People don’t make videos with you specifically in mind. They make them to showcase the sounds and styles that they like
There are essentially infinite variables in testing. Passive or active, P or J or Stingray or Bongo or Thunderbird or Rickenbacker or EB-0, which make and model and version, regular or aftermarket pickups, flats or rounds or half rounds or ground wounds or tapes and do you want them in stainless or nickel, are they brand new strings or old dead ones, short scale or medium or long or extra long, regular or fanned fret, pick or fingers, if it's a pick is it thick or thin or celluloid or wood or acrylic or felt or rubber, DI out or mic a cab or a mix of both, if mic what cab and what mic and what placement, any post processing, what techniques will you be playing with, and etc etc etc etc. Any change to any of those variables has a significant impact on the overall sound of the demo.
Even if we decide some arbitrary feature set is the "standard" (34" passive Fender American P bass with factory pickups, brand new Ernie Ball Slinky stainless roundwounds, fingers only, DI out only, playing the G major pentatonic scale at 120 bpm) you can hand that exact setup to five different players and get 5 radically different sounds. You're correct in saying that youtube videos of people playing an amp aren't super useful to knowing how that amp will sound for you, but I think you're overly simplifying the issue if you think that is a solvable problem.
I think this is a big part of the answer, plus the fact that most of these folks are doing reviews in the hope of generating as many views on their videos as possible. The type of video that might be the most helpful from the perspective of the average potential buyer of an amp isn't necessarily the same as the type of video that will attract the most views and encourage the viewers to check out more of the reviewer's content. I personally don't find Nate Navarro's reviews super useful from a pure gear-buying standpoint because his playstyle and tone are very different from what I typically go for, but I have to imagine he gets drastically more views because of his style and approach compared to if he was just doing more basic reviews of the type OP mentions.
@superheavyfunk You're right, but I don't want reviewers to have
me in mind either. In fact, I play the furthest thing from a Fender. My idea here is that most bass players have an idea of how a passive Jazz or Precision sounds. If you watch That Pedal Show or Andy Martin on the guitar set, they showcase different amps and pedals using Strats, Teles and Les Pauls, playing chords and riffs. They're not showcasing gear playing pinch harmonics on a seven-string multiscale Ibanez.
@Balog does have a point though that other things matter (strings, pick, etc.) But I still think it'd be a better representation, as long as the information is there (what kind of strings, etc.)
@MCS4 You're probably right, too. YouTube is a great resource, but I guess the priority of most YouTubers is to make money, not giving accurate information.
Bass Bonedo is one of the exceptions, but his AG vs TH video didn't
seem entirely accurate. I've not played either amps in a while, so I might be wrong, but but:
Treble and low mids (don't know if they're the same frequency, but whatever) are boosted a bit on both - good.
The drive on the TH is at 11 o'clock, which seems a bit high to make a good comparison. Then again, I suppose you could argue that that's the TH sound because you can't really turn it completely off.
But also the bass is boosted on the TH, but not on the AG. The AG does have the Deep switch on, but IIRC, the Deep switch was way more than a tiny bass bump.
This is just one part of the video. But overall I felt like his videos were better than all the others I've watched.
I'll listen to your video in a bit, @carsonchilders
