Is this a thing people pay money for?

hobbio

This bloke is selling settings for a Zoom MS70CDR. Settings that you apparently have to program in yourself from an email he sends out. For £20!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ZOOM-MS-70CDR-MultiStomp-ART-D-ECHO-Sound-of-HANK-MARVIN-settings-only-NO-UNIT-/161582287871?_trksid=p2054897.l4275

That's 25% of the cost of the actual pedal, spent on an email that gives you nothing that you couldn't get yourself by just playing around with it. Unbelievabled!

Drew_TNBD

Cheeky bastard!

Teetonetal

I am always amazed by this kind of thing. I can only assume he does sell them... as otherwise it wouldn't be worth him doing it....?

hobbio

I've read his feedback, and it looks like he's sold at least one. He's already in profit!

Drew_fx said:

Cheeky bastard!

Yep!

dogload

I've seen quite a few adverts on Ebay for this sort of thing over the years. Not just Zooms, used to be for stuff like Alesis Quadraverbs and the like.

There must be a market for it

d8m

Ill do em on here for £15 seeing as I'm cutting out Ebays fee's......

meltedbuzzbox

never underestimate someones laziness. 

Johnnyseven

I've seen ad's for settings for the Boss Space Echo pedal to make you sound like The Shadows for a similar price on ebay.

d8m

I've got some TU-2 settings going cheap as well!

digitalscream

I seem to recall that somebody on eBay was buying a load of the Zoom G9.2tt second hand, "modifying them" (loading a bunch of "specialised" patches in) and then selling them for about £100 more than the new price. People were buying it too.

Frightening.

paul_backskin

People buy Joyo pedals for £120 too. Whaaa?

d8m

paul_backskin said:

People buy Joyo pedals for £120 too. Whaaa?

Only on TGP

ThorpyFX

Ive seen people pay to have their strings changed, £20 in total including the price of strings. crazy

Heartfeltdawn

And people still pay for the 4 cable method... 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Enhance-the-Sound-of-Digitech-Line-6-Pod-XT-Live-MULTI-FX-Boost-the-Sound-Easily-/111289049280?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item19e95820c0

d8m

thorpy6 said:

Ive seen people pay to have their strings changed, £20 in total including the price of strings. crazy

Is that per string?

Danny1969

There's  guys who  program Alesis Q2 eproms with echos of the past shadows patchs. I know loads of Shadows players who have paid extra for the units to come pre programmed with these patchs

Perfectly normal, keyboard players have been paying for patchs for donkeys years. 

And when it comes to Shadows there's a LOT of songs to program, it's a lot of work to do yourself

lasermonkey

Echoes From The Past, IIRC. I remember seeing ads for Quadraverbs with EFTP on ebay at silly prices.

The Quadraverb isn't particularly difficult to programme!

Voxman

Seen the same type of thing for Line 6 Pods/HD's too.  Something is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it & there is a market.  If there are lots of patches and they really are good, then someone will pay to save the time in creating these themselves.  The other thing to appreciate is that these modern units are very complex pieces of kit with so many parameters and options that you really need to have a very good understanding of tone, effects, EQ etc to create tones that (for example) replicate classic/famous tones/artists.  

If someone has invested their time to create such tones, which probably represents hundreds and hundreds of hours of tweaking, and someone is willing to pay for them because of the enormous time it could save them, then it's no different to selling any skill.  So I think it's perfectly valid.

The caveat is of course (a) the patches really do sound decent (and that's always subjective) and meet the buyers expectation, and (b) even the best patches will sound different if played through different guitars, amps etc - although most of these patch buyers tend to want them for recording purposes.

No one's forcing anyone to buy these, and if effort has been put in to create them and there's value perceived that folk are willing to pay for, then good luck to them for their entrepreneur-ism.   Also, consider this - sometimes people buy complex MFX units and really can't cope with them & struggle to get any decent tones.  They might spend £150-500 on such a unit, and without help they might just end up sticking the MFX unit away in a cupboard somewhere or selling it at a big loss.  So, for £10-20 they might just get a range of patches that allows them (a) to finally enjoy and use the unit, and (b) help guide them as to how to go on and build their own patches by looking at and learning from settings/combinations that may never ever have occurred to them.

So, as far as I'm concerned, as long as there is no mis-description, it's all good! 

hobbio

Never said he couldn't, I'm just amazed that it's a thing that people both sell and buy especially at that price!

brojangles

My (possibly ageist) assumption has always been that these are aimed at ageing Shadows fans who don't want to mess about too much with scary digital stuff. A bit like those rip-off services that used to set you up with a PC and an AOL account if you were a retiree with no kids or grandkids to do it for you.

PolarityMan

What is it with the shadows anyway. Never really thought their sound was hard to get.