TGP history lesson

[baxen]

I've been aware of this forum for a little under 2 years and am curious about the early days. How did the forum evolve and did the early members ever imagine the size and scope of its current state? I for one have learned a lot and laughed a lot reading the posts and am very glad it exists.

[90wreck]

One word that made TGP what is today.
TAG.


Honestly...The amps/pedal forums has taken it a long way IMO.

[re-animator]

The size of TGP increases incrementally with each robben ford album.

[Randaddy]

Originally Posted by baxen

I've been aware of this forum for a little under 2 years and am curious about the early days. How did the forum evolve and did the early members ever imagine the size and scope of its current state? I for one have learned a lot and laughed a lot reading the posts and am very glad it exists.

I've been here for a little under two years also, and I agree with you. I've learned lots of great things and laughed much.

Hurray, TGP!

[P90Nut]

What a great idea for a thread! I gain so much in information & laughter from this site.


Mark

[michael.e]

Oi.........





If I feel like it later, I will elaborate..



I am crusty. I am also not a standard Blooze guy..


Emee

[Ken Ho]

no blooze or Robben here either, but yes, I get a lot of laughs from this place. There are some very funny buggers here, and while it can get serious at tiems, moslty people see the light side of stuff.

A lot of knowledge and motivation too.

Thank you TGP !!

[VaughnC]

Long story short:
TGP started its life as "The PRS Forum" and later became affiliated with PRS guitars. After a few years, the Forum owner decided to break the affiliation with PRS guitars and the forum was then renamed "The Gear Page". A few thousand subscribers later, here we are .

[Scott Peterson]

Vaughn's pretty close.

At first, there was the PRS Forum. And it was good. Affiliation with PRS followed, it was good. We had PRS Forum Events there for 4 or 5 years; precursors to the current PRS event's they have now.

We had enormous non-PRS related traffic in the Amps/Cabs section of the PRS forum that was as heavy a load on the servers as the PRS related discussion was. I thought it was a good opportunity to create a new forum independant of the PRS Forum with absolutely no corporate affiliation whatsoever.

When I was a kid, there was a small local music store in Allen Park, Michigan called "A&R Music" (it's still there). It was my thing to go there on Saturday during the day in my teens before I was old enough to drive, riding my bike close to 45 minutes or so to get there one way, and play gear and talk to musicians. You had national acts, regional acts, local acts and all sorts of guys showing up through the day to buy strings, speakers, etc. that were in the area for gigs that weekend and they'd hang out and talk. Show you some stuff on guitar, sort of mentoring young guys like me and others. The store was cool enough to let me put my dream guitar (which I sill own) on layaway for over a year and pay $5 or $10 a week towards it as I could. Never any issue with me being there, playing gear, nothing.

The Gear Page was my idea of making that happen on a world-wide basis. A place for guitarists and musicians to hang out and respectfully talk shop and music.

When the "Amps and Cabs" section of The PRS Forum was getting as much or more traffic than the "PRS Guitars" section of that site - and most cats there were not PRS guys at all - there was serious consideration for simply deleting that section outright. It was my idea to break it off and create a forum that was not tied to any manufacturer and accepted no advertising so that it was truly independent of that sort of influence. Brian said, "It's your baby..." and off we went.

Brian and I felt the PRS Forum had run it's course when PRS started trying to exert control over the content of the Forum. That wasn't something in Brian or my DNA. So we closed it and redoubled our efforts with TGP.

And here we are today.

[twinrider1]

Originally Posted by Scott Peterson

...(snip)
Brian and I felt the PRS Forum had run it's course when PRS started trying to exert control over the content of the Forum. ...

Is that something you can go into, in a general sense? Was it as harmless as "hey, we're rolling out a new model and we'll send you one to try out. If you like it, talk it up on the forum?" Or was it more heavy-handed, "Member X is hacking on our product, ban him."

Okay, here is where I was going to write that I understood if you didn't feel it was proper to go into it. But I want to know, so spill it!

[GAT]

The PRS Forum begat TGP and Scott and Brian saw that it was good.

I'm not gonna elaborate who has been thrown out of Eden...

[sosomething]

I've been here for a few years and I still have no idea what's going on.

[Scott Peterson]

Originally Posted by twinrider1

Is that something you can go into, in a general sense? Was it as harmless as "hey, we're rolling out a new model and we'll send you one to try out. If you like it, talk it up on the forum?" Or was it more heavy-handed, "Member X is hacking on our product, ban him."

Okay, here is where I was going to write that I understood if you didn't feel it was proper to go into it. But I want to know, so spill it!

No one was ever sent any gear, nor given any gear for review or to talk anything up. Brian got a PRS Bass as a gift at the last PRS Forum Event. I got... a free mousepad.

They were not happy with pricing discussions online and they were not happy with negative posts about dealers. They asked us to remove them. We said no.

Nothing major and no big secret.

[Han Solo]

I got... a free mousepad

[Donbo]

What years correspond with that nice little history lesson?
And secondly, where do these Smilies come from?