Brand snobbery . . .

Paul_C

I must confess there are lots of brand-name pedals I'm happy to buy, and quite a few lesser-known pedals too, but, sometimes for better reasons than others, there are definitely some that I'm very unlikely to buy under any circumstances.

Some, like Boss, I don't really have a problem with and don't mind owning, but I have a feeling that they are "safe", so there's probably going to be something a little more interesting to be found - this is with no proof whatsoever

Others, like Mooer or Joyo, I've owned and found to be perfectly fine, but struggled with ownership because they're cheap - not a very good reason for selling, but sell them I have.

The last group are for purely personal reasons - I wouldn't buy anything with a nudge-nudge schoolboy humour names i.e. Devi Ever Soda Meiser, Way Huge Camel Toe, ZVex Super Hard On etc. because I'm a 54 year old man and no longer a sniggering 16 year old.
I also couldn't buy something if it looked awful unless it did something spectacular, and even then I'd probably have to re-house it and keep the original enclosure in the box if I chose to sell it. A prime example of this is Bearfoot Pedals - I cannot get beyond the writing on them, which looks (IMHO) dreadful.

I'm happy to admit that most of this is irrational, but there it is, I'm a pedal snob

Majorscale

You are certainly missing out by discounting Bearfoot pedals based on the text. Some of best sounding pedals around...

siraxeman

Personally I couldn't care less about brands/names as long as the pedal does what I want it to its all good. I think (personal opinion obvs) that a lot of 'boutique' pedals are a RIP OFF! OD's and Distortions more so - I've heard a good few really posh pedals and thought that don't sound any better than a Boss SD-1, BD-2 or any cheapo TS alike well I are think anyway! Some say some of the real el cheapo pedals are crap and their switches/pots are naff - as maybe but none of the ones I've ever had have let me down at least so far. One of my very fave dirt pedals of all time remains the el cheapo Dano Transparent Overdrive (MK1 version). The old original Guv'nor/Bluebreaker/Shredmaster/Drivemaster seem all highly regarded and copied by some makers of high end pedals, and maybe they do make 'em better (I dunno) but they cost like £45 when they came out. So snobbery with pedals I don't think I suffer from. And anyway apart from boasting on a forum to other guitar nerds no bugger else would know better or could care less.

Zoolooter

Totally with you on this issue. No time for stupid names and garish graphics. I've tried the cheaper mini pedals - all of mine broke within a few months or were too noisy. 

It amazes me that some of the companies seem to go out of their way to make the pedals look like tat. 

Slimbert

I would honestly prefer if ALL gear was unbranded. If people bought equipment blindfolded and purchased items based purely on sound and feel then almost everyone would have a different set up to the one they currently have.

I also think we'd sound better and enjoy our playing a lot more.

I'm as guilty as anyone with some of my purchases. Thankfully not all of them though!

lustycourtier

You listed way huge, zvex and bearfoot. All of which are at the core of my board at all times. Maybe I’ve been using these brands too long but the names have never even occurred to be silly.
 I do however have a problem with the Friedman amp names. Maybe because they cost so much?  

Teetonetal

I'm trying to avoid anything with 3pdt switches in. Soft switches or boss style only from now on.

Otherwise I definitely avoid cheap budget brands like joyo etc.

I do have a couple of mooers. They are tiny so I carry them as spare. Green mile, elec lady and an ana echo. 

Sassafras

Coopersonic do some good stuff but I could never buy something that was labelled like this:



Nor could I own a Friedman Brown Eye or Pink Taco. How old's the guy that builds them?

Sassafras

Sassafras

p90fool

I have a number of Joyo pedals, because they're cheap enough to play around with at home and in the studio, but I've had a few switches die and pots get very crackly in a matter of months. 

Mind you, that's makes them pretty vintage-accurate in a Colorsound/EHX kind of way, but I still wouldn't gig them. 

57Deluxe

whatever makes the best sound and is available at the time. They all work the same in reality no matter how much spin you put on to convince yourself otherwise.

BintyTwanger77

I have gone through a lot of Strymon, but I'm no brand snob. As long as it sounds good, that's all that matters. Simple, but true. Expensive  boutique stuff, Boss, vintage, they all have their place.

Wazmeister

Majorscale said:

You are certainly missing out by discounting Bearfoot pedals based on the text. Some of best sounding pedals around...

I agree 100%.

Good thread @Paul_C and interesting as Ive got some bias too...

impmann

On my board I have pedals from all ends of the spectrum - from Mooer, through Boss, Electro Harmonix (and yes its still working fine, thanks), to Analogman, D*A*M etc. I plug a £25 s/h Mooer pedal into a GigRig G2, ffs. I don't give a shit about how much something costs, what brand name is on it etc - if it sounds great, I'll use it. If not... I won't.

I've seen so many people on the merry-go-round, buying 'this' pedal or 'that' because of a recommendation on a Youtube video (often sponsored by the very people who stand to make money out of ou buying one) - there *IS* a lot of Emperor's New Clothes about pedals.

Rowby1

So cheapest pedal on my board is £40 and most expensive is £450 and the pedal I’m least happy with at the moment is the £450 one. It will probably get replaced next year, maybe with something cheaper, maybe not. How good it sounds will be the deciding factor.

As for juvenile names, I really wish they wouldn’t do that. It’s just crass.

Paul_C

At the other end of the scale, I have an upper limit that I would struggle to pass (about £250) without a very good reason, though that doesn't stop me buying three £200 pedals where one £400 might do

£450 . . . wow, what costs that much ?

It's not all about spending money though, I'm quite happy with my £190 Katana amp

markjohnson

Build Quality is an interesting one. I know that @ThorpyFX feels strongly about this. But to me it's no good how good a pedal sounds or how good value for money it is if it's going to crappy out on me in the middle of a gig.

Perhaps working in a music shop made me paranoid, but there's some gear that a lot of people love that I'd never touch having seen how many fail QC, or come back for repair. Not that'd I'd name names but its something that doesn't just affect the cheapest brands, high end ones can be made badly too.

impmann

markjohnson said:

Perhaps working in a music shop made me paranoid, but there's some gear that a lot of people love that I'd never touch having seen how many fail QC, or come back for repair. Not that'd I'd name names but its something that doesn't just affect the cheapest brands, high end ones can be made badly too.

The trouble with that is though, you get a skewed perspective. For example if you sell 10 of one item and 2 come back, then you've had 2 returns... that doesn't feel like a lot.  However, if you sell 1000 of something and 200 come back, its the same percentage return, yet it feels like a lot have failed.

In a previous role, I had 'discussions' with certain stores about returns of product that I was responsible for. They would get on their high horse about how many they've had back and how many disgruntled customers they'd had - sometimes you needed to show them the percentages to show that a product doesn't have a "bad reliability" reputation. Its a preception. Yes, there are some products that definitely do have a high fail rate - and some that have a bad first pass yield (ie fail straight out the box - they are the real duffers). However, if you are selling lots of *anything* you are going to get some degree of failure - anyone who believes otherwise lives in cuckooland. Otherwise we wouldn't have techs, repair departments etc etc etc

I'd also be wary about using the term 'badly made' as very few products genuinely are these days  - there are exceptions but we'll park that for a mo - an awful lot of field failures come from using something outside its normal operating parameters... for example, when I was working in a music store back in the early 90s we had a particular band return a well known multi-effect unit pretty much weekly with increasing lip and aggro from them. So I went to see them live... and discovered that their on-stage gear involved steel toecap boots and at one point the guitarist launched himself off a 4x12 cab onto said effects box to change patch... likewise a particular individual was all over the forums a few years ago bad mouthing how "rubbish" a particular guitar was and how it didn't track, there was latency and how could anyone use it. When I checked up on the individual concerned, he worked for a rival company who were just about to launch their own version of similar technology (that had far more genuine faults, it has to be said). A well-worded letter to the CEO from the solicitors soon brought a stop to it, but every so often I read his bullshit recounted by someone else who had just read it on a forum and believed it verbatum. I also oversaw a huge testing operation where we'd had a large number of failures for a particular fault, only to find that the device they had been plugged into was causing the issue...

There are some crap products - and I agree that price is no guarantee of quality. But a lot of the talk of endemic faults can often be found to be perception - and are based on apocraphal tales, rather than hard data. 

Finally... if you worked in a shop, it didn't fail "QC". It failed in the shop. VERY few UK shops have quality control steps built into their retail model (or even a QC department...) - and those that are there aren't exactly the most robust I've ever encountered. If something fails in a shop, its a field failure... its not a QC failure. I may be being a pedant (quite happy to be... I worked bloody hard to get the accreditation and experience that I have in that field) but if something breaks in a shop, thats not 'QC'.  :-)

GavRichList

aesthetic clearly matters to some degree, conscious or otherwise. I'm not certain that it'd stop me buying a pedal, but I certainly have opinions on them - Bearfoot, Analogueman.... Really dislike the way they look. Sonically of course it doesnt matter a jot, but it lessens the wider purchasing enjoyment. 

Sassafras

I've had all kinds of boutique overdrives but none of them have replaced my humble OD-2 which  can usually be found for £20 -£30.