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So the chain goes:
Dodgy individual (eg. Ken, Mason at Vertex) suckers well-intentioned but idiot musician. Product released suckers foolish individuals with more money than sense who end up defending frauster for ages on TGP despite granite-firm evidence being produced that says he's a cheating gifford.
The only gear issue with the whole debacle is too many people listen with their eyes. Everything else - stupidity, exploitation, naivety, ruthlessness - are all just facts of life present in virtually all other situations in life. The Petri dish of TGP just makes it easier to observe. And then comment on loftily .
In principle, at least. Granted, I find it easier to hold that opinion if I haven't been to TGP for a while and therefore haven't had a bunch of TGPers (and even sometimes moderators) jump on me for pointing out that the newest $600 overdrive pedal is likely a tubescreamer, instead of their jumping on the person trying to sell them a $600 tubescreamer.
Someone made an excellent point on another (non-guitar) forum to someone who had been scammed- not quite the same thing, but close enough- that maybe the person who had been scammed had been a little naive, but that it still took a scammer to take advantage of that. The naivety would have been harmless without the dishonest person who was taking advantage of it.
It's a bit the same here. Yes, it's complex, and yes the golden-eared brigade can be annoying and talk a pile of crap (as you rightly pointed out), but I still consider them to be the victims overall.
Apart from anything else, you don't have to be in that group to get caught up in these things. We're sort of conditioned by capitalism to assume that anything more expensive is better, and that "cheaping out" is a bad idea which is likely to bite us in the ass later*... you don't have to be a TGPer, especially if you're a newer, more inexperienced player, to think that a £200 overdrive must sound better than a £20 Joyo. You probably don't even know that the £200 one is also a tubescreamer clone.
* I think the placebo effect of non-generic drugs works on Westerners, but not Africans, for example, I think they've done research on that.
All cool, I reread what I wrote and it came across as being harsher than I meant it to be. Sometimes I think my prejudice against TGP can give me "angry monkey at keyboard" syndrome.
Don't drink the Kool Aid folks
It also means you can buy your materials at Maplins .
(I like 4% silver solder too, it makes soldering much easier.)
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein