Idiotic reviews/opinions on Harmony Central

[apocalypsedude]

Ok, just wanted to rant a bit here.

Here's the thing about musical equiptment, yes sometimes there is shite gear out there, and bad tone is just bad tone, of course, but a lot of it comes down to personal preference. I will give several examples of gear/equiptment that I love, that gets a lot of poo- poo reviews on Harmony Central. Its one thing to say something is not your cup of tea, its another to crap all over it cause it doesn't turn you into Jimmy Page and make espresso too.

Celestion V-30s. I simply don't get all the haters. I went from GT-75s in a cabinet to V-30s, and to my ears it was a HUGE improvement. Why do you think Orange puts them in their cabinets? Nuff said. Would Greenbacks be even better than V-30s? maybe, but I don't have the $$ to find out. Sure there are "better" speakers out there. I'm sorry I don't have the time or the money to invest in every speaker known to man, so I can post a glowing review of the best speaker for me and say that all others in comparison are shite.

Gibson 500T pickups. Yeah they're hot, you got a problem with that? Put some mellower pickups that suit your tastes in your guitar, but don't go posting on Harmony Central saying the 500T is crap just cause its too hot for your taste. If you play Allman Brothers covers, they probably won't work for you, on the other hand, Warren Haynes, a master of tone, use to use a Boss Metal Zone as his lead boost pedal, so there you go. The pickup works great for me in my LP Classic for the music that I play and I get comments after every gig I play on how how much people like my tone, (thanks in a large part to the Rocker 30 ).

Fulltone Fatboost pedal. Go on Harmony Central, there's about a 99% favorability on this pedal, people that say it is transparent and does not change your tone, just adds a little bit of bottom end (fatboost), and works wonderfully for boosting leads. I love the pedal, most people do. It cost me almost $200 new ten years ago(Version 1 is not in production anymore) , and it is a handwired piece of art. It has never once failed me or crapped out on me when I needed it, I can't say that for every piece of gear that I own. However of course there are reviews that say its crap, it completely robs your tone, steals your bottom end, Mike Fuller sucks, and does not get up in the morning and make your espresso for you, blah blah blah. I'm sorry, but if 99% of the people say one thing and your experience is totally different, maybe you might wanna check out the rest of your gear, or MAYBE you happened to get a bum one out of the lot and should have sent it back and asked Mike for a replacement, or took it back to the store and exchanged it for something else, but instead, you just sulked on Harmony Central and did nothing about it.

I just don't get it. If something breaks down multiple times, and doesn't do anything that its advertised to do, sure, by all means, then give it a bad review.

JMHO here.

[Neiloler]

Haters gonna hate. It irritates me too, but I realized the open forum environment of the internet, combined with the assumed anonymity of its interactions, breeds all sorts of stupid decisions and trains of thought. It also breeds some pretty cool ones, like here on the forum, etc. Don't let it get you down. I love playing gear that sounds great and make people think/say "but that's one of the crappy brands!"

You're ALWAYS going to be able to find someone of the same opinion in today's world. Chances are no matter how radical your views, you can always find one person who shares them with you (that's why we have The Gear Page! zing! Haha, just kidding, just kidding! ), and likewise you'll always be able to find someone who disagrees with you no matter how benign or common your views may be.

That's okay, it makes the subjective nature of making music as art always applicable and loved by someone. You just have to accept the hatred that comes too as something inevitable and not worth your time.

[baytamusic]

I don't like V30s. Guess I'm an idiot.

[a.hun]

Ok, just wanted to rant a bit here.

Been there, done that!

I have been reading reviews on Harmony Central though and they are very mixed. One person will say that all three effects are the best they've ever heard and the next person says the pedal is trash

Sorry tollhous3, I haven't a clue about that pedal. But I do have some thoughts on HC reviews.

I think they can be pretty useful, but you need to read between the lines and not just look at the numbers. I'm generalising here, but my impression is that a lot of ratings are towards the high or low extremes. You tend to see a lot of 1's, 2's, 8's 9's and 10's. Sometimes as you say for the same piece of kit!

So I look to see the context in each review. If someone has bought and used a piece of kit for a while and gives it an 8 for sound, I'll believe that more then someone who tried it in the shop for 20 minutes and gave it an 8. Or a 2 for that matter. Also for many unusually low scores for valve amps for example, if someone scores 1 - 3 for sound while most others are around 8 - 10, I'll ask myself why. Usually they probably haven't tried the obvious like swapping out valves to check they aren't the problem. DUH!

Reliability ratings mean nothing much to me unless someone has actually used the gear for an extended period, unless they had so many problems that they never got the chance to! Even then, one unlucky customer doesn't mean it's rubbish if evryone else using it for years had zero problems.

The more actual reviews there are of a piece of gear, the more significant the overall ratings become. And then the solo "don't buy this amp - you can't get a clean sound out of it", 2,1,2,1,1 scored post leaps out and says to me that the guy reviewing the amp hasn't got the first clue. Why did he buy it for a start if it sounds so bad???

Another thing to bear in mind is that for some gear / manufacturers, there are known good and bad periods. "The early Japanese made ones were great - bombproof, but the later ones didn't sound the same and fell to bits" might well be true! So the same name sometimes means nothing. Not all Vox AC30s for example are the same by any means.

I think you can glean a lot of useful info from HC reviews about sound, useability, reliability etc, as long as you bear in mind that there will always be some reviews which deserve more attention then others.

Having written all that I've just checked out the Foxrox CC2 reviews there. Appears to be a very well liked piece of kit with a lot of 9's and 10's and just a couple of lower ratings. One of those admitted it was s/h and ?? faulty. Overall ratings in the mid 9's with 30+ reviews indicate it's probably pretty good.

(The Orange amps always seem well liked there wouldn't you say... Clearly only very smart people buy them )

Andy.

Not really worth getting too worked up about I'd say. There are plenty of smart people but also plenty of total idiots who post on HC...

As far as Vintage 30s are concerned, my experience is that they suit some amps (Oranges) MUCH better than others. V.30s have a very forward high midrange peak. If an amp also has a lot of upper mids then they can sound really harsh and nasty. With the right amp though they are great speakers - it is all down to the right combination.


Andy.

[apocalypsedude]

Well said, I think I'm just bored at work and have nothing better to obsess over today!

[oranginator]

Vintage 30s are awesome. Sound GREAT with my TH-30. I replaced the crappy Blue Marvel speaker in my Classic 30 with one, and I got more body and low end.

Great speaker.

[OrangePaul]

Haters gonna hate. It irritates me too, but I realized the open forum environment of the internet, combined with the assumed anonymity of its interactions, breeds all sorts of stupid decisions and trains of thought. It also breeds some pretty cool ones, like here on the forum, etc. Don't let it get you down. I love playing gear that sounds great and make people think/say "but that's one of the crappy brands!"

You're ALWAYS going to be able to find someone of the same opinion in today's world. Chances are no matter how radical your views, you can always find one person who shares them with you (that's why we have The Gear Page! zing! Haha, just kidding, just kidding! ), and likewise you'll always be able to find someone who disagrees with you no matter how benign or common your views may be.

That's okay, it makes the subjective nature of making music as art always applicable and loved by someone. You just have to accept the hatred that comes too as something inevitable and not worth your time.

NEIL! I must strongly disagree with your ENTIRE opinion here!

[jason41224]

yup. There's always the village idiot. They're just different types of idiots. On HC, it's some idiot hipster wanker trying to be against everything for the sake of being against everything. On TGP, it's some idiot who's against something because it's not handwired. And here, we just have Randy.

[sizzlingbadger]

V30's sound good with darker amps but can be really harsh with others. They work well with most Orange amps, I do find mine a bit harsh on the clean channel of my TH30 but its new and may mellow a bit yet. If it doesn't I may get a greenback, they are only 25w though so I'll need to keep the amp away from fully cranked which isn't difficult. I could get another cab and load it with a greenback for 50W handling in total

As for the interwebs... well I just ignore about 95% of it these days and use my ears and personal experience.

[Randy Bass]

You guys are all jerks. I'm joining the Randall Forum.

[Neiloler]

Haters gonna hate. It irritates me too, but I realized the open forum environment of the internet, combined with the assumed anonymity of its interactions, breeds all sorts of stupid decisions and trains of thought. It also breeds some pretty cool ones, like here on the forum, etc. Don't let it get you down. I love playing gear that sounds great and make people think/say "but that's one of the crappy brands!"

You're ALWAYS going to be able to find someone of the same opinion in today's world. Chances are no matter how radical your views, you can always find one person who shares them with you (that's why we have The Gear Page! zing! Haha, just kidding, just kidding! ), and likewise you'll always be able to find someone who disagrees with you no matter how benign or common your views may be.

That's okay, it makes the subjective nature of making music as art always applicable and loved by someone. You just have to accept the hatred that comes too as something inevitable and not worth your time.

NEIL! I must strongly disagree with your ENTIRE opinion here!

God bless the internet!

[a.hun]

You guys are all jerks. I'm joining the Randall Forum.

God help the Randall forum!


Andy.

[DiabloS]

V30's sound good with darker amps but can be really harsh with others. They work well with most Orange amps, I do find mine a bit harsh on the clean channel of my TH30 but its new and may mellow a bit yet. If it doesn't I may get a greenback, they are only 25w though so I'll need to keep the amp away from fully cranked which isn't difficult. I could get another cab and load it with a greenback for 50W handling in total

As for the interwebs... well I just ignore about 95% of it these days and use my ears and personal experience.

If you want a greenback-flavored speaker but you're concerned about the wattage, there are other companies that make them with a higher wattage rating. I like the Eminence Private Jack, although I will say it doesn't sound "exactly" like a greenback, it sounds better to my ears than the celestion. It's rated at 50W and has a tighter response than a greenback but still has some of the similar characteristics to how it sounds.


http://www.usspeaker.com/Private%20Jack-1.htm

WGS also makes affordable speakers that copy the greenback but with higher wattage as well.

As for V30's, I wouldn't say they suck but I'm not a fan of them for playing rhythm due to the upper mid fizziness that you can't dial out. I think they sound good for playing leads though and they mix well with other darker speakers too. I think they would be an upgrade over a G12T-75 or a Blue Marvel too.

[jangle]

Perhaps we should separate the animals from the zoo here.

On your bones of contention: I can see how experience, hard knocks, personal preferences, musical styles, etc. would lead you to a certain point of view or a particular piece of gear. I don't care for V30s, for example, but admit that others may like them and that my dislike may be related to their ubiquity across so many manufacturers' amps and cabs. In other words, I'm simply tired of listening to them.

Pickups and effects are like flavors of ice cream...there is no right and there is no wrong and there is too much variety to ever reach total agreement although there may be general consensus on some topics, e.g. Fulltone products sound and perform much better than, say, Danelectro.

Which leads us to the other, larger issue, which is Harmony Central itself. It has lost its monopoly as the internet hive of musical opinion. Some of that is due to competition (this forum, TGP, guitar/brand-specific fan sites, etc.) but much of it was due to the self-inflicted catastrophe of their site/forum redesign. It should be a course entitled "Don't Do This" for web site owners/admins the way psychology students study the Stanford Prison Experiment. A site that was a household name with a fantastic amount of traffic, perceived as an authoritative site due to the mix of professional and user content submitted and stored. The redesign was truly a fix for something that wasn't broken. They compounded their error by digging their heels in - it's our site, we like the new software even if you don't etc. They compounded their error further by accusing critics (read: loyal users) of attempting to sabotage the cutover by flooding the site with complaints. They compounded their error even more by finally capitulating on many of the complaints but by then the damage was done.

Despite the exodus of many HC users, a core of holdovers remains along with a certain population who share myriad neuroses, quirks, and obsessions. Archetypes include:

Branded cattle - these people have chosen an OEM (usually boutique/high-end) like the rest of us choose a spouse. They will inject a mention of it into any conversation no matter how irrelevant that mention may be. Typical brands: Engl, Diezel, Mesa, PRS

Anti-brand cattle - they may not have a favorite brand, but they have many non-favorites and spend 99% of their time slating any make of gear that might be mentioned. To be called a cork-sniffer is a badge of honor.

15 year olds and many others stuck at that stage of adolescence - these are the back of the school bus types who enjoy the visual stimulus of a good bikini photo but whose questions and responses reveal a discomfort with, even a fear of, the opposite sex. The usual juvenile humor is used to disguise the fact that these posters are several degrees short of merely awkward in developing and maintaining any sort of relationship.

The pedants - remember the guy in the black t-shirt with the bald head/ponytail combination at your local music store? You weren't sure if he worked there or not but he spent more hours there than the staff. If you walked in and announced that you had purchased a mint 1958 Stratocaster for a good price from a nice old grandmother whose son died in Vietnam and left his instrument under his bed untouched all these years, he would fold his arms, narrow his eyes with suspicion and say something like "Does it have slotted or Phillips screws?" Whatever your answer, it would be wrong. "It's probably a fake"..."I prefer the '57s"..."Real players use Teles"...etc. The store might deal in present-day equipment but the store pedant would claim only to use vintage gear - despite the fact that you never once have spotted him playing an instrument - his own or the store's.

The tripartites - those dedicated strictly to a discussion and appreciation of three and only three guitarists out of the many thousands who have recorded or performed regardless of genre or era: Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Clapton. Occasionally a poster will slip a foot off the reservation and mention Page, Trower, West, or Johnson but he will be swiftly reprimanded.

The crabs in a bucket - essentially an amalgamation of the above categories with an additional Greek chorus. Any positive experience in music - a gig you played, a gig you attended, an instrument you like, a band you like, a personal breakthrough in technique - will be mercilessly shouted down. It's groupthink on a grand scale along with the kind of hostility and xenophobia the ape-men showed the monolith in "2001: A Space Odyssey."

I could go on but the point is that the Bizarro world of HC should be used sparingly as a source of honest, informed opinion and should never be used to generate and/or share enthusiasm about any subject, musical or otherwise, due to the potential for mindless, reflexive, negative feedback.

[hellagnar Brosevelt]

You guys are all jerks. I'm joining the Randall Forum.

I'm looking now for your screen name. I assume it will be Randall Bass.