Musical Instrument Reviews

gerarda

Hi all,
When you decide you want to buy a new piece of kit how seriously do you consider online reviews/demo's? I know their are countless reviews to read with varying opinions, does this affect your final decision to buy?

Ravelleman

I tend to disregard Harmony Central reviews as a starting point. None of the reviews are worthwhile, since every piece of gear always recieved a million billion points, despite its apparent inferiority.

I think fora are usually the way to go if you want useful opinions. At least there is a certain level of interaction involved and you can find out specific information that you need.

Reviews on youtube and the like are also useful, especially for things like effects pedals, where the actual sound is the most important consideration. For guitars, video reviews are fine, but ultimately they're never the deciding factor.

Welease

For me it depends.. Commercial reviewers can have a bias towards advertisers, and user reviews can lack any real knowledge (I find harmony central user reviews really poor)..

I prefer to try kit myself so I can be sure.. if not, then I only take notice if reviews are exceptionally poor or good across the board (because then it's probably true).

If there is a reviewer who i generally agree with then i pay slightly more attention.

Squidgy Black

I avoid ultimate guitar/harmony central like the plague. It's basically lads who just bought the amp who want to rave about it.

I spend a good bit of time on The Gear Page, a lot of it can be a bit snobby and booteek, but there's some really good first hand opinions.

A lot of 'reviews' on YouTube are from people who are endorsed by the company, or sent the products for free in exchange for a raving review. So they tend to be quite biased.

Ravelleman

stetyrrell wrote: »

I avoid ultimate guitar/harmony central like the plague. It's basically lads who just bought the amp who want to rave about it.

I spend a good bit of time on The Gear Page, a lot of it can be a bit snobby and booteek, but there's some really good first hand opinions.

The HC fora can be quite informative, but they're nothing like how they were 2-3 years ago during their golden age.

I like TGP for the quality of information and vast amount of pictures but I get the impression that it's run by a group of Republican voters - it's so conservative and lifeless.

Strings.ie

We get reviews on our website so I thought I'd chip in from that angle.
We don't have many negative reviews about the products we carry which I hope means our product range is well chosen. But I think if a product isn't any good then it is right to receive a critical review. Having said that, if a product we carry got more negative feedback than good I think we'd just stop selling it. Maybe that's not the best business decision but I don't see the point in selling something that p***** people off.

Personally I do read user reviews but as previously mentioned, its best to research at somewhere other than the retailer. Though I have to say, Amazon reviews are fantastic and honest.

Malice

gerarda wrote: »

When you decide you want to buy a new piece of kit how seriously do you consider online reviews/demo's?

For all but my most recent purchase I didn't read any online information, I either just trusted my own two hands when trying the instruments out or I crossed my fingers and hoped that Ishibashi wouldn't let me down .

For my most recent purchase I did a good bit of reading but it was more around people's experiences with the instrument rather than a specific marks-out-of-ten review.

As stetyrrell wrote, I wouldn't bother taking any notice of the reviews on UltimateGuitar.com, they nearly always seem to be brilliant guitars and that's it.

Demeyes

I'll often have a quick read of some user reviews but they are often by people who just got the item so they are in the honeymoon period and they don't notice the flaws. I find looking up clips on youtube or some sound clips pretty informative. Websites like thomann have clips of loads of things so it's good for comparison.