High end pedals & why do people hate them?

BintyTwanger77

All of this is subjective (sadly...my subjective judgement changes with the tides). This "high-end pedals bad, guitar & amp good" stuff is just a point of view, it's not true.

A better way of putting it would be that technique is all and that good tone is in the fingers, so if you have that, you can sound good without high-end pedals...but what's wrong with having both?

When I practise, a good chunk of the time is spent playing straight into the amp. But there's nothing wrong with adding some high-end pedals if you are happy to pay for them. 

Sassafras

Some pedals can be inspiring.
If they cost a lot then so be it, there's anything wrong with that.
I think some people have trouble justifying buying expensive gear if they're not gigging or recording.

Teetonetal

I've learnt the expensive way that some high end pedals are bargains and some are a rip offs.

It's quite fun finding out though.

juansolo

There's a lot of perceived value due to increased cost (same goes for the audiophile market on this). In that, it's much more expensive so it must be better... A lot of boutique brands just stick on a silly number to get attention, someone will buy it, proclaim it the second coming, and the hype train leaves the station. It's been a very effective marketing tactic again and again.

Then there's supply and demand. From a building perspective, it must be much nicer to take your time and build a few pedals that sell for lots than churn out pedal after pedal for a much smaller margin. If you could do that, you would, wouldn't you?

In the end, it comes down to what the market is prepared to pay. Simple as that. Nothing is sold on the cost to build. A Mercedes for example, cost no more to build than a Ford. Yet a Mercedes is vastly more expensive. It gets you from A-B just as effectively as a Ford. In terms of how they're built, there's no reason whatsoever that a Mercedes should cost more than a Ford.

I suppose the biggest problem with expensive kit is that there are a lot of shysters in it to cynically make a quick buck. But that's the same with all things (again, audiophile Hi-Fi being a perfect example). You just have to accept that it happens. You can tell some audiophiles that a gold plated mains lead that cost £400 makes fuck all difference and they'll likely disagree with you. It's sometimes better to just stay out of it and let people get on with it. Life's too short.

Dave_Mc

ThePrettyDamned said:

Because the high end pedal industry has a history of rip offs. 

Not entirely. But a lot of it is. I think there was a massively expensive overdrive from someone that was a tubescreamer... Without the buffer. Yeah, it sounded different, but they charged a lot for something that required no r+d. 

Edit to remove name.

Also, who could forget the alpha drive and alpha drive red dot? 

Or the amazing Jan ray and the tone changing case... which was a very slightly tweaked Timmy for really stupid money.

Yeah.

It's also worth pointing out that being anti-rip-off-pedals is quite different from being anti-pedals entirely. And that being anti-rip-off-pedals is not the same thing as being anti-all-expensive-pedals.

Whitecat said:

The thing about ripoffs is certainly true though, and then there's the whole 'goop' phenomenon - I understand that some builders want to protect their circuit design but on the other hand it's pretty easy to 'hide something' underneath it, huh?

I remember a good while back on TGP one of the UG forum regulars posted in a thread about goop, where he listed the pedals where goop had been used to hide original circuits versus the pedals where goop had been used to hide cloning. It was a little facetious, and I suspect there are a few more examples of where goop was used to hide originality, but I think the gist of his argument was fundamentally sound- in the "Hiding originality" section he had: Klon Centaur. Needless to say, the other column wasn't anywhere near as short.

Teetonetal

I won't buy a gooped pedal unless it has life time warranty. 

UnclePsychosis

Its mostly inverted snobbery, but it is also born out of the "modify a tubescreamer, stick it in a fancy box and charge £200 for it" school of thought. 

Ironically enough its often the high-end digital pedals that are both original and actually impossible to find a cheap alternative for. 

Personally I am a believer in "spend no more than you need to". For distortions, that maxes out at about £50 for me. For tremolo, its a lot, lot more. YMMV. 

BintyTwanger77

@Teetonetal This Gravitas has better be gooped or there will be hell to pay...

Teetonetal

BintyTywanger77 said:

@Teetonetal This Gravitas has better be gooped or there will be hell to pay...

No goop there! 

NotNowJohn

I know plenty of players who hate pedals full stop and see them as an affront to their 'blues purity'. Any discussion of high end pedals sends these idiots apoplectic. But then you don't really need any effects for another fucking rendition of 'Mustang Sally'.

I don't have a huge pedalboard but I do have some pedals on there that probably qualify as 'high end' (Cornish) as well as 'budget' (Mooer). I'll try anything that's built well and sounds good and if I have the cash I have a wider choice. But I've turned up for shows with my gear and have been pretty much ridiculed by the blues purists...Obviously at the end of the night the Squiers and Blackstars are loaded into the various Mercedes' & BMW's. 

mellowsun

I find this surprising. I thought 'murican P&W guitarists were into their high end gear.

Ro_S

I refuse to get into certain expensive brands.  Namely, Chase Bliss, Strymon, Eventide, Wampler.  

I simply don't want to spend that much on a single pedal.

I only abide digital for delay and reverb effects.

Wampler stuff is really meh.

ThePrettyDamned

Ro_S said:

I refuse to get into certain expensive brands.  Namely, Chase Bliss, Strymon, Eventide, Wampler.  

I simply don't want to spend that much on a single pedal.

I only abide digital for delay and reverb effects.

Wampler stuff is really meh.

I've got an amazing digital chorus/phaser pedal that Ibanez made. It's not classic sounding but has some excellent, truly bit crushing sounds that make your guitar sound like a tuned set of springs. 

Writing off all digital beyond delay and reverb seems a little short sighted. Surely best to judge each effect on its merits/usefulness? 

Ro_S

ThePrettyDamned said:

Writing off all digital beyond delay and reverb seems a little short sighted. Surely best to judge each effect on its merits/usefulness? 

I've yet to encounter a digital dirt or modulation pedal that sounds better than analogue, so I stick to analogue pedals for those types of effects.   

I have a small digital multi-fx unit (not an H9) but that's only for practical purposes to achieve more unusual effects that I don't have dedicated stand-alone pedals for.

baddog01

The same reason people build there own pedals. It's a cost factor for most of us.  The most I've spent was on a TS808 reissue and that was to much.  

juansolo

I build pedals because I enjoy building/making stuff.

WarpedSounds

I will never understand how guitarists who use electricity to generate sound can bang on about purity.

TTBZ

When I see a big pedalboard with loads of weird effects my first thought is "what kind of music do they play??" and then wanting to hear the music created with all these contraptions.

I've always been a fairly minimalistic player, have only just added a delay to my board after about 8 years of just having my amp dry all the time!

BintyTwanger77

@WarpedSounds Nail on head.

Let's just reject these bullshit concepts of purity, and just ask if it sound good.

Blueingreen

Unfortunately a lot of folk - not just Americans - are highly judgemental.  If other people think differently they don't think "fine, it would be boring if we were all the same";  they don't even think, "well I think you've got that wrong mate, but you're entitled to your opinion".  They think, "you're wrong, and I feel fully entitled, nay compelled, to lecture you on the error of your ways, and I'm not ruling out losing my temper in the process".

Why?  Mainly insecurity, I suspect.  Deep down there's just this little nagging doubt that they may be wrong.  And because they are the kind of people who need certainty, that makes them very uncomfortable.  The threatening notion that someone who disagrees with them may be right has to be squashed, very aggressively if necessary.

And unfortunately message boards where people share opinions will always tend to attract more than it's fair share of these types.

There's probably a decent case to be made that high end pedals don't represent value for money, the first and obvious piece of evidence being the number of superlative players who are happy with run of the mill brands (although it's equally true to say many great players are high-end pedal junkies).  i somewhat tend to that view myself, but I'm not going to turn evangelical about it.  If you think it's worth paying extra for high end, it's your prerogative. And you may even be right.