Well done Guitarist Magazine: videos and playlists

vasselmeyer

I was on the verge of cancelling my subscription when the Joe Bonamassa issue came out, but decided to hang on for a few issues when news of a replacement for The Vault came out.

The Gear Shows are pretty good with decent production values but for me the small reviews are what make it. There seems to be a playlist which is put together for each magazine and it looks to me as if most of the videos aren't indexed on the Guitarist channel, but referenced from within the magazine itself. When I eventually got around to looking at them I found reviews for the Xotic SP and the EHX B9 which I didn't see from their main page.

I'm not going to list the format of the link as I presume they magazine would still prefer you buy it but it's a good idea and I'm going to keep my subscription for the foreseeable future.

Here's an excellent comparison from their "small gigging amps" feature. I was surpised to find out I liked the H&K the best of any of the amps on test:

EricTheWeary

GuitarPlayer used ( probably still do) to have open access to their video content but it was fiddly to find unless you had the links in the magazine and I thought that was okay. If it was a lesson the tab would be in the mag, the video online. The mag still made sense without the online content and vice versa. The Vault had an annoying log on process and the large iOS video content used to glitch on my old laptop, the GP content was slightly poorer video quality but being on YouTube meant it was easier to watch on any device. Having been used to cd's/ cd roms/ dvd's a tricky online system was definitely a step down.

xchrisv

Glad you like it, @vasselmeyer - a single bit.ly link in the mag to a YouTube playlist that contains all of the video content for the issue has to be easier than logging onto Vault and downloading masses of video to your hard drive, right? 

That said, a handful of readers have written in to say that they would still prefer to download the video than stream it, so we're looking into a download solution to run alongside the YouTube playlists. Hopefully that will please most of the people, most of the time.  

ThePrettyDamned

It's a vast improvement and the quality of content seems generally good.

Just waiting for a big feature on Andy James now

RocknRollDave

ThePrettyDamned said:

It's a vast improvement and the quality of content seems generally good.

+1 for this.

I was a harsh critic of the way the Vault worked, this is far and away more engaging. The production's very good and the videos, which were never bad anyway, remain very watchable.

And whilst I am brown-nosing Guitarist, that Red Special feature last month was excellent.

Andyjr1515

RocknRollDave said:

And whilst I am brown-nosing Guitarist, that Red Special feature last month was excellent.

+1

It was a great feature article

Phil_aka_Pip

aye, it was good, but by the time I'd finished reading it I lost count of how many times the author said he was over-awed by the guitar and the opportunity to dissect it.