on what warrants its own item page on Equipboard. Here are some examples of the requests:

Keep: Gibson Les Paul Custom Electric Guitar Delete: Gibson Les Paul Signature T Goldtop

Keep: Gibson Les Paul Custom Electric Guitar Delete: 1976 Gibson Les Paul Standard

Keep: Gibson Les Paul Custom Electric Guitar Delete: Paul McCartney's Custom Painted Gibson Les Paul

Keep: Gibson Les Paul Custom Electric Guitar Delete: Gibson Les Paul Special SL Electric Guitar

Keep: Gibson Les Paul Custom Electric Guitar Delete: Gibson Les Paul DC Lite

Keep: Gibson Les Paul Custom Electric Guitar Delete: Gibson Les Paul Dale Earnhardt Jr. Guitar

Keep: Gibson Les Paul Custom Electric Guitar Delete: Vintage 1957 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop Electric Guitar

I think these are distinct products with more than just color/finish variations. Our thought is that anything that's a unique product, with the exception of color/finish variations within a product line, should be a distinct item page on Equipboard.

For example, all of the guitars on this page can have their own item page on Equipboard:

http://www2.gibson.com/Products/Electric-Guitars.aspx

The Midtown Standard comes in Pelham Blue, Ebony, and Vintage Sunburst – we don't need to create 3 item pages for those finish variations.

Thoughts? Questions?

This isn't exclusive to music, but it bugs the hell out of me when someone lists something for sale and classifies it as "MINT", then continues to describe the various problems with what they're selling. For example:

"MINT Roland SH-101 – one of the keys is broken, it's missing the battery cover, and the filter doesn't always work. Aside from those issues, it's in MINT condition."

NO.

http://equipboard.com/items/beretta-9mm-target-pistol

Please... somebody please tell me WHY THIS IS ON A MUSIC SITE?!

When Equipboard started, we were testing out the idea of cataloging everything everyone uses be they musicians, athletes, chefs, archers, or whatever profession. We're musicians, and music is what most of the people who found Equipboard were interested in, so we stopped asking for non-music submissions. We've just yet to remove non-music submissions.

Also, you rock for continuously pointing out the many things that need attention. We're working on making it so anyone can fix those things. So even though I'm not actively fixing each thing you're pointing out, you're really helping to surface the things that should be a priority for us. Thanks for that!

Yamaha recently announced their new ReFace lineup of synths.

http://usa.yamaha.com/products/music-production/synthesizers/reface/concept/

I wasn't into them at first, but after watching some demos I might have to go an play with them. They sound great. And the controls aren't as bad as they appear at a glance. The DX model seems much easier to program than the DX7 from which it's inspired. I think the only thing that might keep me from getting one is the price – $799 is a hefty tag, considering you can pick up a DX7 for around $250.

What do you guys think?

Here's a video demo of the DX:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR47UZNwxlM

I haven't liked him since he went red and black Wolfpac. The less he says, the better.

Oh man, that's too funny!

Just wondering earlier: Why doesn't anybody like sting?

I like The Police, does that count?

Is there a reason why we can't capitalise our usernames?

You can use whatever casing you like on the display of your name on your Equipboard. It looks like you have it capitalized there.

Are you talking about how it's displayed in the forum, or in the URL?

y'know, it might be a good idea to categorize the forum... even if tis just by instrument type, so the "Humbucker" thread I posted would go into guitar/bass instead of general and then that guy who posted "Old school vs new school gear for beginners" would have posted it in synthesizers (or some similar category) so that I knew what sort of rig/home-studio problems I was going to be interrogated about before I even read his original psot.

I think so too. We've held off on doing that because there wasn't a lot of forum activity. I think that's changed a bit, so here you go:

http://equipboard.com/forums/guitarists-bassists

We'll need to change the Forum link to point to a directory of forums, but for now you can get there either via that link or by clicking on "Forums" in the Forum > General breadcrumb.

Moved this to the new Guitarists & Bassists forum. :)

If you'd like, I can make a new submission in the correct manner, and you can just delete those two old submissions.

Sure, that'll work. Thanks!

EDIT: "Nearly 1000 submissions have been approved in the last week"

Is this normal for this site, or is EB having a sudden burst of submissions and/or members?

We've had some 1000+ submission weeks recently.

Okay, a few things to comment on this.

1. Nearly 1000 submissions have been approved in the last week and nearly all of them are miggity and austin. A lot of work is done on the site that doesn't necessarily show up to members.In fact, I may have done the least of all mods and admin so far. I used to get frustrated that out of 800 submissions, miggity had already seen 600 of them, reviewed them, and had spoken with the member who submitted it :) . That dude is really on the ball.

We all have our different roles and of course different schedules in the real world. Rest assured, all things get worked out eventually. Being given the opportunity to be a moderator for this site really opened my eyes up to many things. Where I thought things just weren't getting done I realized that the shear amount of content, fixes, and programming is overwhelming. A famous quote sums it up, "The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few;".

1. Submissions are about to be submissable by members, if they aren't already.

2. Many times, members don't check on their submission status and if there isn't enough proof to make a submission, one of the staff will come through and ask for more content or help finding a make/model or etc. If you are finding that your submission hasn't been made yet, please check the status of it on your profile page. There may be a BUNCH of notes and comments from the mods mentioned above ;)

I'd also like to leave you an example of the work just 1 submission requires on average. I am guilty of all the things below as well when I was a member.

Member submission: "Guitar is CLEARLY seen in video" or "DUDE uses this item" Submits 17 minute video without using YouTube "Start From" feature.

Mod's Part: Where in this giant video is the guitar he's talking about... wait... there are 3 guitarists in this band? Which one is DUDE? Lemme go on google and look at the member list of the band.... oh okay, the guy with the beard is who he is talking about... okay.... hmmm.. That guitar looks different than the one they submitted. I'll leave a note and see if they can show me another video or something.

This is often the end of the experience if the member doesn't check on the status :( If the submission is legit however, the mod then has to reformat the entire submission, select a photo of the item, list who uses it, what band they are in, and type up a bit about it. Sometimes this can take anywhere from 3 minutes to 20 if the submission requires a lot of digging and re-writing.

I'm not posting this in a negative light or even a judgmental one. My hope is just to share enough of whats going on that everyone will be more willing to exercise patient and understanding.

In Short...

Things will be fixed eventually

Please respect the staff for the work they do

Do keep posting errors, concerns, and suggestions. That's why this thread exists!

Did I already say Boom was awesome? OK, just checking. :D

It can be denied, but no one seems to be doing that.

You know what, have you noticed that the moderators seems to be extremely biased about accepting submissions? It's not all, actually it's austinmw and miggityfriggity. They keep accepting submissions from a few people REALLY quickly, and everyone else still need their submissions reviewed. It really bothers me, and I've been holding this in for some time.

I'm sure there's probably some natural bias. When I've moderated submissions, it's usually less work when it's a submission from someone I've interacted with repeatedly and come to trust as a reliable and accurate contributor.

We've recently changed the system up though. All submissions are going live immediately now, without moderation. We're flagging them as "Needs Review" on the artist page, and we'll be introducing a new system for editing and rating the quality of submissions in the coming weeks.

At least Boom acts like a human and talks. Haven's seen Sims or gchiaren in some time, though. All the other moderators look like they haven't been on the site for some time.

I'm sorry, that rant was uncalled for...

Boom is awesome. gchiaren does all the programming, so we have him locked in a closet pushing out code 12 hours a day. We occasionally let him out for coffee and bathroom breaks.

http://equipboard.com/pros/erez-eisen

http://equipboard.com/pros/amit-duvedevani

These two should be deleted. The duo of Infected Mushroom share the same equipment and work together, therefore they should be considered one whole.

Done!

http://equipboard.com/pros/mike-kerr/ampeg-svt-basscombo

http://equipboard.com/pros/mike-kerr/ampeg-svt-guitar-combo

This submission bothers me on unwanted levels.

Yeah, those aren't great. Are they correct? Can that gear be spotted in the photo on the linked source page? If so, I'm happy to go in and edit it.

Letting the community rate the quality of submissions, and adding editing features, is one of the big things we're working on right now.

I wish I could easily drag and drop the stuff on my equipboard to change the order it appears in. I have so much music junk that the arrow system is becoming a PITA...

The arrows are a PITA. Drag and drop would be cool. Not sure it'd make it to the top of the list of things that need to be done just yet.

Personally, I'd love for all my gear to be categorized like on Pro pages.

http://equipboard.com/pros/jamie-hewlett

This guy makes draws stuff. He's not a musician.

How did he even get on this site?

Destroyed.

http://equipboard.com/pros/radical-face

Ben Cooper head Radical Face and is a member of two other bands. As such, this should be deleted.

I've destroyed Radical Face.

http://equipboard.com/items/marshall-jcm-800-2210-100w

Silly EB, I said Marshall JCM 800 2203, not 2210.

It's now a 2203. :)

Big post of stuff that I screwed up at.

http://equipboard.com/pros/dayshell

That needs to be destroyed.

Destroyed. Funny, that's the actual term we use when taking that action.

http://equipboard.com/pros/adam-thompson/fender-american-nashville-b-bender-tele-electric-guitar

Correction.

http://equipboard.com/pros/adam-thompson/boss-dd-20-giga-delay-digital-delay-pedal

Turns out the camera was a douche and made me think that was Adam's. Needs to be removed.

I'm not 100% clear on what needs to happen here. Do both submissions need to be destroyed?

One other thing, I've noticed that many artists aren't aligned to their appropriate bands.

Also: http://equipboard.com/pros/mark-smith

Mark Smith is the guitarist from Explosions in the Sky.

Edit: Case in point: http://equipboard.com/pros/tom-cowan He's the bassist and keyboardist of the Horrors.

To date, we've done most of the band assignments using APIs from The Echo Nest and Freebase. It's a little fuzzy on the matching, with occasional mistakes and omissions, but it was a good way to seed things.

We do plan on creating options that will allow the community to create and edit artist->band relationships. I don't have an ETA on that, but we're hard at work making our way through the backlog of things that need to be improved to make Equipboard even more awesome. I promise we'll get to it!

We're interested in publishing an article about guitar strings on our blog. We had a writer start on the article, but it's not quite what we had in mind.

We like the way it's broken up by different string types (could use some fact checking), but the recommendation for a specific type of string in each of those sections is a little light on helpful details about why a particular brand of string is worth trying. It doesn't have to be those specific strings, we'd just like to provide readers with a good recommendation (mini review) for each category.

Would any of you guitarists be interested in helping us improve the article?

Here's the article in its current state:

Buying strings for an acoustic guitar can be a daunting task, especially for someone who might not know what they’re looking for.

While it’s important to experiment a little to find the feel and sound that you like best, it can help to have a vague idea of how to achieve different sounds in the first place. That’s why we’ve put together a guide on how to choose which guitar strings to buy.

String Material

Bronze

Bronze strings are clear and bright and ring for a long period of time. The bright tone lends itself well to a wide variety of music styles, however in situations where the guitar needs to cut through the music and be heavily featured, bronze strings will be well suited. While they sound great, however, bronze strings need to be replaced more often because they oxidize quicker than other strings. A good example of bronze strings is Elixer’s Nanoweb 80/20 Bronze strings.

Phosphor Bronze

Phosphor bronze strings are quite a bit darker and warmer than bronze strings, however they still feature a crisp bronze sound compared to other acoustic guitar strings. Not only that, but they are longer lasting than straight bronze strings because of the inclusion of phosphor. All major string makers make phosphor bronze strings, however a great example is Martin’s SP series.

Brass

Brass strings have a sound that some would describe as “jangly,” as they are quite bright and metallic. This makes them perfect for things like country and in situations where the guitarists may use a slide. Brass guitar strings are a little less common than other types, however a good example of some are made by Yamaha and are branded as being for folk music.

Nylon

Nylon strings have a much more mellow tone with a lot less sustain compared to other strings, and they are used most often in classical music and songs in which a softer sound is required. A word of warning, however, you cannot simply decide on nylon strings – classical guitars are built specifically to use nylon strings, and using nylon strings on a guitar not made for them – and vice versa – could do significant damage to the guitar. If, however, you do own a classical guitar, and good example of nylon strings would be D’Addario’s Pro Arte series.

Gauge

While string gauge won’t have as much of an effect on sound as string material, it will have an effect on your playing, which will affect sound. Thicker strings are simply harder to press down, making them hard to play. Those that use thicker strings will generally get callouses thicker and faster, and these strings are a lot harder to bend. They are, however, louder and offer more sustain. Lighter strings are easier to play and bend, however they do not offer as much sustain. String gauges start at around 0.010 inches for the top string, and go to 0.059 inches for the bottom string. A light set of strings will include strings between 0.011 to 0.052, while a heavy set will include strings between 0.014 and 0.059.

Conclusions

Between string gauges and the materials there is a wide range of sounds that can be achieved on any acoustic guitar. The right set of strings can make even a cheap old guitar sound half decent, so make sure to experiment and find that perfect set of strings for your guitar.

I'm sure many of us were assigned an instrument in school, or had our parents sign us up for lessons of some kind, but what was the first instrument you purchased or sought out for yourself?

My first was the Casio PT-30. I asked my parents to buy it for me when I was a wee little tike. My first purchase with my own money, was a Roland Juno 106.

Still love the Juno 106. Such a great synthesizer for learning subtractive synthesis. The Casio was a lot of fun too, and was my intro to sequencing.

What was your first?