Stereotypes II: Sellers

Do you remember when people use to go to the store to buy things?  That trend is pretty much dead.  Whether for better or worse, I have no opinion.  Eventually, it will probably completely die out.  I envision a day when I tell my grandchild that there was a place called "Blockbuster", where I used to rent/buy movies from.  And with a look of sheer disbelief, he/she will say to me, "Grandpa, are you making up stories to cover up the fact you sh$% your pants again?"  Maybe an exaggeration, but probably not.

The internet is not a "new" thing anymore.  Why talk to a microwave expert, when you can just look online and research it?  Then you can pretentiously bring up the fact you know all the specs on a 4-slot toaster at the water cooler tomorrow.  You can buy anything you want from the safety of the Men's Room stall.  Then eBay and Craigslist happened.  Regular people became not only expert consumers, but also expert sellers.  So on and so forth...

This is all well and good.  However, most people are idiots.  What does this mean for us buyers?  Let me show you:

Misinformed

This person is selling a "Gibson Les Paul Special II" for $125.  I assure you, this did not come out of the Gibson factory.  Maybe from the cesspool of expired lacquer that sits behind the factory, but this is in fact, not a Gibson.  I mainly find it odd that despite the fact that in fancy lettering up on the headstock, it says "Epiphone", this person decided it was a Gibson.  But of course, this type of seller never would include a picture of the headstock to confirm that.  This ad also falls into another category:

My Crap Smells Like Roses, Because It Was MY Crap

Do you remember when I sanded a guitar down to its sealer, and tried to sell it with no upgrades for $100 more than I bought it for?  Now you can drag your crusty panties out of the closet and put whatever price you want on it, cause it's got "stock parts".  Everyone wants to buy things for dirt cheap, and sell their stuff for twice the amount they paid, simply because they're magic and they owned it.

Terminology

People come up with the most hilarious adjectives for their stuff when they're selling.  I ran across this listing this morning, and almost died laughing.  What on earth is "swat"?  It sounds naughty.  Dirty.  Like some sort of fluid excreted from the nether regions of a person's body.  Needless to say, I am withholding my money for a "swat"-less guitar.  

Another term I see frequently is "MUST SELL ASAP!!!".  Maybe this is just me, but when I see that title, my brain immediately thinks "cheap".  But when I open the link, low and behold you've got that puppy listed for a pretentiously high price.  You're going to get low balled if you put that in a listing.  If you don't, please FWD me your email so I can low ball you.  

"Upgrades"

This is one that just blows my mind.  

Here's a guitar.  It was $700 new.  They blew them out in stores because they couldn't sell them for around $500.  But wait, he made upgrades.  Let's see *reads* they put $250 of upgrades into it.  Okay that makes $750 low, $950 high.... and they're asking a grand plus shipping.  But that would be if that guitar was new...

If you buy any guitar, from any store and your 30, 60, 90 day return policy goes away, that is now a used guitar.  I don't care how pristine it is or how little you played it, you own a used guitar.  But even more than this, all of my existence wants to smite people who try to sell a used guitar for substantially more than they bought it for.  Yes, there is a vintage market.  But what about stuff in the past 10 - 15 years?  Here's the hard truth.  Upgrades are nice, but they don't raise the value of a guitar much.  If anything, it makes it only slightly more appealing to sell at a reasonable used price.  If you really want to make your money back, you'll sell off the upgrades and try to get what you can for the stock instrument.  

Partscasters

I'm going to tread lightly on this stereotype because it seems to be hit or miss.  I've built up a couple Partscasters.  It's usually some extravagant scheme that will fulfill all my weird niche desires in a guitar, while having an original look and vibe.  I usually finish it, love it for a day, then realize that I've made some sort of ugly bastard guitar child and want to get rid of it ASAP.  I can tell you from experience, if you try to sell the guitar as a complete, you will almost never get what you have into it back out.  That's not to say it won't ever happen, especially if you build up a parts guitar modeled after a very famous retro guitar.  But if you have a super strat, with sustainer pickups, built in fuzz, and misting fan to keep you cool, it's probably not going to happen.  You're actually better off parting it out, that way people can incorporate pieces of your master scheme into their master scheme.  

Relentless Re-Posters

This is not Photoshop magic.  I kid you not, this is what my local CL looks like if you type in "piano".  If you scroll down, they keep repeating each day for a couple months (at least).  It has to be one person too, because these get re-posted in the same blocks of various pianos.  Someone even made a listing to try to get everyone to "Flag" these posts from popping up.  It worked for awhile, but they've crept up again.  I'm sure you've seen em too.  The WORST part about re-posters, is that they're typically unwilling to lower/negotiate price.  There was a guy with an Epiphone Casino on Craigslist a while back (he's actually resurfaced recently) who kept doing this.  I tried to get it from him at one point actually but he was unwilling to budge on price.  Now he's got a "PRICE DROP!!!" tag in the title, and it's -$25 less than he was asking in the first place.  I don't make the rules on selling, but if you haven't sold something for months or a year, you really should reconsider your price.

Now I don't rule the internet.  I don't make the rules.  These are just my observations.  I've been guilty of a few of these.  Let's just remember to turn that ole brain on when we're selling our old toys.  

- Stonewall

Stonewall Approved Gadgets #1: Electro Harmonix Cathedral

Long ago, when Stonewall's Guide was still gestating within the folds of my brain, I decided that I wanted to provide a resource to fellow musicians/nerds, without having to ball gag everyone with the latest hype and trends that plagues the forums.  Like music, I like to create things I would want to hear/read.  There's nothing more worthless to me, than reading a review about a pedal, which the writer has owned for three days, and ultimately claims "X pedal is the best thing they've ever heard."  If this is the case, you were probably born yesterday.  Tastes change, you get interested in other music, yada yada.  So I'm creating an installment, if you will, where I'll highlight some of my favorite pieces of gear that I'm particularly attached to.  Most of it, I've had for a decent amount of time and still use fairly regularly.  Since I don't get any free gear via sponsorship, I can give an honest pro/con.  I hate the term "review", because that gives off the vibe that I plugged it in for a couple days and formed some silly opinion, rather than really putting something through the gauntlet.  So welcome to the first feature of Stonewall's Approved Gadgets.

I'd like to kick this off regarding a very popular item these days, the reverb pedal.  It seems to be an ever increasing trend of buying/selling/trading reverb units, to get that latest "Shimmer" or "Grandma's Bathroom" reverb sound.  Prices on these puppies are getting higher and higher too (Blue Sky $300, Space $500).  To me though, most reverbs are just boring as F%&$.  (*turns knobs* big space *turns knobs* little space)  I'm still trying to wrap my head around why everyone wants a dedicated modulated reverb (I do have a deep hatred for most Flanger sounds).  I have two requirements that I look for in modern reverbs, decent plate sound and on subtle reverbs, the effect doesn't wash out when a boost is engaged.  I don't know why, but most companies never get the latter requirement right.  Any other added features outside of those requirements I just consider a bonus.  I used to just resort to using amp reverb, which I sometimes forget to shut on and off for various songs during shows, and is a pain.  I also don't want to deal with extra cables from FX loops and footswitches.  Solution?

Electro Harmonix Cathedral

 I will start by saying no, this is not the greatest reverb ever.  But damn, it is cool.  I'm not going to explain what all the knobs do, you're a big kid, but let me give you the basics.  It does 7 different types of reverb that you can save one preset for each type, and an echo.  The "Infinite", is a momentary switch that will hold sound that it captures when you hit the switch until you let it go.  Sort of like the Freeze/Slow Gear pedal, but very different.

Pros

An old pedalboard shot from a short tour I did.

Obviously, I like this pedal because it covers my two requirements.  The Plate setting is very big sounding, which I love for that droney shit.  And on most of the reverb types, it doesn't wash out.  The Plate will wash, but that's just what happens with real Plate reverb anyways.  As long as I have one other type of small reverb sound to emulate amp reverb (knob set to maybe 1-2), I'm happy.  Most people use too much reverb, I like it subtle.  The Room setting does a good job of that.

Added bonuses:  Cheaper than most reverbs.  I think it's maybe $220 street price?  Snag one used for $150 and you're set.  That's the price of the ever-so-popular RV5, and unlike the RV5, it doesn't sound like crap.  Presets?  Awesome.  It's nice to be able to just save a couple different 'verbs and recall them quickly.  I'm lazy.  Having an extra delay is nice too.  It'll sort of (I say sort of, and I'll address that in the Cons) of knock out the need to have a simple digital delay on your board for long repeats.  The Reverse doesn't really work like how a Reverse Delay would, but I actually use this a lot for a long, 90% wet, droning sound.  Very This Will Destroy You sounding.

The "Infinite" feature is definitely my favorite bonus.  I own a Freeze and Superego, and I must say, I really like the way this "freezes" the sound more.  A)  It swells into the freeze, rather than lock it in right away.  Sounds more natural to my ears.  B)  You can use the momentary switch to control how fast you want to release, by repeatedly releasing the switch for a couple moments at a time.  Like easing on the break in a car.  Again, more natural sounding than just killing the sound.  

The pedal is also built like a tank.  Which is actually pretty strange, because I've had a number of build issues with EHX stuff before.  This pedal has seen tons of shows, and I've even dropped it a couple times (yeah, like you've never done that).  Still works great.  As lame as this sounds, the graphic is pretty cool too.  

Cons

Since the goal isn't for me to gloss over the nasty stuff, here are a number of things that I wish could be improved about this pedal.  It's got the old Holy Grail algorithm as one of the preset types.  Which means all the old problems the Holy Grail had such as, being useless after 12 o' clock, volume drop, etc.  Again, some of the reverb types will wash out, which is really frustrating.  It basically means I can't use that reverb unless I don't anticipate doing any sort of gain staging.  But like I said, a majority of reverbs have this problem so I just choose to deal with it on this specific unit.  There's also a slight volume dip on a couple reverbs, especially the Accu Spring.  

As I eluded to before, the Echo is nice, but isn't very good.  For some reason it doesn't "cut through" very well.  I had heard about delays having this issue, but I've never really had this problem with any of the ones I owned, so it was very noticeable discovery for me.  Even if you turn the Blend (aka Depth) way up, it seems to duck out regardless.  I don't really use the delay much due to this (not that I really needed another delay).  

My final real complaint is that the white selector knob can be a bit sensitive.  Meaning if you're playing a show and the pedal is bumped too hard, it'll bypass your preset to whatever the knobs are at.  I end up just taping it down.  Not really a big issue, you just have to watch out for it.  

Improvements?

The last two "issues" I'll talk about, are more recommendations than cons.  I wish this pedal (actually any reverb) had a spillover circuit.  I'd like to turn it off and have the sound decay out naturally vs. stopping abruptly.  I actually have a looper on my board, just so I can sample short segments of this, and slowly fade it out, cause of this problem (some delays do this too).  I know that would require the pedal to "lose" its True-Bypass, but you're a child if you really believe all of your pedals need to be True Bypass.

Also, it would be super amazing if someone (Walrus audio?) offered a mod, so you could have an expression pedal control the "Infinite" function.  That way you could control the swell in and out better.  Not necessary but it'd be convenient.  

Anyways.  There are so many cool usable things about this pedal that I just love.  I've had since it came out, and I've used it on everything I've done ever since.  I think I tried to sell it once, but I put it at a stupid high price so no one would buy it (a big indicator that you really don't want to let something go).  I don't really care whether it has a Shimmer effect or not.  I tried a pedal with them shimmers, and I could never really use that sound in a musical context (it's harder than you think without sounding cheesy).  I've never been so blown away by more expensive pedals that I've felt the need to make an "upgrade".  If you're selling a $500 reverb, it should sound/have features that are $300 better than my $200 reverb.  I'm intrigued by the Eventide space, but it's way too much to shell out for.  So I just stick with what works.

- Stonewall