How do you launch a pedal?

[Chankgeez]

You need to hire a hype man.

I hear Flavor Flav's workin' cheap these days.

[goroth]

Have demos by big names... Just Nick, Kingman, ...
More presence on social media.
Tourbox.

I love tourboxes but I'm fairly certain most generate little buzz for the maker.

[Chankgeez]

For a forum the size of ILF, I might agree with you. For a much larger forum (e.g. TGP), however, I think you're wrong.

David's pedals aren't your typical TGP fare though. No transparent overdrives or fancy reverbs.

Still, doing a tourbox is good exposure no matter how debatable the intended results are.

[hotknife]

Yeah, I would try a tourbox over at TGP. There's a big enuf fuzz community over there that you might breakthrough the vanilla.

Knobs and PedalsAndEffects demos would be good to expand your reach. Mike Hermans would probably be the best fit out of the "standard" bigger name demo guys to showcase your pedals.

[goroth]

For a forum the size of ILF, I might agree with you. For a much larger forum (e.g. TGP), however, I think you're wrong.

David's pedals aren't your typical TGP fare though. No transparent overdrives or fancy reverbs.

Still, doing a tourbox is good exposure no matter how debatable the intended results are.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't get the maths to work out.
Over the course of a year you'll be lucky if you can expose 20 indivuals to the pedals. Being generous, a third of them make demos. That's 6-7 demos over the course of a year. I dunno what the average hit rate would be for Joe TGP's YouTube channel, but again, being charitable 2000 views per video, over the course of a year.
Then of course you have the page hits generated by the thread. I have no idea what that could look like at tgp, but after a while it's going to end up pretty internal with just those involved in the tourbox.
It will likely generate a decent hit on a google search due to the size of the traffic to the site, but that's going to be a lot of content and forum jargon for a "never heard of this brand/pedal" person to sift through.
Then you have the sunk costs associated with the pedals, as well as the management keeping the tourbox on the rails.

I just can't see how that can compare to sending 6 pedals, simultaneously to six rad demoers - who have the YouTube followers and who manage their own social media (and have an interest to grow their presence based on their demos/photos/reviews). The demos will come out with higher production value, across more media, to a much greater audience, and with a much larger impact by the fact that these dudes will get their demos/reviews/photos/hype out over a much more compact time frame. This can then be timed with the actual launch of the pedal, and it's availability in shops.

The idea of course is that it can't compare, rather that it is a complementary action. But it just seems a drop in the ocean, especially considering the time aspect.

Maybe if D made a transparent overdrive that became flavour of the week - that kinda hype can make a massive difference.

Anyways, convince me I'm missing something! I'd love D's stuff to blow up.
Figuratively.

[goroth]

Can't believe I typed that much on my phone.
Apologies for any autocorrect specials that make my train of thought even less coherent.

[D-Rainger]

I don't understand how a tourbox works.... One person gets a fun time with lots of pedals until they get bored. Then they send it on to someone else, and over a year you get six people.... who are slightly bored with your pedals! (I'm being negative hear, and missing out excited posts, videoclips etc).

I guess I'll investigate videoclip people further. I always sent stuff to Dennis Kayzer - who now seems to be permanently on holiday....

[hotknife]

The tourbox can snag you a potential echo chamber of enthusiasts on a forum. Also reviews and more user impressions for when a buyer does a search in the future and wants further affirmation. Just interacting with a whole different community could do you a lot of good too. That's how Source Audio went from being ignored to having their new line of digital products take off in a generally snobby analog crowd.

Kayzer is cool, but a lot of guitarists with "safe" tastes seem to ignore his demos and some even call it noise. Branching into the mainstream guys (Andy, M.Hermans @PGS, Burgs) will give traditionalists a warm & fuzzy introduction into something that would probably scare them off otherwise. Just my 2cs, though. A lot of good points brought up all around.

[D-Rainger]

The tourbox can snag you a potential echo chamber of enthusiasts on a forum. Also reviews and more user impressions for when a buyer does a search in the future and wants further affirmation. Just interacting with a whole different community could do you a lot of good too. That's how Source Audio went from being ignored to having their new line of digital products take off in a generally snobby analog crowd.

Kayzer is cool, but a lot of guitarists with "safe" tastes seem to ignore his demos and some even call it noise. Branching into the mainstream guys (Andy, M.Hermans @PGS, Burgs) will give traditionalists a warm & fuzzy introduction into something that would probably scare them off otherwise. Just my 2cs, though. A lot of good points brought up all around.

Thanks!
Who's Andy, and Burgs?

[hotknife]

The tourbox can snag you a potential echo chamber of enthusiasts on a forum. Also reviews and more user impressions for when a buyer does a search in the future and wants further affirmation. Just interacting with a whole different community could do you a lot of good too. That's how Source Audio went from being ignored to having their new line of digital products take off in a generally snobby analog crowd.

Kayzer is cool, but a lot of guitarists with "safe" tastes seem to ignore his demos and some even call it noise. Branching into the mainstream guys (Andy, M.Hermans @PGS, Burgs) will give traditionalists a warm & fuzzy introduction into something that would probably scare them off otherwise. Just my 2cs, though. A lot of good points brought up all around.

Thanks!
Who's Andy, and Burgs?

Andy from ProGuitarShop (he rotates demo duties with another guy called Mike Hermans). Burgs is the alias of an Australian demo dude named Brett Kingman. ProGuitarShop gets more hits than him, though.

Knobs would actually be an excellent first choice since he has a knack for creating hype and mystique to get people talking (like the Reddit crowd).

[Chankgeez]

The idea of course is that it can't compare, rather that it is a complementary action. But it just seems a drop in the ocean, especially considering the time aspect.

I don't have time right now to respond to your baseless accusations, goroth. I never said just do one or the other.

So, I'll just quote myself again.

one word: hype
two words: social media
three words: scattergun-like dispersion pattern

I think Andy, Burgs and Mike Hermans all do demos for PGS now.

It seems David has a lot of homework to do.

[sylnau]

Take a look a those David.

Just Nick
https://www.youtube.com/user/JustNickMusic

Burgs
https://www.youtube.com/user/burgerman666

LRGD
https://www.youtube.com/user/conradtiss

Knobs
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCarxZ8 ... OhQ/videos

[goroth]

The idea of course is that it can't compare, rather that it is a complementary action. But it just seems a drop in the ocean, especially considering the time aspect.

I don't have time right now to respond to your baseless accusations, goroth. I never said just do one or the other.

I know you didn't say one or the other - that's what I meant in that I understand a direct comparison isn't necessarily relevant. But if impact is a function of number of actions multiplied by the reach of the actions divided by the time frame over which it occurs, then I can't see te relevance of a tourbox, especially when it could directly fund other actions with a higher impact.

I think my main thesis is that forums, and forum-based activities are largely a relic of another internet era. With the caveat of insanely hyped overdrives, which wasn't a joke but rather my genuine impression that hype on that level takes builders from obscurity to big players within a week or three. But that effect seems limited to overdrives.

My list of possible demoers/content creators/buzz generators would perhaps include Chicago Music Exchange. Definitely Knobs (who would totally do Rainger stuff justice). Just Nick (even though he does nothing for me, he's rad). Juan Alderate and that dude from Tera Melos. Can't stand either of their demos but they get genuinely psyched about new and weird sounds, and have a good following. Pedaloftheday on Instagram. Dunno if Excane is still doing demos and generating buzz...

[oldangelmidnight]

Freakenfest:
D. Rainger drives from house to house with a helmet-mounted camera and a cattle prod and electrocutes people while they play songs using the pedals.

I think a lot of the greatness of the Rainger pedals is in the performance capabilities of the Igor. It's hard to capture that in a typical video demo.

[D-Rainger]

Freakenfest:
D. Rainger drives from house to house with a helmet-mounted camera and a cattle prod and electrocutes people while they play songs using the pedals.

I think a lot of the greatness of the Rainger pedals is in the performance capabilities of the Igor. It's hard to capture that in a typical video demo.