Who will refuse to watch "The Pedal Movie" on principle alone?

A

AdrianFripp

Member
Messages
2
casiotone1331 said:
I'm not going to watch it, but for some pretty valid reasons other than principle.

One, the entire pedal industry has devolved into a litmus test of reactions and self-promotion.

Two, there has already been quite a good documentary on the phenomenon of pedals (Fuzz: The Sound That Changed The World) that nobody seems to remember anymore now that social media has collectively erased our brains.

Let me back up a bit: I LOVE PEDALS. I love guitars. I love playing guitar. When I watch a movie or ad or promotion about someone else playing guitar, I am not playing my guitar. Heck, when I am angrily being a curmudgeon online, I am not playing my guitar. This makes Jack a dull boy.

I recall a time where pedals truly were innovative, but now the pedal industry mirrors a lot of what is wrong with the music industry. Every garage startup company that springs up on Instagram, every shiny new overdrive that is a "modified" clone of something that rhymes with "Rube Cleaner", is one more piece installed on the world's largest vanilla soft serve machine we line up at NAMM to witness every year.

Don't get me wrong, there are truly some innovative designs that come out, but half the time the GAS is perpetuated by marketing and not the actual product itself. In the old days, a pedal was released and you went to a guitar shop and tried it out, without objective influence. Now, we wait for internet superstars or influencers to react to products and extrapolate their expectations onto our own. We consume based on this, we lack any opinion of our own because if we think freely, we will surely see through the BS and realize we don't need ANOTHER OD.

So do I want to watch a movie by what would deem a large market enterprise that utilizes starf*cker tactics to further embed a lack of individuality on the masses, generating another slew of copycat artists and mindless bouts of gear fetish that makes us talk about pedals more than actually use them?

Sweet mother of god I need to stop drinking coffee after 5PM...

Edit: Just realized I was post #169... Nice
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Sounds like a principled rationale to me (much of which I agree with...).
 
skipburz

skipburz

Silver Supporting Member
Messages
265
casiotone1331 said:
Oh for sure! I'm just tired of hearing the same kinds of effects over and over. The thing is, designing something new and unique that isn't a one trick pony or a feature-creep mess is almost impossible these days. I find myself asking myself "who asked for this" almost 80% of the time.

Maybe it's the fact that I've built things since I was a teen - when I open up a pedal and point out all the little snippets that were lifted from previous designs makes me realize that half the industry are just graphic designers with a penchant for soldering. Most of the real gurus and famous builders have already had their say and then some, with pomp and circumstance, mind you. The substance has gone down, the brand presence has increased. Back in the day, you heard nothing from the builders - now, it's like everyone that owns a pedal company is an influencer of sorts. And the collective internet strikes the gavel unless companies scramble to release one more pedal that year. This is why JHS has so many damn overdrives, and NAMM is almost a political event.

Old school dictates if you have to tell someone you're King Sh!t, you simply aren't. While I'm not from the old school, my mentors certainly were.

I think about the vision of the future that Aldous Huxley painted for us - the fact that the human race will not be led into oblivion but surrounded by a "sea of irrelevance", where the din of constant distraction numbs us to reality. That's what we all are, just distracted. If we dropped this façade and bought with our ears, we would find that quality is not necessarily quantity.

I'm sure it is a brilliantly shot movie with some informative interviews. At some point my interest may be piqued to check it out. I'm not saying to boycott Reverb for some agenda against seller fees, etc... For that I could care less about, its a business model. But I just feel like it would be a lot less interesting around here if opinions were shelved. We are too often led in this industry rather than leading ourselves through it.
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Huxley, hmmm....You think it's a little ironic that you're quoting Huxley's skepticism about modern technology and how noisy the world has become on a forum dedicated to modern music (noise) technology? And if Huxley was worried about the "din of constant distraction," perhaps he needed a treble boost to sparkle up that "din" a bit. I can recommend four or five. They're pretty much the same circuit, but the graphics on the cases are unique and pretty cool!
 
cygnusx1

cygnusx1

Member
Messages
951
I'll watch it. History of what we use to make music we love? If you don't watch it, there may be a very large stick jammed somewhere you need to pull out. Just sayin.:dunno
 
M

mattier

Member
Messages
33
casiotone1331 said:
I'm not going to watch it, but for some pretty valid reasons other than principle.

One, the entire pedal industry has devolved into a litmus test of reactions and self-promotion.

Two, there has already been quite a good documentary on the phenomenon of pedals (Fuzz: The Sound That Changed The World) that nobody seems to remember anymore now that social media has collectively erased our brains.

Let me back up a bit: I LOVE PEDALS. I love guitars. I love playing guitar. When I watch a movie or ad or promotion about someone else playing guitar, I am not playing my guitar. Heck, when I am angrily being a curmudgeon online, I am not playing my guitar. This makes Jack a dull boy.

I recall a time where pedals truly were innovative, but now the pedal industry mirrors a lot of what is wrong with the music industry. Every garage startup company that springs up on Instagram, every shiny new overdrive that is a "modified" clone of something that rhymes with "Rube Cleaner", is one more piece installed on the world's largest vanilla soft serve machine we line up at NAMM to witness every year.

Don't get me wrong, there are truly some innovative designs that come out, but half the time the GAS is perpetuated by marketing and not the actual product itself. In the old days, a pedal was released and you went to a guitar shop and tried it out, without objective influence. Now, we wait for internet superstars or influencers to react to products and extrapolate their expectations onto our own. We consume based on this, we lack any opinion of our own because if we think freely, we will surely see through the BS and realize we don't need ANOTHER OD.

So do I want to watch a movie by what would deem a large market enterprise that utilizes starf*cker tactics to further embed a lack of individuality on the masses, generating another slew of copycat artists and mindless bouts of gear fetish that makes us talk about pedals more than actually use them?

Sweet mother of god I need to stop drinking coffee after 5PM...

Edit: Just realized I was post #169... Nice
Click to expand...
I was going to say one of my favorite documentaries is “Fuzz: The Sound that Changes the World”, actually it’s free on YouTube and I watch once a year I bet. Great movie.
 
Gugerty

Gugerty

Member
Messages
22
<<In the old days,>>

Right. The good ole’ days when pedal, guitar and music corporations didn’t use marketing strategies to sell products; they were only in it for the purity of tone, not to sell products. Our first listen occurred in some kind of sound-enabled social vacuum - we didn’t have any preconceived notions about about the product or it’s performance. Our first listen was pure and objective and good.
 
casiotone1331

casiotone1331

Member
Messages
65
Gugerty said:
<<In the old days,>>

Right. The good ole’ days when pedal, guitar and music corporations didn’t use marketing strategies to sell products; they were only in it for the purity of tone, not to sell products. Our first listen occurred in some kind of sound-enabled social vacuum - we didn’t have any preconceived notions about about the product or it’s performance. Our first listen was pure and objective and good.
Click to expand...
Off (or on) topic, nothing... and I mean NOTHING... has ever come close to the feeling I first got when I was 14 years old and I saved up my money to buy my first pedal, a BOSS BF-2 Flanger. The feeling of actually going to a brick and mortar place, buying it without even testing it out, and hearing it for the first time, without any outside influence really. I knew BOSS was good for the money, I knew I wanted a flanger.

No amount of videos of Andy jamming, or any flashy Instagram ad, or unboxing has ever scraped the surface of that moment. Buying stuff back then was really something. Nowadays its almost like everyone has managed to figure out a way to make tangible items intangible if that makes any sense...
 
SweetSAAB

SweetSAAB

Silver Supporting Member
Messages
318
casiotone1331 said:
Off (or on) topic, nothing... and I mean NOTHING... has ever come close to the feeling I first got when I was 14 years old and I saved up my money to buy my first pedal, a BOSS BF-2 Flanger. The feeling of actually going to a brick and mortar place, buying it without even testing it out, and hearing it for the first time, without any outside influence really. I knew BOSS was good for the money, I knew I wanted a flanger.

No amount of videos of Andy jamming, or any flashy Instagram ad, or unboxing has ever scraped the surface of that moment. Buying stuff back then was really something. Nowadays its almost like everyone has managed to figure out a way to make tangible items intangible if that makes any sense...
Click to expand...
Let it go. We get it, you don't want to watch it. Move on.
 
bigtone23

bigtone23

Member
Messages
6,248
I'll watch anything that's music industry. I love all of it, warts and beauty marks.
My first pedal was a gift. 1980. My older sister's boyfriend gave me a Maestro FZ1S because he knew I wanted to rock, but had a small Airline amp that didn't give up the goods. I'll never forget that moment, nor the next 2 hours I spent in total magic land playing the pedal and discovering the world of fuzz. I turned all knobs to 10 and freaked out!
I really wish I still had that pedal. It was truly a life changing moment.
 
Gugerty

Gugerty

Member
Messages
22
casiotone1331 said:
Off (or on) topic, nothing... and I mean NOTHING... has ever come close to the feeling I first got when I was 14 years old and I saved up my money to buy my first pedal, a BOSS BF-2 Flanger. The feeling of actually going to a brick and mortar place, buying it without even testing it out, and hearing it for the first time, without any outside influence really. I knew BOSS was good for the money, I knew I wanted a flanger.

No amount of videos of Andy jamming, or any flashy Instagram ad, or unboxing has ever scraped the surface of that moment. Buying stuff back then was really something. Nowadays its almost like everyone has managed to figure out a way to make tangible items intangible if that makes any sense...
Click to expand...
Please stop with the nostalgia rage. Please.
 
O

Olinmonsoon

Member
Messages
3
“Principle” wow. Look at the fighters in here standing up for principles. Full on Tom Morello vibes fighting the big bad pedal industry. you go girl.

i will watch it. If it educates or entertains me that’ll be good and if it highlights the problems I know already exist in the pedal industry that’ll be just as good.

i tend to look at both sides of a heavy opinionated subject and not just shy away from things I personally don’t like or agree with. Better to ha e the knowledge of both sides before and opinion than to find your opinion and then only go in the direction of it.

Personally I think I’ll be shivering from douche chills after watching it. It’ll be something to talk about with my musician friends.
 
danoverb

danoverb

Member
Messages
373
amz-fx said:
More reading on pedal history:

www.premierguitar.com

When Exactly Did Boutique Pedals Become a Thing?

Travel back in time 30+ years and meet the circuit-tweakers who started a stompbox craze.
www.premierguitar.com www.premierguitar.com

Best regards, Jack
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" “Reverb did an interview with me at NAMM,” he says. “They were doing something about the history of pedals, and they said that half the companies they spoke to got started with my book [laughs], so they figured they better talk to me.”" -- wonder what that could be in reference to :)

MrSage said:
If there are no bare feet or sandals, I ain’t watching it.
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I've never been more creatively conflicted in my life
 
Midlifecrisis

Midlifecrisis

Member
Messages
17
whatizitman said:
Cool. I only watch original or vintage pedal documentaries. They were just made better then. Anything since are just clones of the originals. Clonumentaries
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Had you said there is little innovation and a lot of copying and refinement, I'd agree. But it's categorically not true to say there is no innovation. There are several recent innovative designs, especially on the digital side of things.

Owning both vintage and new stuff I'd differ as to whether things were really built better historically. Seems like one eyed nostalgia.
 
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