Worst Pedal Names?

[Pepe]

Fun fact from the "BOSS Book": the BOSS DS-2 Turbo Distortion was planned to be sparkling red with black lettering (the XT-2 had this colour scheme a few years later) and the original name was "Red Zone". They dropped that idea to avoid any conflicts.

[coldbrightsunlight]

If people were really worried about possibly offensive symbology they'd probably quit it with the Soviet stuff, you know given the wide scale human rights abuses, mass murder and starvation and the millions of people still scarred by the legacy of those regimes.

But we like that because it looks cool and edgy on the wall of my dorm room

This is a go-to for whataboutism, but it doesn't really work. The Soviet Union had far more non-Stalinist history than Stalinist - for the rest was it a repressive regime? Yes. More repressive than most of the world? Not really. More repressive than its predecessor? No.

You're not Eastern European, are you jiro?

^^^^^^

For a lot of people this symbolism carries all the meaning you rightly attribute to Nazi symbolism. That was my point, that many people are unaware of this and therefore freely use it because from their perspective there's nothing wrong with it. You're talking about general historic trends and I'm saying this is an extremely personal and painful subject for millions of people.

[coldbrightsunlight]

That doesn't mean you can't use the symbol or whatever if you feel like it. I'm not the insane clown sheriff of bad pedal name town. But the point is we all have blind spots

[ibarakishi]

I'm not the insane clown sheriff of bad pedal name town.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luPUVhs_3ic[/youtube]

[Eivind August]

So anyway, when is the SNES Holocaust pedal out?

[coldbrightsunlight]

Asking the Real Questions

[Benn Roe]

All you can do is not support the things you don't agree with. You can't force somebody to be something they're not but if you don't feel comfortable then you should not support them financially.

This is true, but I'm not sure anyone has suggested otherwise. I didn't see any calls for boycotts or death-threat campaigns. I won't buy MASF pedals because the Raptio has a name that tells me they're not a company worth supporting. The end.

[Mudfuzz]

All you can do is not support the things you don't agree with. You can't force somebody to be something they're not but if you don't feel comfortable then you should not support them financially.

This is true, but I'm not sure anyone has suggested otherwise. I didn't see any calls for boycotts or death-threat campaigns. I won't buy MASF pedals because the Raptio has a name that tells me they're not a company worth supporting. The end.

Ah, but, not knowing why it's called that you don't know the actual reason. For all you know it's so people look it up and think about it. It might just be adolescent egdyism or not. thank about it.

[dubkitty]

the Obama Wah envelope filter. nothing against Obama other than that he was a compromiser, it just sounds icky when said out loud.

It does actually.. not sure why

i think it's the repeated pattern of bah/ma/wa...too many occluded "a" sounds in sequence just sounds ugly in English.

[dubkitty]

Also I have a Raptio and it doesn't bother me, it does a thing I like, even though when I looked up what it meant (or used to mean, like 1000 years ago) I was surprised. But then I remembered they're Japanese, make pedals for the noise scene and maybe don't give a flying fuck how their brand is perceived. It may be they did it as a sort of reappropriation of the word for the audio realm, although considering Japan's history.. well that's a whole political hornet's nest I probably shouldn't get into. They also have a pedal called Biloma, which is quite disgusting.

tbf Japan has a lot of rather outre/disgusting cultural artifacts, e.g. the Rapeman comix. i personally avoid that stuff to the extent that i won't listen to the like-named Albini project. not amusing when i have personally known multiple women who were raped. and regarding the Imperial Japanese war machine references, i don't much care for them given Japan's hideous atrocities in WWII; i assume this is because Westerners are generally clueless about e.g. their POW death camps or Unit 751. i'm OK with the sun-with-rays design tho, because it's not war-specific.

[dubkitty]

I'd argue that it also has an aesthetic quality to it. Like, the nazis had great aesthetic sense in terms of clothing and generally making things look cool. Not saying there's not a 3edgy5me element to having some commie stuff on your walls or your t-shirt, but I know I thought as a kid that the hammer and sickle symbol looked cool as hell before knowing what it was representing. Again, this is not to excuse some grown-ass pedal builders, but some things just look or sound cool.

Also, regarding the Raptio and the likes, having a curious affinity for the darker parts of human nature and history does not mean you're excusing the acts, but expressing your fascination through your art. At least potentially. Doesn't mean it's a good idea or that you need to have it on your board, but intent matters. My $0.02

the USSR had some brilliant design ideas, especially the Constructivist stuff. however, i don't use or wear anything with the hammer-and-sickle Communist logo because it's indelibly associated with the murderous Lenin and Stalin regimes. i don't have a similar problem with the Red Star, which has a long and honorable association with more humane forms of socialism.

[Dapper Bandit]

All you can do is not support the things you don't agree with. You can't force somebody to be something they're not but if you don't feel comfortable then you should not support them financially.

This is true, but I'm not sure anyone has suggested otherwise. I didn't see any calls for boycotts or death-threat campaigns. I won't buy MASF pedals because the Raptio has a name that tells me they're not a company worth supporting. The end.

Ah, but, not knowing why it's called that you don't know the actual reason. For all you know it's so people look it up and think about it. It might just be adolescent egdyism or not. thank about it.

True, nobody has called for any action in particular but the name definitely touched a nerve and I was merely trying to chip in with my perspective that it isn't worth getting truly upset about. You look, you decide it's shitty in your opinion and you move on. Not worth fighting on a forum about.

I will say that if MASF were looking to raise awareness and prompt discussion about violence towards women, naming a glitch pedal after an obscure practise is a fairly, ahem, unique strategy.

[Jwar]

That's my point. It's fucking weird that they name the rest of their pedals dumb shit and then this one has some deep meaning? I mean, Starry Wisdom is an HP Lovecraft reference but most of the pedals have a very straight forward, plane as day name. Plane? Plain? Which type is it. Anyway, why am I talking about this still? I don't even like MASF pedals. I've tried several and they aren't that great.

[D.o.S.]

We are now in a unique place in history to be able to look back and be able to realise that humans are, in the grand scale, a terrible idea. Never should have crawled out of the ooze. Or perhaps, should never have triumphed over the Neanderthal. We're merely the nasty little apes that won and have we / will we ever outgrow that legacy?

Yes.

Example A:
https://www.dischord.com/band/fugazi
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi8VfxoIMyE[/youtube]

[lost in music]

Pigtronix Disnortion