Sup everyone

[goroth]

Sousie's back!

[UglyCasanova]

The King of Mason J(w)ars!

[TheTransient]

Hey man! Everyone is back it’s like Obama’s first term in here.

Its funny, I was also strangely drawn to making a return to this forum recently too. Wonder if 2024 will be the year we return en masse to niche internet forums again like the good ole days before Facebook Groups, Reddit and Discord stole us away. Also seems like many dipped around 2020/2021, wonder if that was just due to the pandemic or if there was some other shift of interests and/or culture that moved us away

Like, for me the pedal culture kinda went ham and it got old real fast... Bought several hyped up, very expensive boutique pedals only to find that they sucked or had inherent flaws that made them borderline unusable. Resellers started jacking up the prices old old gear like everything was a collectable. That was kinda the nail in the coffin for me that made me lose interest.

I pretty much sold off all my guitar pedal collection and amps about four years ago, but I'm kinda itching to start messing with some pedals (reasonably priced or DIY) again for a bit of fun, so I came crawling back here for some inspiration

[goroth]

I've still got a stoopid pedal collection, but I've sold a lot of stuff. I dunno if it is a natural result of testing many things and finally settling on stuff I like, or if pedal culture is different now than 10 years ago, but for the most part I just don't care that much anymore.

I do feel a bit anchor-less now that I don't always log in to ILF the first thing I do.

[TheTransient]

I've still got a stoopid pedal collection, but I've sold a lot of stuff. I dunno if it is a natural result of testing many things and finally settling on stuff I like, or if pedal culture is different now than 10 years ago, but for the most part I just don't care that much anymore.

I do feel a bit anchor-less now that I don't always log in to ILF the first thing I do.

It's funny you mention the pedal culture thing. I was looking at the Seppuku thread and saw this in a post from 2021:

It's not 2013-2016 pedal culture anymore.

So I'd say you are on the right track with your suggestion about pedal culture being different. I'm sure it's better in some ways, but it's certainly worse in other

I used to talk on gear forums a lot back in the day, definitely some nostalgia that's brought me back here too.

[friendship]

Hey man! Everyone is back it’s like Obama’s first term in here.

Its funny, I was also strangely drawn to making a return to this forum recently too. Wonder if 2024 will be the year we return en masse to niche internet forums again like the good ole days before Facebook Groups, Reddit and Discord stole us away. Also seems like many dipped around 2020/2021, wonder if that was just due to the pandemic or if there was some other shift of interests and/or culture that moved us away

Like, for me the pedal culture kinda went ham and it got old real fast... Bought several hyped up, very expensive boutique pedals only to find that they sucked or had inherent flaws that made them borderline unusable. Resellers started jacking up the prices old old gear like everything was a collectable. That was kinda the nail in the coffin for me that made me lose interest.

I pretty much sold off all my guitar pedal collection and amps about four years ago, but I'm kinda itching to start messing with some pedals (reasonably priced or DIY) again for a bit of fun, so I came crawling back here for some inspiration

Same. I never got aboard the expensive pedal train, but I loved finding old, outdated things that were affordable and sounded good. It was fun to drop by the used section at Guitar Center and buy a pedal because it was like $50 and while it might not be amazing, but would still be pretty cool and useful. Around 2020 that stopped happening, maybe because of Youtubers hyping up AMAZING HIDDEN GEMS and everyone suddenly having a lot of free time at home with nothing to do. It seemed like anything no longer in production was speculated as RARE and VALUABLE, and therefore EXPENSIVE. I wasn't buying gear as an appreciable investment in a niche consumer commodity, I was buying what I could afford so that I could make music. As it became rapidly harder to do that, I kind of just stopped.

Having been away from it for a while, it's hard to remember why I thought it was worth spending so much time reading/watching reviews of stuff that more or less all sounded alike. Little sound differences are intrinsically fascinating, I guess, but I don't think I would spend my time that way again if I had to go back. I was (as usual) focusing on the wrong things.

[dubkitty]

i've been getting odd old stuff off Reverb for good prices. the Ibanez Tone Lok boxes are crazy cheap. and some prices have settled...the Land HP-1 harmonic percolator is back to a reasonable $200 used rather than the $800 it was fetching awhile back. since Guitar Center is 80 miles away i spend a lot of time researching stuff and listening to demos. i said somewhere else here today that i generally prefer old analog/early digital pedals to today's super-costly digital modeling FX. a CH-1 just feels more alive to me than a software chorus algorithm. i like quirky effects that do odd things...it took forever for me to replace the Octave Multiplexer i used for bass on the loops because i liked the way it jumped around when mistracking. but i was pretty well off the market for a couple of years because i got long COVIDed and only got back up to speed this July. i kind of lost interest in new expensive pedals about the time Chase Bliss put out their third or fourth pedal that made me go "so?" which is to say their third or fourth pedal. dusty old shit is more fun to play with, and i can actually afford it. i love combining simple things to get complicated results. anyway, my version of GC now is YouTube demos and the lowest-priced version of some dealie on Reverb (or eBay occasionally) that was common 20 or 30 years ago and everybody forgot about.

[Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D.]

mmm i love that space in between
like not old enough to be sought after
but not new enough to be thought about too much anymore
so many things in there that have been mostly forgotten about

[PanicProne]

I've still got a stoopid pedal collection, but I've sold a lot of stuff. I dunno if it is a natural result of testing many things and finally settling on stuff I like, or if pedal culture is different now than 10 years ago, but for the most part I just don't care that much anymore.

I do feel a bit anchor-less now that I don't always log in to ILF the first thing I do.

I can relate to this too. I still really like pedals, but (cue hipster/old man statement) I miss it being "my" kind of thing. Everything is so over saturated and EVERYONE getting and having EVERYTHING really kills the sense of community. I miss not knowing everything about gear (not that I do now, I'm pretty dumb, but you know what I'm saying), seeing a forum post, asking and getting explanations and opinions from actual people rather than algorithms and semi-hyped/paid influencer folk. It's more a "have-and-already-know-it-all" rather thanthe "be-interested/curious-and-not-the-same-as-everyone-elese" feel for me in the gear world nowadays. Also, of course having tried/owned lot through the years makes stuff less interesting. The rate at which everything flows is a problem too. I can't keep up, even if I wanted. But yeah, I still buy (and have too much) stuff, but I keep going back to my old faves all the time.

[dubkitty]

i feel that way on the pedals-related subreddits. they're almost as bad as the guitar groups as far as poorly-informed people pontificating about shit they really don't understand, or applying some weird gatekeeping vibe to say "you need THESE pedals for METAL" or something equally informative. at least it's better than the kids on r/guitarcirclejerk who insist that the only determinant of a guitar's sound is the pickups, and everything else--materials, construction, scale length, string gauge, string composition, etc.--is irrelevant and that this has been PROVED by TESTING (i.e. some foo' made a YouTube video). i like to respond with answers like "yeah, because all Strats (see also: Les Pauls, Gibsons, Telecasters, guitars with humbucking pickups, guitars with P-90s, etc.) sound exactly alike" or really laying it on the line with "you sound like someone who only plays metal-adjacent stuff through at least three distortion boxes into a high-gain amp. all guitars sound alike when you totally obliterate their sound like that." seriously, most of those guys could play Teiscos and Daisy Rocks if they could be had with a Floyd on.

[dub]

The medium is the message, something like reddit, with it's pace, inability to sticky topics and upvote/downvote system will mean every hobby subreddit turns into an image board of "look what I just bought" with a tendency towards the hivemind and flavour of the month. Harder to get to know anyone either with the narrow focus and temp accounts. I'm glad there's still a few cosy clubhouse message boards hanging on.

[dubkitty]

i know tons of people in real life i met on forums, some of them very dear to me. i've never met a single person from social media in real life other than a couple of guys who put on tiny experimental music shows here i found cos one of them is a Twitter friend for other reasons. when a lot of different topics are grouped together and folks interact in several of them it gives you a much better idea of what they're like as a human being. all i get from social media people that's positive is a kind of forced cleverness which is entertaining but shallow as fuck.

[coupleonapkins]

mmm i love that space in between
like not old enough to be sought after
but not new enough to be thought about too much anymore
so many things in there that have been mostly forgotten about

Otherwise? Biggest takeaway frome allodis: people are mostly surfing on their phones, on thee toilet. And all anyone is really interacting with on a non-message board is advertising, even when the guise is a thin veil of humanity. Sometimes substance can eke thru, but mostly, we are all on thee toilet, literally and figuratively.

I endure guitar Youtube (biggest slum of all!), somehow, but even that has become a circling-thee-drain affair when all those suggested Shein try-on hauls and horror moobie podcats sound more appealing for my actual happiness, but at least ILF is still a place that eggisists! For nao! Ewe just gotta beliebe!

[Pepe]

Crappy New Year!

[TheTransient]

Otherwise? Biggest takeaway frome allodis: people are mostly surfing on their phones, on thee toilet. And all anyone is really interacting with on a non-message board is advertising, even when the guise is a thin veil of humanity. Sometimes substance can eke thru, but mostly, we are all on thee toilet, literally and figuratively.

I endure guitar Youtube (biggest slum of all!), somehow, but even that has become a circling-thee-drain affair when all those suggested Shein try-on hauls and horror moobie podcats sound more appealing for my actual happiness, but at least ILF is still a place that eggisists! For nao! Ewe just gotta beliebe!

Love the toilet pondering. Good stuff. Also very true.

I watch a lot of YouTube, but I do not watch "guitar YouTube". Mainstream guitar culture has always irked me so I mostly avoid it unless I am looking for something specific. ILF is not mainstream guitar culture, that's why I'm back here now. Also the strong DIY ethos is cool. Kinda wish i got more involved when i joined back in 2014, thats when this place seemed like it was booming. Better late than never I suppose