Ugly Nora wrote:People are starting to realize that a large amount of pedals wont make up for a small amount of talent
I wish that were true of the local indie scene but it's a world of extremes - either
just a crappy muff and a delay, or a board fucking packed with everything; verbs/delays/comps/buncha dirt/chorus+flange+phase/whatever else someone told them they should have.
The big boards are usually a mixture of something "boutique", one or two boss, then a bunch of chinese-made crap. All this for a 20-min set of sonic youth/mbv karaoke. And no, they don't have any real talent or a unique voice on the guitar. Guitar isn't hard to play, it isn't hard to be good at either if you enjoy playing it, but most bands I see treat them as accessories and everyone is wearing a jag/jm.
The explosion of cheap delays and offsets has led to a lot of players sounding exactly the same. A tacky and tasteless overreliance on delay/verb to fill out the sound where some decent musicianship should be. It's refreshing when somebody sets up a small board/few pedals coz it normally means they at least have confidence in their own playing, and that's a huge contribution to sounding like a decent player.
I'm in no way against big boards and I try not to be snooty about cheap or mainstream gear but the majority of the time, the people gigging the big boards are - consciously or otherwise - compensating for or covering up something.