Gear Trend predictions: PERFECT VISION EDITION

[coldbrightsunlight]

Not released but he's working on a cool sounding filter. Probably releasing next year?? I think that's what dos is talking about.

With the crazy pedals thing, it seems fairly significant to me that no good bands I have heard in the last few years are using super crazy effects to make music. But maybe that's just a bubble of things I like.

Boringly because this will shock nobody I predict Eurorack is probably only going to get bigger and bigger. Unlike with the pedals I'm seeing more musicians using that. Plus it's always gonna be a good format for NEW GEAR HYPE

[Dowi]

While i agree with what most people here said about new stuff being mainly for gear nerds but rarely used in albums etc., i think "weird" pedals (at least some) can have their own use if the one who buys those does it following an idea of sound, or at least buys them with the aim of using them and not only to put out a "newgearday" instagram video, and them flipping 'em.

Also, i really hope 2020 will be the year where we don't see any more "lush ambient textures" reverb-delay pedal combos, i mean, how many of those came out in the last couple of years? plz stop.

[frigid midget]

Also, i really hope 2020 will be the year where we don't see any more "lush ambient textures" reverb-delay pedal combos, i mean, how many of those came out in the last couple of years? plz stop.

Fuck yeah. There should be a law or something. Every builder is allowed to put out no more than just one ambient pedlol a year.
Anyone who's in the market for a pedal like that gets shopping anxiety and waists hours and hours on demos and forums and reviews..only to flip their fancy wobbly delay reverbarators to fund the next best thing. Or that's at least the case for at least one person here

[Dowi]

Anyone who's in the market for a pedal like that gets shopping anxiety and waists hours and hours on demos and forums and reviews..only to flip their fancy wobbly delay reverbarators to fund the next best thing. Or that's at least the case for at least one person here

[Jwar]

I’m probably a loner here but I think we’re at the beginning. Pedal companies don’t stay in business by offering the same pedals as always and never creating something new.

There will be lots of re-hashes (Westwood, cheese ball, etc) and lots of looping/ bedroom banging (mood, blooper, plasadk. Ezhi is coming back, Alexander looks like some cool stuff is coming)

You’re totally right but I don’t think anyone is re-inventing the wheel here on any level. Just adding features to things over and over again and making variations upon variations upon variations.

It’s nothing against any of the companies. The pedals are fun but ultimately lackluster imo and lack any real direction. That is what kind of bothers me the most. Everyone in the gear community seems to have become content on making bleep boop crap, which I get it. It’s what’s in...now. For like 5 minutes until everyone gets bored. LOL. The useless sequencing devices, things that degrade your signal into horrible hissing. I honestly am both happy and annoyed. I feel like some of the pedals are so close to winners but maybe I’m being too picky?

I don’t know. I haven’t really said “wow” to a pedal in probably 3 years. I have said “my boner” then tried then and said “really? That’s it?” Lol

That’s why I’m back to the basics. I don’t want something to cover play my whack ass to playing. I want to play better.

This is all a self reflection btw. Ymmv

[ibarakishi]

EHX BAG9 Bagpipe Machine

really under-appreciated post in this thread

[Inconuucl]

I have said “my boner” then tried then and said “really? That’s it?” Lol

It's okay, buddy. Happens to the best of us.

[coldbrightsunlight]

EHX BAG9 Bagpipe Machine

really under-appreciated post in this thread

Oh I missed that one. A+ idea would consider buying

[coupleonapkins]

EHX BAG9 Bagpipe Machine

really under-appreciated post in this thread

Oh I missed that one. A+ idea would consider buying

It was an EHX April Fool's joke from 2018, but I still keep a candle lit

[crochambeau]

I don’t think anyone is re-inventing the wheel here on any level. Just adding features to things over and over again and making variations upon variations upon variations.

It’s nothing against any of the companies. The pedals are fun but ultimately lackluster imo and lack any real direction. That is what kind of bothers me the most. Everyone in the gear community seems to have become content on making bleep boop crap, which I get it. It’s what’s in...now. For like 5 minutes until everyone gets bored. LOL. The useless sequencing devices, things that degrade your signal into horrible hissing. I honestly am both happy and annoyed. I feel like some of the pedals are so close to winners but maybe I’m being too picky?

I have to narrow my focus & definition down pretty damn tight to agree with the first section of your post.

I do agree there is and always has been an unnecessarily wide margin of "market focus" that is mired in the sense of not moving forward; moving at an ever decreasing cost of production on one side, and burrowing deeper and deeper into rarefied NOS tone voodoo on the other. At least, speaking of the analog design regions.

That statement is, of course, unfair to many analog designers - but forging paths not yet defined is a slow business - and it's easy to overlook minor gains with a mindset cultivated in an instant gratification ecology.

Then there are advances on the digital side. Naturally the fastest wave of change is based on repackaging existing notions (the "sandbox" being filled with blocks suspended in a silicon plane), but trust that some forge forth into the wild. Admittedly, sometimes those brave souls become consumed by the forest and are never heard from again.

Regarding the latter section of your post, I fully understand the sense of a feature or effect not resonating with my playing style or mindset. It is certainly a realm in which there is room for much advancement, that of tailoring the behavior of a given circuit for compatibility with today's operator, with enough sway to carry relevance into tomorrow. But yes, at the end of the day you either have a signal path that embellishes your offered source, or obstructs it - though that end is just a state of mind.

[frodog]

With the crazy pedals thing, it seems fairly significant to me that no good bands I have heard in the last few years are using super crazy effects to make music. But maybe that's just a bubble of things I like.

Boringly because this will shock nobody I predict Eurorack is probably only going to get bigger and bigger. Unlike with the pedals I'm seeing more musicians using that. Plus it's always gonna be a good format for NEW GEAR HYPE

I relate to these statements. Every guitar band I love (emo/hardcore/cuddlecore for the most part) uses minimal effects, maybe some chorus and delay once in a blue moon. My pedal desires have thus been limited to that and getting good dirty sounds (and better cleans) out of cheap, older solid state amps. Of course it went a little further than that, but never beyond primitive octavers and like the Wizard of Pitch and Raptio. Only got a BitQuest two months ago because it was too cheap to pass up, that has mostly been used to delay one of the amps by a few milliseconds.

Eurorack is probably the main trend for the future, yeah. Every time some electronic music prickles my ear I assume that's what's going on. But I don't want to go there either, although I love synths I'm content with the basic ones I have. Pedals with CV and MIDI, ok that's cool, but then I'd become a slave to my own pre-programmed rhythms and go down a drum machine rabbit hole... idk, maybe I will with that 808 clone thing if I buy that. But then I have these drums sitting around who are nothing without cymbals and shit. At least that's an eternal thing, sort of - instruments that have been the backbone of music for decades/centuries (drums are old as fuck). Despite all the technological advances and rock/punk/insert genre being dead I still think bass, guitar and drums will continue to sell. Of course now it doesn't shock anyone to hear that augmented with synthetic sounds. There are still novel soundscapes that arise from that sometimes, I mean it all depends on the people involved and their vision(s) in the end, there still hasn't been invented a device that makes everything you play automatically awesome as far as I know.

Weeeelllll, that crochambeau has some stuff in the works but let's not talk about it too much..

[Jwar]

I don’t think anyone is re-inventing the wheel here on any level. Just adding features to things over and over again and making variations upon variations upon variations.

It’s nothing against any of the companies. The pedals are fun but ultimately lackluster imo and lack any real direction. That is what kind of bothers me the most. Everyone in the gear community seems to have become content on making bleep boop crap, which I get it. It’s what’s in...now. For like 5 minutes until everyone gets bored. LOL. The useless sequencing devices, things that degrade your signal into horrible hissing. I honestly am both happy and annoyed. I feel like some of the pedals are so close to winners but maybe I’m being too picky?

I have to narrow my focus & definition down pretty damn tight to agree with the first section of your post.

I do agree there is and always has been an unnecessarily wide margin of "market focus" that is mired in the sense of not moving forward; moving at an ever decreasing cost of production on one side, and burrowing deeper and deeper into rarefied NOS tone voodoo on the other. At least, speaking of the analog design regions.

That statement is, of course, unfair to many analog designers - but forging paths not yet defined is a slow business - and it's easy to overlook minor gains with a mindset cultivated in an instant gratification ecology.

Then there are advances on the digital side. Naturally the fastest wave of change is based on repackaging existing notions (the "sandbox" being filled with blocks suspended in a silicon plane), but trust that some forge forth into the wild. Admittedly, sometimes those brave souls become consumed by the forest and are never heard from again.

Regarding the latter section of your post, I fully understand the sense of a feature or effect not resonating with my playing style or mindset. It is certainly a realm in which there is room for much advancement, that of tailoring the behavior of a given circuit for compatibility with today's operator, with enough sway to carry relevance into tomorrow. But yes, at the end of the day you either have a signal path that embellishes your offered source, or obstructs it - though that end is just a state of mind.

Narrow that definition as much as you can sir! Hahahahaha


What I often times see as lackluster and kind of boring could be someone’s year of hard work. Which sucks. I mean, these opinion things we all have.

As far as re-inventing the wheel. I mean there hasn’t been anything really outside of the dirt arena that I’ve seen a lot of good progress on effects overall. To me it appears as if most of the industry has finally figured out how to have their stuff hit by super hot signals (which was super annoying as an active bass player), so that I can almost buy any dirt and make it work on some level. A lot of other stuff I can’t though. I have to throw it in a mixer and use a buffer buster to even make it close to usable with an instrument. I guess that’s all up to interpretation as well. What do I mean? I guess for my selected style and genre (whatever that is), I prefer playing my instrument versus my pedals. I HATE knob tweaking. Absolutely hate it. Used to love it then started playing clean after spending more money than most people make in a lifetime on pedals.

For me a perfect world would be all the pedals I want fine tuned where I want with no knobs at all. Digital interface is totally fine with me. I’m a huge supporter of digital stuff. Analog is great too. Just like both. I would also like to see a good looper actually come out. Like. For real. Can someone make a good looper please? If I knew how to build and code, I’d do it. Goddamn it.

[coldbrightsunlight]

With the crazy pedals thing, it seems fairly significant to me that no good bands I have heard in the last few years are using super crazy effects to make music. But maybe that's just a bubble of things I like.

Boringly because this will shock nobody I predict Eurorack is probably only going to get bigger and bigger. Unlike with the pedals I'm seeing more musicians using that. Plus it's always gonna be a good format for NEW GEAR HYPE

I relate to these statements. Every guitar band I love (emo/hardcore/cuddlecore for the most part) uses minimal effects, maybe some chorus and delay once in a blue moon. My pedal desires have thus been limited to that and getting good dirty sounds (and better cleans) out of cheap, older solid state amps. Of course it went a little further than that, but never beyond primitive octavers and like the Wizard of Pitch and Raptio. Only got a BitQuest two months ago because it was too cheap to pass up, that has mostly been used to delay one of the amps by a few milliseconds.

Eurorack is probably the main trend for the future, yeah. Every time some electronic music prickles my ear I assume that's what's going on. But I don't want to go there either, although I love synths I'm content with the basic ones I have. Pedals with CV and MIDI, ok that's cool, but then I'd become a slave to my own pre-programmed rhythms and go down a drum machine rabbit hole... idk, maybe I will with that 808 clone thing if I buy that. But then I have these drums sitting around who are nothing without cymbals and shit. At least that's an eternal thing, sort of - instruments that have been the backbone of music for decades/centuries (drums are old as fuck). Despite all the technological advances and rock/punk/insert genre being dead I still think bass, guitar and drums will continue to sell. Of course now it doesn't shock anyone to hear that augmented with synthetic sounds. There are still novel soundscapes that arise from that sometimes, I mean it all depends on the people involved and their vision(s) in the end, there still hasn't been invented a device that makes everything you play automatically awesome as far as I know.

Weeeelllll, that crochambeau has some stuff in the works but let's not talk about it too much..

haha any time some electronic music prickles your ear it's probably a computer.

But hardware synths of various kinds are fun anyway and I enjoy both.

I definitely expect (and hope) to see more combinations of electronics and "traditional instruments". Not that this hasn't been happening since the dawn of "electronic instruments" but I think in a lot of spheres of "guitar music" there is resistance to it. And the reverse! Sometimes pure synth/computer performances are great fun but they can lack the vitality of someone whacking drums or a guitar and making noises in a way you can viscerally understand (ie not acousmatic like synthy music).

That got away from discussions about effects but whatever. Did I use enough "quotation marks" ?

[Jwar]

I like crazy stuff. Don’t get me wrong! I’m all for nuts! I just thing a lot of stuff is not really as nuts as it says. Lol

[frodog]

With the crazy pedals thing, it seems fairly significant to me that no good bands I have heard in the last few years are using super crazy effects to make music. But maybe that's just a bubble of things I like.

Boringly because this will shock nobody I predict Eurorack is probably only going to get bigger and bigger. Unlike with the pedals I'm seeing more musicians using that. Plus it's always gonna be a good format for NEW GEAR HYPE

Eurorack is probably the main trend for the future, yeah. Every time some electronic music prickles my ear I assume that's what's going on.

haha any time some electronic music prickles your ear it's probably a computer.

But hardware synths of various kinds are fun anyway and I enjoy both.

I definitely expect (and hope) to see more combinations of electronics and "traditional instruments". Not that this hasn't been happening since the dawn of "electronic instruments" but I think in a lot of spheres of "guitar music" there is resistance to it. And the reverse! Sometimes pure synth/computer performances are great fun but they can lack the vitality of someone whacking drums or a guitar and making noises in a way you can viscerally understand (ie not acousmatic like synthy music).

That got away from discussions about effects but whatever. Did I use enough "quotation marks" ?

3 pairs of quotation marks was fine but then you threw it all away for one last pair, used around the term itself! In 5 minutes a wormhole will open in your room, you may enter at your own peril.

Anyway, you're totally right the computer is king of the new amorphous sound I didn't even think because I never use it for that. But a lot of emo/goth rappers recently have been blending all kinds of sounds, Lil Peep (RIP) sampled Mineral and The Microphones and kids loved it (not so much Mineral eheh, I like them but fuck off with the lawsuits), Ghostemane tours with a guitarist or two, pedals and all (I don't know which exactly) along with all the gothic TRAPpings. Song of Zarathustra, The VSS, The Locust uhhh DEVO did the synth/punk thing, many post-hardcore bands actually. I don't like epic electronic rock but it was huge in the '80s and '90s... so I think that barrier is down. But I also like the purist approach, again it depends on how it sounds as a whole, live or on record (or spotify I guess).