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Whose demo vids do you trust the most?

Whose demo vids do you trust the most?

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    113
#22
Pro Guitar Shop wins hands down for me. Nice d.i. recordings and great, disparate playing to stretch the product. There's also a consistency that really helps you guage things well.
I hate demos in boomy rooms that are badly recorded or set too low against bad backing tapes but my biggest hate is bad/lazy playing. Sadly they only test products they're selling so I may never hear them review Markbass stuff. Just realised you're only referring to bass demos but Andy Martin still rocks.
 
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#23
Glad you brought this up because bass doesn't have as many options for great demos as guitar players have.

Most talk way too much. Others are demoed by players with totally unique styles which are not helpful. Some are demoed by players that bass isn't their main instrument or they are trying to play something beyond their skill level.

On the plus side, Andertons can be fun if you've got the time, but I usually just want to hear the instrument.
The bass whisperer is good.
Reverb.com has some of the best I've heard. Wish they did more.
 
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#24
I like having a couple options to watch and sort of get a feel for the different ways a pedal can sound. Any demo with a jazz bass is def not going to sound anywhere near what my Warwick’s sound is, but since that’s the ‘norm’ I have to just do my own sort of adjusting of what I know my tone is. When darkglass pedals came out, it seemed to have brought out more versatility in the bass/gear people use for their demos, so that’s been a huge help.

Any sort of talking is an automatic skip, if I am searching a media site for a demo then by that point I already know everything I need to know about the pedal and I just want to hear how it sounds. This is kind of against the grain as it seems the more popular videos are ones where they just talk the whole time. I don’t really get it, but whatever floats your boat I guess.
 
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#25
I haven't seen enough great ones to have any favorites. But if you're doing any kind of gear demo and the sound quality is crap, you've already failed. So I look for reasonably good sound quality, decent technique and "base" tone (oh god, guitar gear reviews are the worst, they play an overdrive pedal solely into an already overdriven boutique amp, complete waste of time), minimal if any talking (basically anything you want to say can be put on screen as text). And FFS, have the amp volume loud enough in the room so I'm not hearing your pick or fingers on the strings.

And for most effects reviews, the sound should be coming from a well miked cab. If you give me a DI of an overdrive or fuzz, that doesn't tell me anything.

Sadly, these things are generally pretty lacking. One of these days I might get around to making some of my own. I play multiple instruments, am very familiar with a lot of gear (and buy and sell a lot of it), and have a bit of background in video production, and a lot of background in sound engineering. So I doubt I could be any worse than the average. Maybe one day youtube will have a "voice over" function, where people can choose to upload a narration track (or the other way around, add a music track) and the viewer can switch that on or off and change the level relative to the main audio.
 
#27
I like Zach Rizer’s demos (@Proton Lenny )probably the most. My one issue with Zach is that he can make anything sound good (the best example is the tracking that he is able to eeek out of the Boss Oc-2) so I need to adjust my expectations to my setup, my technique and my ability.

I feel like Excane uses so many gain stages in his setup that his dirt videos tend to sound kinda alike. I love the gear he reviews but his sound is not my sound.

Pedals and effects is fun but kinda meh. I did like the Fuzz Wars and it was how we found the Fuzz Against the Machine.
 
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#28
I will add that Zach is about the only one who can talk on a demo and I don’t skip it. At least he is explaining what he’s doing and why he’s doing it, and plays a great example of the pedals strong points along with it. Not just holding the pedal in his hand and saying how good it sounds and crap like that.
 
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#30
brianrost said:
I don't "trust" anybody. Don't forget they are all in the advertising business. :whistle:
Click to expand...
This may or may not be true....I don't know the business dealings involved, but I personally have never felt like a hard sell was on in any demo vid I've seen. Credit to Hunter, even though I don't find his videos useful, he seems to have no problem telling us when he feels a pedal is not working out for him. That to me shows integrity beyond him being an "advertiser" as you put it.
 
#33
I definitely see how Zach's vids are useful. For me though, he's a bit too experimental in his sounds. I tend to only play with overdrive and a tad of chorus. For noise makers and experimental bassists though I can see how he is a good one to watch.
 
#34
brianrost said:
I don't "trust" anybody. Don't forget they are all in the advertising business. :whistle:
Click to expand...
Sometimes it feels like I’m making a commercial. The problem is the more straightforward and neutral I make a video, the less ‘attention’ it gets, generally speaking. There’s a balance between making a video look and sound good, and actually portraying a pedals actually sound and use.

That being said, everything I’ve demoed so far (and in the future) is a pedal I enjoyed playing and would spend money to buy it if I weren’t making the demo. I have sent plenty of pedals back to the manufacturer because I didn’t like it, and have told companies no when I don’t agree with their business model or read too many negative things about them, things like that. That kind of real world filtering doesn’t ever come through to the viewers, and I don’t get extra views and subscribers from demoing just any pedal, so at the end of the day I know I am being honest, and making sure people that follow me or find my videos have a sense of trust that I am not trying to sell anything, but showing how awesome gear is that I enjoy already.

Also, other than compression I hardly use any other post processing so that what I heard from the beginning is what comes out on the end. (Comp doesn’t change the sound but helps with the overall mix to help balance the drum/bass levels and allow the video as a whole to sound better, again not the tone/pedal flavor, but just the overall mix, if that makes sense)
 
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#37
brianrost said:
I meant people who are making money from their videos.
Click to expand...
I can’t speak for everyone, but the norm for me over the years has been, whatever pedal you demo you get to keep. Joe from just bass it has done a few that were ‘loaners’ which is usually the case for more expensive things and basses/guitars. Between him and I there’s never been an offer to pay for a demo to be done. So unless we sell whatever pedal we get, we dont make money other than YouTube ads, which is in itself a pretty low amount. Until this year I was maxing our at $10 a month. Now I’m at about $30 which basically pays for Adobe Premeire and photoshop, so I’m just now at the point where my videos are paying for themselves and I get some free pedals.
 
#39
Bassbeater said:
Anderton's is pretty consistent for new gear, though not bass specific. I tend to watch a high volume of vids from multiple sources(when available) on a specific piece of gear before buying.
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I stopped watching the Anderton's videos when they did the blindfolded test of the modeling amps and the tube amps and neither Chappers nor Lee could consistently tell them apart and THEN of course Lee STILL said he thought tube amps were clearly better. Could there possibly be a clearer case of listening with your eyes???? hahaha gimme a break.
 
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