I actually think he does just fine as a player. But...he doesn't bring very much good information to the party, and his knowledge and thinking appears to this listener as very shallow, disingenuous, and self-serving.
Pete Thorn works his butt off on those videos. He freely shares a ton of useful knowledge, and his knowledge goes much, much deeper, into technique, production, performing, and a myriad of other things in addition to his product demos.
These aren't even remotely comparable.
Also, Pete Thorn doesn't pretend to be an objective reviewer. He's paid to demo products, and that's what he does. He demos them. THEY ARE NOT REVIEWS, THEY ARE DEMOS.
This. Lazy for sure. And you have to start a video off telling me about what an honest/wonderful sumbitch you are? Dude wants a pat on the back for merely not being dishonest?
Something about that smells like a long-dead fish, especially considering the inherent conflict with his role as a music gear store owner.
Now, he may in fact be a very nice guy, and just come off badly on video. So I have to differentiate between him as a person, and his presentation. Just to be clear, it's his presentation that gives me a negative feeling when watching him, and while most of that is based on the lack of in-depth information, some of it is based on his self-serving statements.
Finally, you see there are banner ads on his videos. That means money is involved in advertising that goes to him. I see nothing wrong with making money. I see nothing wrong with promoting your store indirectly.
Just be upfront about it.
Agreed.... and now he's gonna run a lottery too?
I guess his channel might be good for people who like to hear dudes talk about gear, but for him to classify it as an
educational channel is embarrassing.
His video on compression was... I just can't.... I know he's tryin' to make videos for beginners and novices and that compression is a fairly broad and difficult subject to explain, but I actually felt dumber after his analogies. The was nothing about thresholds, release times, or ratios...nothing.
At no point during his video for the decibel meter app explain
why or when you'd actually use one besides some lame comment about being able to point out to your wife that you're rockin' out at an agreed upon level. No mention of using it to set levels for your studio monitors, not even a dip of the toe into the concept of Fletcher-Munson curves or how volume can affect your hearing during mixing, or how you could use it to check outside noise transference after you try and soundproof your home with cat pee-stained carpeting so the neighbors don't call the 5-0...
Then there was the one where he recommended a container to store pedals in with no price or name of the product, just: "my wife bought this at Walmart". Or the one where he explains the finer intricacies of Floyd Rose tremolos by making the international sign for rectal-fisting for two minutes while describing how strings can get bound in the nut, and making
no effort to explain why the system uses locking saddles.
It seems to me dude just doesn't take this all that seriously. His harsh video edits....( Jebus, I made cleaner edits on two VCRs in 1986!) And he proposes sending him money for this???? There was one (OMG), where he started talking about his guitar manufacturing experience and he showed a picture of his specially made bass by holding up
his f@cking iPad to his web camera!!!! 
He literally couldn't be bothered to upload the pic and post it in iMovie?
Dude puts
zero planning and minimal effort into this sh!t. Three videos a week? How about researching one topic a month, actually write down what points you wanna make, actually mic up the gear with something besides your video camera, and stick to the script.
Remember how Bangin'! crgtr's videos were? I miss the Twang-Bangers vids... He did a great job, was informative and educational, and fun.
