Being a muso snob

imalone

Emp_Fab said:

I don't care what is used to produce the music - be it a umpty-thousand vintage guitar with boutique gear or a broomstick with some garden wire and an amp from LIDL.  All that matters is whether it moves me or not.

Lidl do amps?
I spotted a little 10W Roland in our local BHF at the weekend. If a Peavey bandit turns up I'm on it.

Danny1969

scrumhalf said:

Danny1969 said:

Never mind some nice pedals, I've got a big rack full of expensive looking kit behind me, a double necked custom shop SG, 2K's worth of LP and a custom guitar made just for me. Then there's the dedicated lights guy, the FOH sound mixer, mics on the drums that cost more than most bands would spend on their entire PA etc. All that can raise a lot of expectation, you can see the looks, pointing and comments and I can imagine what people are saying

They're saying "bit much for the bedroom, isn't it?".

Lol yeah propably

chillidoggy

I don't suffer from the snob affliction, because every guitarist I see is always miles better than me, whatever gear he's using,

thisisguitar

UnclePsychosis said:

The only time I make judgements in relation to gear is when people turn up with ALL OF THE PEDALS but don't actually use them. I saw a rock/punk covers band once, they were pretty decent but the bass player had a pedal train pro absolutely crammed full of delays, reverbs, flangers, octavers, a wah wah, about eighteen different distortion pedals, and then proceeded to use literally only the tuner and one of the od pedals. What's the fecking point in carrying all that around??

This guy? http://modernworshipdude.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/largest-guitar-pedalboard.jpg?w=451&h=299

Modernworshipdude… I'm not sure if that applies to 'the lord' or the pedalboard!

UnclePsychosis

ICBM said:

He probably plays in a different band where he uses all that stuff, and didn't want to dismantle his board to just take those two pedals for the gig.

Probably, but the band in question gigs *all the time* (at least 3-4 times a month) and he was lugging around about > £1000 of bulky, heavy kit that he didn't need and that was taking up a decent proportion of a tiny stage. Get a smaller board, man! 

thisisguitar

UnclePsychosis said:

ICBM said:

He probably plays in a different band where he uses all that stuff, and didn't want to dismantle his board to just take those two pedals for the gig.

Probably, but the band in question gigs *all the time* (at least 3-4 times a month) and he was lugging around about > £1000 of bulky, heavy kit that he didn't need and that was taking up a decent proportion of a tiny stage. Get a smaller board, man! 

He's probably blown all his money on the big board… and you know second board territory eats cash. I've built one large one and have a small one part-way there. It becomes a pain in the arse to detach stuff, especially if you are using a pedal power or similar. So you just end up taking the big one.

Just be glad you aren't their roadie :-)

ThePrettyDamned

thisisguitar;24497" said:

I went to see some bands on Saturday. There were three on the bill, the first was alright, second were good, but the headliners turned out to be pretty awful. 

I looked down at the guitarists pedalboard in the first song and saw a boss bcb, with 5 boss pedals and a boss wah, and straight away I looked down on him. Which I felt a little bad about. 

Anyone else find themselves making judgments based on gear?

Nope, I have ears and that's what I use to judge a band. Satriani sounded amazing through a ds-1, and John frusciante sounds amazing through a regular, boggo big muff and ds-2.

I don't even look at pedalboards unless they do something I desperately need to know about. And that rarely happens because most people get drive, fuzz and distortion pedals for the most part.

mike_l

chillidoggy said:

I don't suffer from the snob affliction, because every guitarist I see is always miles better than me, whatever gear he's using,

Someone's never heard me play.............

chillidoggy

No, really. You're miles better than me. Trust me on this one.

Freebird

Quite a few multi-million selling bands use Boss pedals.

thisisguitar

It's not that I dislike Boss pedals btw (I have two on my board), but having a pedalboard with nothing but them shows a lack of imagination… 

richardhomer

thisisguitar;370052" said:

having a pedalboard with nothing but them shows a lack of imagination… 

Not entirely convinced by that line of reasoning, tbh.

Would the player have demonstrated imagination had they all been Strymons?

Is it just the 'one brand' thing, or the prosaic nature of the brand?

I really don't see how a player's ability can be determined by his choice of equipment, anymore than a writer can be castigated for writing their genius work out long-hand with a biro, rather than typing it on a MacBook.

Fuzzdog

thisisguitar said:

It's not that I dislike Boss pedals btw (I have two on my board), but having a pedalboard with nothing but them shows a lack of imagination… 

I've had all-Boss pedalboards quite a few times, particularly when I've been touring - if something breaks, a backup is cheap, and if the backup breaks, you can pretty much just stand out in the street and shout "Oi!  Anyone got a spare Boss DD-3 I can borrow?" and you'll have one in five minutes.  )

mike_l

thisisguitar said:

It's not that I dislike Boss pedals btw (I have two on my board), but having a pedalboard with nothing but them shows a lack of imagination… 

Why?

I've had all Boss on boards before, they worked sound wise, and they're reliable.

Billy Duffy from the Cult uses Boss exclusively, as they're reliable and easy to replace if they break/get nicked.

chillidoggy

I've always used Boss pedals. That in itself is good reason not to.

Iamnobody

thisisguitar;370052" said:

It's not that I dislike Boss pedals btw (I have two on my board), but having a pedalboard with nothing but them shows a lack of imagination… 

So if you had a board full of different boutique pedals but played fairly straightforward generic music - would that be imaginative?

I'll use Fat Bob again as an example. Do you think he has a lack of imagination?

I think you might have nailed it in your first post. It's maybe a wee bit of snobbery on your behalf?

They are just tools at the end of the day.

ThePrettyDamned

thisisguitar;370052" said:

It's not that I dislike Boss pedals btw (I have two on my board), but having a pedalboard with nothing but them shows a lack of imagination… 

I think 4 chord songs lack imagination...

But they're still great songs

I know what you mean, sort of, but if reliability and replaceability is important, boss is the best brand in the world. You can buy them everywhere, they're very reliable and the stomps are the best around. You can't miss them, you can hit 4 at once if you use both feet and rock on your heels if you desperately needed to, and they feel great.

Where is the imagination in buying a whole bunch of pedals that TGP are going mad over? It's just following a different herd of sheep, and some of the pedal boards I've seen are, frankly, laughable - a couple of grands worth of pedals that have loads of overlap because they listen to marketing and hype, not the sounds each pedal makes.

ICBM

Perhaps they have the imagination to think about what happens if a switch breaks on a fancy boutique pedalboard mid-song.

monquixote

I once saw an interview with Chad Smith where they asked him about why he uses Pearl drums. He said something along the lines of while some custom hand made kits might sound better Pearl sounded good enough and on tour kits got lost and broken a lot and in nearly any country in the world someone can get you a Pearl kit with a couple of hours notice and due to their consistency you know it will be alright. 

I imagine playing all Boss is a very similar thing. 

EricTheWeary

monquixote said:

I once saw an interview with Chad Smith where they asked him about why he uses Pearl drums. He said something along the lines of while some custom hand made kits might sound better Pearl sounded good enough and on tour kits got lost and broken a lot and in nearly any country in the world someone can get you a Pearl kit with a couple of hours notice and due to their consistency you know it will be alright. 

I imagine playing all Boss is a very similar thing. 

yeh, the Billy Duffy quotes about Boss are similar ( although he always has an Ibanez TS of some description on his board).