The Real Value Of Punditry, Gear Reviews And Other Nonsense.

László

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I watched several college football games over the past few days. They demonstrated the value of sports punditry to be:

Zero.

Worthless.

Laughable.

One well known ESPN football pundit from the South who argued that Alabama SHOULD have been in the playoffs, and it didn't matter who won the Oregon-Ohio State game or other matchups because they hadn't played the REAL team on the slate, Georgia, had his asshat handed to him on a silver platter.

Same exact thing happened to him last year.

He wasn't alone. Other pundits were equally embarrassed by the outcomes of a variety of other games. Why do people take this stuff seriously?

Which brings us to (ta-da!) Gear Reviews.

Let's assume for the moment that some of the zillion people claiming to be experts have any experience using the gear in professional settings. What is the value of their review if they aren't YOU, with your tastes, musical styles and experiences?

[Never mind that most of them couldn't find their asses with both hands in a real, big time recording session...]

Wow, you got that right! The correct answer is:

ZERO.

Worthless.

Laughable.

What is the value to you of any so-called advice you get on an Internet forum where no one knows anything about your tastes, what you play, how you play it, your experience, etc (this includes the advice I give people, by the way):

You guessed right again. The answer is, of course:

ZERO.

Worthless.

Laughable.

Magazine reviews?

ZERO.

Worthless.

Laughable.

Because the fact is, when the teams take the field, when you use your own gear to do the work, when you judge the tone of something, the only thing that matters - literally - has nothing whatsoever to do with reviews, pundits, self-appointed experts.

How many pieces of gear have you bought after a glowing review that you later said, "Great XYZ, but I didn't bond with it?"

What matters is the outcome, not the prediction. The Important Whos and the Self Appointed Thems have nothing more than:

Opinions. And their opinions are really no better than your opinions.

You know what reviews are good for? Showing you something you haven't seen before that you might want to check out for yourself. And it ends there.

As they say in sports, that's why they play the games.
 
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Sports? Not a fan of and never have been. Each to their own.

Gear? Yeah, I've bought a few things here and there based on reviews only to say "not quite what I thought it would be." Especially pickups for the neck position. Have yet to own one where I can say "finally, this is it!!"
 
Especially pickups for the neck position. Have yet to own one where I can say "finally, this is it!!"
Exactly. Your opinion and your ears are the things that matter!

Maybe there's a one in a million random chance that the following info could be helpful, so I'll share it:

If you record with a DAW, you can find plugin EQs that allow you to move the frequency response up and down just by dragging a point across the frequency and trying different settings of all kinds by dragging the point up and down.

If you record your neck pickup and then try doing this, it's possible that by experimenting you might be able to zero in on the frequencies that you feel are problematic, and need to be increased or cut. Often you can adjust the "Q" of a frequency - that is, how wide you want to have the boost or cut - and that information might be of interest.

This information could be shared with one of the many custom pickup winders, and there's a chance you might be able to have a pickup made to accommodate your needs.

On the other hand, This is opinion, too, so please flush it in its appropriate location (the toilet) after reading.
 
Thanks for the info! Good stuff!

The probelm I have with neck pickups is, to one degree or another (and in comparison to the bridge piclups) they are always louder and they alway have WAY too much low end. Some are worse/better than others.

I play at church and do my own thing at home. I use a Pod Go. In case someone is not familiar with it, in each preset there are 4 Snapshots. As long as you use the same amp, cab and effects, you can tailor each snapshot to your liking. So the way I do it is: snapshot 1 is for the bridge pickup, 2 is the middle position, 3 is for the neck pickup and 4 is for those ambient swells. This way I can shape the sound of each pickup position exactly the way I want to hear it so that no one position drowns out the other in terms of volume or tone. For me it's perfect.

You listen to these pickup reviews on YouTube and all positions sound so evenly balanced (due to compression and filters) but it doesn't sound that way in real life for me. Never has once despite of trying every pickup height adjusment known to man.

As far as recording I just use a digital Tascam 8 track recorder. I have no expeerience at all with computer recording and probably never will. It comes down to finances. Just happy I have something I can use to work on my ideas!
 
The probelm I have with neck pickups is, to one degree or another (and in comparison to the bridge piclups) they are always louder and they alway have WAY too much low end.

Does this happen with both humbuckers and true single coil pickups? I ask because humbuckers often have more bottom and are usually louder than true single coils.

Here's a single coil neck pickup on a Swamp Ash bodied Telecaster with maple fretboard, played through my DG30 Grissom PRS amp. Pretty bright, not much bottom. Not loud. Quickie demo, ignore the playing.


It's been said that one thing Hendrix did to give his neck pickup tones a more shimmering, less bassy quality was to use his pick very lightly, just brushing across the strings. I've found that to work from time to time. I did it on that little quickie demo.
 
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Does this happen with both humbuckers and true single coil pickups? I ask because humbuckers often have more bottom and are usually louder than true single coils.
The only true single coil neck pickup I have is in my Telecaster and it's actually pretty good. Doesn't drown out the bridge pickup at all.

The original neck pickup in my Gibson SG Special (P 90's) was unusable and I'm not the only one who says that. Way, way too loud and the bass was overbearing. Replaced both pickups with a set of Lollars and while the neck pickup was a big improvement it was still too loud with too much bass. I did order and do have another P90 neck pickup from Lollar which is of a lower wind, but I have yet to install it. The guitar needs some other work and I figure I'll have that pickup changed when I can afford to take the guitar in for the other work.

(When I say "when I can afford it" I'm not broke, Prior to Christmas I got clobbered with some unexpected expenses. Just need some time to play catch up for a little while to build the funds back up before I take the SG in). It's just a matter of priorities.

Actually, the neck pickup in my PRS SE 24 Standard is not "too" bad, but I would love to hear that pickup underwound by about 5 to 7 percent. Just enough to give it a bit more clarity and to knock off a bit of that bass. But again, I can shape it all well with the Pod Go.
 
Who Knew The World Wrestling Federation And All Of Its Antics Would Infiltrate All Manner Of Communications And Entertainment After All These Years...But Is Seems To Have Done Just That.

Reviews Very Rarely Make Me Jump On Anything That I Am Not Already Interested In. Certain People Who Review Gear Online Capture Decent Recordings Of Said Gear And My Ear And Understanding Is Trained Well Enough That I Can Usually Hear Something That May Interest Me And Then I Am In The Abyss Of My Own Gear Problem. There Are A Lot Of People Reviewing Gear That I Feel Shouldn't Be Doing So But That Is My Opinion. I Am Probably A Better Pilot Than I Am A Guitar Player And I Have Never Flown A Plane So There Is That. When I Hear An Amp Review And The Reviewer Is Talking High Gain And Is Reviewing Said Amp With A Traditional Tele Downtuned 3 Steps And Playing Bar Chords For The Heavies I Know I Landed On The Wrong Channel.
 
I Am Probably A Better Pilot Than I Am A Guitar Player And I Have Never Flown A Plane
I am a better pilot than a guitar player. My pilot's license says I have, or at one time had, a baseline level of competency. I sure don't have a guitar player's license and would hate to be situation where lives depended on my skill on guitar.

As far as the value of gear reviews, at best they have to be taken with a huge grain of salt. But that contrasts with value of forums like this, where you have folks who aren't doing it for the $$$, know what works for them, sometimes at a pro level, are are willing to share their views in ongoing discussions has been really valuable in helping me to get some fantastic gear that I probably wouldn't have known about otherwise.

And as an ex-Pac 12 college football fan (maybe the best regular season ever but with an untried kludge of poor playoff games) I'm predicting OSU over Notre Dame in the finals. Would I put money behind that? Nope.
 
The only true single coil neck pickup I have is in my Telecaster and it's actually pretty good. Doesn't drown out the bridge pickup at all.
So maybe an H-S-S combination is best for you?
The original neck pickup in my Gibson SG Special (P 90's) was unusable and I'm not the only one who says that.
I have a vintage 1965 SG Special with the original P-90s. I have no idea what they're putting into them 60 years later, but the original neck pickup sounds quite good. To me. YMMV. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

The Duncans in my 2017 594 Soapbar sounded just like them, and the neck pickup was fine.

You just never know with this stuff.
 
I am a better pilot than a guitar player. My pilot's license says I have, or at one time had, a baseline level of competency. I sure don't have a guitar player's license and would hate to be situation where lives depended on my skill on guitar.
I have no pilot's license and the only plane I've ever flown was a mini gas engine one that I won for something I did as a Boy Scout in 1961.

However, I'm sure I'm a better pilot than I am a guitar player. 🤣
As far as the value of gear reviews, at best they have to be taken with a huge grain of salt. But that contrasts with value of forums like this, where you have folks who aren't doing it for the $$$, know what works for them, sometimes at a pro level, are are willing to share their views in ongoing discussions has been really valuable in helping me to get some fantastic gear that I probably wouldn't have known about otherwise.
But there's still the inescapable truth that everyone's tastes and needs vary. On the other hand, there could be some benefit if you've tried doing things someone has recommended and they've worked for you.
And as an ex-Pac 12 college football fan (maybe the best regular season ever but with an untried kludge of poor playoff games) I'm predicting OSU over Notre Dame in the finals. Would I put money behind that? Nope.
I think Ohio State takes it all, too. They're looking great, like they peaked at the right time. I'm kinda rooting for OSU as well.

I'm not sold on either Penn State or ND. So I dunno. :)
 
I have no pilot's license and the only plane I've ever flown was a mini gas engine one that I won for something I did as a Boy Scout in 1961.

However, I'm sure I'm a better pilot than I am a guitar player. 🤣

But there's still the inescapable truth that everyone's tastes and needs vary. On the other hand, there could be some benefit if you've tried doing things someone has recommended and they've worked for you.

I think Ohio State takes it all, too. They're looking great, like they peaked at the right time. I'm kinda rooting for OSU as well.

I'm not sold on either Penn State or ND. So I dunno. :)


That the approach I usually take.

When something new comes out, I may watch a review or two just to see what new shiny is out. I don't think that ever really made me run out and get whatever it was.

However, when I play something and enjoy it enough to but it, then the reviews and demos of that particular item are of interest - ONLY if they actually show the settings they used! I truly despise when people do videos of them playing something and even pausing and zooming in you can't see which position a switch is in, or what settings the amp has set, or they're constantly fiddling with vol/tone knobs! Useless to me. I want to see those details so that I can try out the same settings on the gear I just got. Helps me explore the capabilities a bit more than just the whack-a-mole type random experimenting I do. I don't expect to get exactly the same results - I'm still a crappy guitar player. But I can at least use that as a starting point to push myself in another direction.

As for college football, I work at a college and we don't have a team - so I don't watch any of it.
 
I have spent most of my 30+ year professional career in the “adult beverage” world, primarily focused on craft beer. There may be no better example of the worthlessness of reviews and their potentially negative impact on an industry they can have than craft beer. In the 1990s, we had very little consumer knowledge about beer that wasn’t yellow and fizzy, so as an industry we had to educate our potential buyers in what “good” beer was and why they should look to a “micro brewer” to get it. We did a pretty good job, and before long, there were a few hundred breweries in the country cranking out some pretty good beer. So “we” empowered the people through the glory of the internet, creating a “game” that would allow us to get direct feedback from our most prized asset- the people who had come to believe the wrongful notion that all “craft” beer was great beer. I assure you, like all guitars are not great, it was not. But hundreds of reviews to the contrary CAN’T be wrong, even if they all were made by your friends and fan boys. So the hype train fueled growth, more and more “brewers” entered the fray with NO training and no knowledge of how to properly make beer.

Oh but the reviews! This sludge filled glass of **** the “brewer” doesn’t know how to get out of their beer is an expression of their art! EVERYONE loves it! The interwebz says so!

And we grew, and grew, and unsustainably grew…and then got a stay of execution with Covid. But now, now the chips are falling because most of that beer never was very good, despite the reviews. And people are slowly figuring it out. As breweries fall, some good beer will go away. Some bad beer will stay. Hype will become less important. Maybe, just maybe, people will stop letting reviews decide what they should drink.

Maybe…maybe they will just start drinking…what they like.
 
Allow me to RANT
Obviously the internet, but to a large degree everything published these days is about getting attention to the publisher; Whether its a newspaper sucking up to its dwindling advertisers, maybe its a commercial website also trying to sell ads, same for people creating personal websites and making some dough or even massaging their egos. Factor this in and it seems obvious that none of it is worth much.
I won't even mention the new political situation where you can say ANYTHING, no matter how obviously absurd..

Bu
 
Gear demos are exclusionary for me… I basically know that if most people can’t make it sound decent, it probably sucks. But, great players can make almost anything sound good, so beyond not sucking, who knows.

I’ve gotten to the point that I don’t try to explore every piece of gear out there. There’s just too much! I stick to the companies I know and trust, and look for the features I want.

For the sake of the analogy… I’ll think about how many times I heard Lions fans say “this is gonna be the year…”

A comment that is easy to say, and as we’re seeing now, very occasionally is actually true.
 
Whether its a newspaper sucking up to its dwindling advertisers, maybe its a commercial website also trying to sell ads, same for people creating personal websites and making some dough or even massaging their egos.
I massage my ego as often as possible but it does me no good.

For the sake of the analogy… I’ll think about how many times I heard Lions fans say “this is gonna be the year…”
Remember last year when it was gonna be the year, and they went away from what was working in the first half of the conference championship game, and blew a solid lead?

Never underestimate the power of The Curse Of Bobby Layne. It makes the Lions snatch defeat from the jaws of victory!

Recently, I was at Briggs Stadium and saw The Lions win their last championship.

Note:

In the world of the Detroit Lions, 'recently' = '1957'.

Note:

Briggs Stadium got its green exterior painted gray long afterward, and became Tiger Stadium. Demolition of the stadium began in 2008.

Note:

The regional NBC affiliate did a documentary on the history of the old building and I was asked to do the score. It was on television. It won an Emmy, a Renaissance Award and a Communicator Award.

They show it still at the Detroit Historical Museum.

They made me write 'period music' after a nice orchestral intro over the titles. Gosh, I hate period music in a score. It's so trite. Sadly, it's my Official Claim To Fame.

😂
 
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