Endorsements that make you trust/want a product less.

GuitarGuy08

GuitarGuy08

Well-known member
It's late and I'm tired so this will be fairly short and to the point.

Are there any pieces of gear that when you see someone specific endorse it, it makes you trust/want it less.

My example: Vertex Effects.

Binged the videos for awhile sometime back and then did some deeper studying on them.

I remember reading something like they shipped over Chinese pedals at some point, swapped a component or two, and then sold it at boutique prices or something akin to it.

This, among other things have made me trust not only their own products less, but products they would endorse as well.

I mean, I guess Esteban would be an easy shot but who else for you, if any at all?
 
Marty Friedman is my favorite guitar player of all time. All time. Has never played a bad note in his life as far as I’m concerned.

Anytime he endorses something I start laughing because I’ve literally heard him say “I don’t care about gear, my tech or the studio guy will make it sound good…I just want to play”…lol

Love him but watching him endorse stuff is hilarious.

Beyond that…when a new product is released and the wave of YT zombie reviewers start popping their vids out, I just start hitting ignore channel like a maniac!
 
I found an entire reddit thread about 3y old. This is "supposedly" legit from Robben Ford and he is being a very kind and forgot soul it seems. More than most.

People definitely deserve the mercy of second chances so I am not trying to be "that guy" but anyway, here is that post of what RF supposedly stated:

Open letter from Robben Ford regarding Vertex Effects After some time and a lot of thought, I've decided to publicly endorse a boost pedal designed by Mason Marangella for his company, Vertex Effects.

Many of you reading this know that Mason was exposed last year for having put his label on some cheap, Chinese-built, Wah-Wah pedals and sold them as his own design. This act came back to bite him severely, and most turned and distanced themselves as far as possible. Especially those of us who had endorsed him personally. Understandable.

I myself kept a distance. He called to apologize to me and posted an open letter online to apologize to everyone who might have been injured from his deceit. And, since then, he has been making good on his promise to refund, rebate, credit and/or exchange anyone who had purchased one of his fake pedals(not a small feat). Perhaps more importantly, he is addressing what turns out to be a problem akin to alcoholism in the same way an alcoholic might, with a twelve step program, as well as ongoing therapy and giving back to his community.

Many might just choose to hide after such a public humiliation, but I see Mason making every effort a man can make to clean up the past and make a new life for himself.

I use Mason's Boost pedal. It's the most important pedal on my board and it would feel a little hypocritical to me to use his pedal and, otherwise, put him down. Besides, as said, the guy is seriously trying.

Mason has of course offered me a royalty for my endorsement of the pedal. I will have that royalty paid directly to a charity and will profit not one dime from sales.

Everyone has told me not to do this. Why stick my neck out? It's a good question. I'm counting on human decency.

-Robben Ford
 
Nashville Riff Co said:
Marty Friedman is my favorite guitar player of all time. All time. Has never played a bad note in his life as far as I’m concerned.

Anytime he endorses something I start laughing because I’ve literally heard him say “I don’t care about gear, my tech or the studio guy will make it sound good…I just want to play”…lol

Love him but watching him endorse stuff is hilarious.

Beyond that…when a new product is released and the wave of YT zombie reviewers start popping their vids out, I just start hitting ignore channel like a maniac!
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That's a good point about Marty! Very cool take there. Yeah the YT madness is just....ugh.... It's gone so downhill so fast.
 
GuitarGuy08 said:
That's a good point about Marty! Very cool take there. Yeah the YT madness is just....ugh.... It's gone so downhill so fast.
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Leave it to a few talented humans to devise a really great thing and then the rest of the distribution curve participants to wring the fun out of it lol

I’m all for trying gear and having fun with it, but there’s a whole industry of people whose livelihood is now peddling gear on YT!

I just always go back to this vid of Jason Becker at his high school talent show playing yngwie on I think a (cort?) Strat through a peavey amp 😅



We should all spend our hard earned money on fun stuff, but ain’t no substitute for talent/hard work

Just my 2 cents
 
I don't know if I'd totally write off a product just because all its reviews come out at once, which telegraphs that it's clearly a paid wave of product placement with an NDA that just expired. As long as you understand you're watching bought-and-paid-for commercials, it makes things easier. You can ignore any subjective "this sounds great" statements but still check out the stuff they can't outright lie about, like features and tones themselves, to see if it solves any problems you might have. Usually any company with a big enough marketing budget to pay for all those ads and coordinate a marketing campaign is also going to have a good enough R&D and production department to not make total junk.

Aside from that, I'd say I steer clear of anything George Lynch puts his name on just because it's kind of known that he'll put his name on literally anything he doesn't use if the money is right.

Besides him, it's tough to think of anybody so radioactive as to make me dislike an otherwise legit product just because they talk about it. Maybe Glenn Fricker? But the logic there isn't so much that I'll automatically hate something just because he likes it, but rather because his channel is like a filter for junk bullshit aimed specifically at taking advantage of beginners, like any product that bubbles up to the surface on that channel is most likely going to be for people who don't know how to spot crap when they see it.
 
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Nashville Riff Co said:
I’m all for trying gear and having fun with it, but there’s a whole industry of people whose livelihood is now peddling gear on YT!
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That's the key word here - it's an industry. Their industry is getting you to buy more bullshit, and the vast majority of the time they are completely full of shit. Think about all the demos of Panama amps a decade ago. They sounded bad, dissolved into dust, and every guitar player on earth couldn't get enough of them.

Most of the examples people can think of aren't THAT bad, but that's the thing; it's all about the degree of bullshit. Not whether it's bullshit or not.

One example IMO is the Revv amps. Most of their amps cost just as much as the big boys round these parts, and I swear to god I can't hear a difference between a generator mark I and a 5150II. Get a couple of the usual youtube suspects to slather that demo with delay, the axe mesa OS IR, and put it in a mix, and all of the sudden you have high margin stuff like pedals and lunchboxes flying out the door.

I don't mean to pick on them specifically, because a million brands are guilty of it. Fortin is probably the worst.

Every time a new product comes out and the wave of videos by Rabea, Fluff, etc comes out, it immediately makes my GAS turn off. I need the hype to die down so I can get a reliable measure on what the product is, what it sounds like, what the QC and customer service is like, and whether I'm remotely interested.

Most of the time i'm not, because i'm too busy playing music to play musical chairs in Madison Square Bedroom.
 
Guitars/basses/amps/guns. All things I want to try for myself before I buy. Eric Clapton could endorse it and I'm still gonna wanna play it first.
 
DanTravis62 said:
Like the new guy, as soon as a product is being demoed by a bunch of channels at the same time, I lose interest most of the time.
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stratjacket said:
The only time I don’t like reviews is when someone is trying to demo a pedal or an amp and they do a full production mix instead of just playing the demo gear in isolation.
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If it’s a new pedal, I kind of expect reviews and demos to pop up the day it’s released. At the same time, I know those reviews are all going to be sunshine and roses, which is fine if you know you’re getting subjectivity when you start watching the video. Gimme sounds.
 
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