Clueless gear reviews and never-ending entertainment.

[rfurtkamp]

I must admit i have a soft spot for bad ad copy from folks who don't understand what they're commenting on.

It's particularly true of emulations or supposed emulations of vintage delays - guys who espouse how an alleged boutique Echorec clone sounds "lush like you would expect a tape echo to be."

You know, because there's so much tape in an Echorec.

Or the generation of new players who now think that tape delay units all sound like they couldn't align anything across the heads, let alone pass signal, with the amount of wow and flutter that's "normal" on so many of the things floating around.

Or exacting recreations of fuzz pedals where they've redone the tone stacks sand eliminated the boost side of the circuit...but are still "exacting replicas."

I'm sure it's probably funnier to those of us who grew up with old cheap beater units as digital swept in and the old toys couldn't be given away, but damn....you young folks are going to experience this in 20 years if you're still playing and looking at gear.

"Captures that classic Behringer sound" is going to be a direct quote, I'm almost willing to bet - or "An exacting handwired replica of the Line6 Spider II"....

Anybody out there got stuff worthy of the hall of shame?

Trying not to put out too many direct quotes from reviews because...I like some of these vendors...but...damn. They should know better.

[alexsga]

that dude razorblade ray was hilarious

[Seance]

Or the generation of new players who now think that tape delay units all sound like they couldn't align anything across the heads, let alone pass signal, with the amount of wow and flutter that's "normal" on so many of the things floating around.

This is somewhat like the world of letterpress printing using movable type.
People now who letterpress print things put so much pressure onto the
paper that it seems like they're trying to make it into Braille for the blind.



This is sloppy printing. But if it was printed correctly it would be hard for
modern youngsters to tell the different between something letterpress
printed and something laser printed from a digital file.

Thus the using too much pressure.

Back when everything was printed this way a good printer would be shamed
out of business to print such a sloppy 3-D page. Imagine a book filled with
this kind of a thing? A 10-page children's book would be 4 inches thick and
the covers wouldn't shut properly.

When a technology becomes "obsolete" (i.e. two millimeters away from
"the cutting edge" but still usable) then the artifacts become fetishized.

Like "film effects" you can put on video clips to give them "mojo".
Not everyone in the past stored their film prints in their sock drawer
and allowed film projectors to scratch the shit out of the frame.

But we live in a scratched film, "wow and flutter" moment.
Authenticity is an app. #keepingitreal

[psychic vampire.]

As someone who holds the world's most laughably worthless degree in printmaking, I would agree that the letterpress example would be classicslly considered sloppy, but offer the counterpoint that a lot of these technologies were attempting exacting ideas they were never quite suited for, and now that new technologies have surpassed them at their "original purpose" their quirks are one of the major things that make them remain interesting, other than an interest in tradition. No one would argue that impressionist and expressionist painters are without merit because film made them turn their backs on realist or representational art. (Okay, well some fools would, but the "Is It Art?" Argument has been going for a century a d people still paint non-representational images, so for our purposes let's say yes). Different print mediums were all valid methods of achieving reproductions of images, one of the major reasons to choose one over the othheher WAS because of the intrinsic properties of the medium. Otherwise why continue etching after the lithograph, why lithograph after silkscreens, and why silkscreen after the printer? The properties unique to a medium are right to be celebrated, I personally think.

As an aside, a teacher once offered me this story: after the advent of metal plate lithography some 60 odd years ago, limestone lithography was rather immediately deemed obsolete, and the shop which owned the most lithography grade limestones - an incredibly finite resource that is hard to come by anymore - in the country, if not world, just up and dumped all their stones into a lake.

[rfurtkamp]

Yea, I have a few 19th century or older books, and they're immaculate on the printing. If it wasn't for the age of the paper and different texture from aging...you'd never know how it was done.

Even my 19th century atlas is pristine, color is a little faded but well, it is pretty damn old and the color stuff doesn't age nearly as well (nor was it anything more than a "cheap" one of the time).

Don't get me wrong, I love some of the emulations as flawed wacky (or ironically, used in conjunction *with* the real thing), but...this mojo thing has warped it beyond sanity.

[Seance]

Yeah. Form follows function. And well-printed, well-bound books can last hundreds of years.
That's been tested and proven. Digital stuff has been proven to have a finite shelf-life in
several different areas.

Exploring the form and expressing something through the materials and means of production
is great. But fetishizing the artifacts in a way that has no connection to anything results in
kitsch and way too many ironic prints about beards, deer, lumberjacks and all the reasons to
"keep calm" yet persist in doing some godforsaken and largely irrelevant something-or-other.

[rfurtkamp]

Yep. I always knew when it was "hip" to have a beard the end times would be upon me (from someone who can't shave without slicing themselves to ribbons due to scars from a misspent youth).

Then again, if I'd thought that anybody would have ever wanted some of the stuff I see fetishized now, I'd have put a storage unit full of $5 DOD pedals away fifteen years ago...

[Seance]

Isn't it possible to shave with a $5 DOD pedal?
I thought that was what a Gonkulator was for.
Or at least an Electro-Harmonix Switchblade.

[JonnyAngle]

Have you been to tb lately? I feel like a stranger over there and it is in line with what you're saying.

But then I thought, am I turning into a "get off my lawn" guy?

There is truth to what rfurtkamp is saying, but frankie says ,"Relax."

Too
Much beer

[chuckjaywalk]

It feels like there are a couple of different things being covered. Cluelessness in reviews applies to almost anything. In the case of pedals, I am very put off by how many reviewers compare a modern take on an older pedal to the original, when you know they don't have access to an original. If I was going to review a Sound Shank, I wouldn't be able to compare it to a Burns Buzzaround because I don't have a Burns Buzzaround. Hell, I don't think I've seen a picture of a Burns Buzzaround. Same goes for tape echo. I can easily compare a Catalinbread Belle Epoch to the genre of digital tape echo effects, but certainly not to an actual tape echo. I think a lot of "reviewers" lack proper experience and could really use editors. Writing video game reviews that had to pass through two editors before publication taught me a lot, like not to reference items I had no experience with as if I had first hand experience. It is okay to admit you don't have access to Radiant Silvergun on the Saturn or a Binson Echorec.

Making a fetish of the imperfections of a bygone era isn't a new phenomenon. Hell, the term 'Gothic' was popularized to describe gardens that recreated decrepit castle ruins back when you could easily acquire actual castle ruins. I mean, guitarists are very prone to mythologizing old technology. Tube amps? Coily cables? Relic guitars? If you made a tape echo pedal that was as close to 100% accurate as possible, it would be pretty pointless because when guitarists buy a tape echo, they want flutter and wow. Shit, go on Surf Guitar 101 and read about reverb units and pedals. If it doesn't drip, it isn't worth buying. They reject actual spring units for being too clean and civilized over there.

[friendship]

Playing guitar long enough to see trends and fetishism revolve full circle was pretty illuminating for recognizing my own arbitrary fetishism. I still get excited about stuff sometimes because of its Cool Factor, but I'm much better at recognizing when it comes from external sources. Pretty much any piece of equipment is cool if you do something cool with it. Buying stuff is the easy part; doing something exciting with it is the real challenge with real rewards.

[friendship]

Also on topic does anyone remember the Rip Glitter reviews

[rfurtkamp]

Yep, don't disagree.

I went down the "cool for cool sake" when I was younger, now it's "does it do what I want and lead me somewhere I wouldn't go otherwise?"

[CyaNitrate]

When a technology becomes "obsolete" (i.e. two millimeters away from
"the cutting edge" but still usable) then the artifacts become fetishized.

Like "film effects" you can put on video clips to give them "mojo".
Not everyone in the past stored their film prints in their sock drawer
and allowed film projectors to scratch the shit out of the frame.

I experienced something similar in college when I was learning photography. I was fortunate enough to cut my teeth on film (I'm 28) because college darkrooms are quickly being replaced by digital-only programs. In addition to traditional silver gelatin, what we think of as black and white, I also learned what is now called alternative processes, which chronologically actually came first: cyanotype, a blue colored print, and where the term blueprint actually comes from, and salt printing, which comes out a lovely shade of brown. See my pick guard.

It used to drive my absolutely insane that while I was learning and using these historic processes, it was the hight of instagram popularity, filters galore, without users having any real idea what said filters were bastardizingly "referencing".

That said, I'm totally guilty of loving old, "obsolete" technology. Tube amps. Record players. Film photography. Carburetors and big block V8s.

[psychic vampire.]

I do 't disagree with all of y'all that fetishization is silly or shortsighted, and watching trends circle around is similarly silly. I just feel like it might be of value to see this from a different perspective: mediums have innate, unique, and interesting properties which can be worthwhile or rewarding to explore in their own right. Wow and Flutter was an unwanted artifact when the technology was invented, but it is interesting to some people. It is silly when people assume all tape echos sounded like broken wrecks, but I won't fault anyone for liking the sound of broken wrecks, there is enough historical precedent in music and other arts to reaffirm the idea that this is valid. Or whatever.

On the other hand, people talking about Echorec clones and their true tape sound is also hilarious. I don't know, opinions on the internet, sorry y'all.