This Forum Never Really Did Recover :(

[Sad Darwin]

This forum used to be the best place on the internet to find out about new pedals and gear for musicians. It was my default place to find gear news. It was a Mecca for gear heads and aspiring pedal makers alike. The first post in the morning would be on page 4 by afternoon on any given day. It's sad to see what the format change did to this place. I really do miss it.

[bieke]

yup, well it took 5 years and 3 software changes to get to this point

so give it another 5 years and hopefully the software will improve

 

and HCEF isn't the only forum that went downhill, Amps, Bass forum, Acoustic, Open Jam also suffer from this

the explanation given is that forums are a thing of the past

well, they are, but still, other forums are doing well and are even growing

and have taken over the lead from HC

 

also, HC has been giving birth to a lot of new forums

at least they should receive credit for that

a couple of these are really good, yet small communities

 

and HC is no longer the best place to find out about new gear, they somehow don't get the scoops

I read about new gear on other sites and a lot of the times there's no mention of it here

also, since HC is owned by Gibson Brands, there will not be much news about competing products,

like Fender guitars ...

 

 

[Phil O'Keefe]

a couple of these are really good, yet small communities

 

and HC is no longer the best place to find out about new gear, they somehow don't get the scoops

I read about new gear on other sites and a lot of the times there's no mention of it here

also, since HC is owned by Gibson Brands, there will not be much news about competing products,

like Fender guitars ...

 

 

Sorry bieke, but you're incorrect about that.

 

Since HC was acquired by Gibson Brands, I've been reviewing things no differently than I did the HC reviews previously. I've got review units incoming from all kinds of companies who are competitors with Gibson Brands - and as soon as they're back in stock, that includes something I've requested from Fender.

 

My orders - which came from Henry J via Craig Anderton - are to remain editorially neutral, which means I don't favor ANYONE. My job is to tell you guys about the gear I test out - as honestly and as fairly as I can. I post news about non-Gibson products on a daily basis in the HC News - I personally handle that, and my criteria for what gets published is simple - if it's a new product or a product update, or an upcoming event that I think our readers will be interested in, I put it up... if it's for an installation, a sales event, an artist endorsement type press release, or something along those lines, I don't. The decision on what I run each day has ZERO to do with the company ownership or affiliation. I source from press releases that are sent to news@harmonycentral.com as well as to my personal email account - and I'm on the distribution list for a lot of companies, and I regularly send out emails to the PR and marketing departments at various companies asking to have the HC News email account added to their press release distribution list. If you know of a company who isn't sending me their PR stuff, please feel free to give them that email address and have them start! I'd appreciate it.

 

If you don't regularly visit the HC Home Page, you might want to drop in from time to time. Not only are the latest articles and reviews listed there, but also the HC News.

[Phil O'Keefe]

Here's a couple of examples from today's email box:

 

The type of thing I typically DON'T post (because I figure the readers generally aren't interested / don't care):

 

Riedel Appoints Rhett Frazier to Oversee Business Development for Western United States

 

The type of thing I typically DO post:

 

http://www.harmonycentral.com/news/pro-tools-collaboration-heads-to-the-clouds

 

The second of those two press releases is for a product that is directly competitive with one of Gibson's brands (Avid / Pro Tools v. Cakewalk / Sonar), so if your theory was correct, I wouldn't be running it.

 

Here, let's try this: I own more Fender guitars than Gibson guitars. While I love my Epi and Gibson guitars too, I happen to own a lot more Fenders, and absolutely love them. I'm a big fan. While I've also owned Sonar for years, I also am a longtime Pro Tools user who has spent way more time working with that program over the years than the other one.

 

If I was supposed to be shilling for Gibson's brands and ignoring their competitors, you'd think I'd get fired for saying that or something... but I won't - and that should tell you quite a bit.

 

 

 

 

[nightraven]

Sure, this software got clunky and slow... But when was the last time anything exciting happened in the world of effects pedals? Don't tell me that is on par with vintage Zvex or Jbrazz forum drama. I suppose most people are more interested in the music now, and if they still inexplicably get hard-ons from Proguitarshop "demos" they're living it up at you-know-where. Different strokes. Where do all the guitarists/musicians/whatever go to just chat shit and argue? Please don't say Reddit.

[bieke]

 

Sorry bieke, but you're incorrect about that.

 

If you don't regularly visit the HC Home Page, you might want to drop in from time to time. Not only are the latest articles and reviews listed there, but also the HC News.

 

I could be incorrect, but yesterday I tried to seartch for and could not find anything in HC News about for instance the Fender Elite Series or Fender Bassbreaker amps ... yeah, there are threads and user reviews, but nothing in HC News ?

[bieke]

Sure' date=' this software got clunky and slow... But when was the last time anything exciting happened in the world of effects pedals? Don't tell me that is on par with vintage Zvex or Jbrazz forum drama. I suppose most people are more interested in the music now, and if they still inexplicably get hard-ons from Proguitarshop "demos" they're living it up at you-know-where. Different strokes. Where do all the guitarists/musicians/whatever go to just chat shit and argue? Please don't say Reddit.

 

Well, there are a lot of smaller -somewhat hidden- communities for this type of thing.

 

 

[Phil O'Keefe]

 

I could be incorrect, but yesterday I tried to seartch for and could not find anything in HC News about for instance the Fender Elite Series or Fender Bassbreaker amps ... yeah, there are threads and user reviews, but nothing in HC News ?

 

Remember that big server crash we had? It killed off all of the HC News entries that I made from roughly the first week of January up until the point where the site was brought back up. Unfortunately, that includes the bulk of the NAMM show period new product announcements.

 

Remember all the NAMM show coverage? It was all lost - we had to restore that from our personal backups since the server crash took out the RAID backups too. That also had an effect on the News. Unfortunately, once I go through the email and post the pertinent stuff, I delete it - there's usually no reason to keep it - so when the site went down and took the backups with it, I had no way of restoring the previously entered news items.

 

I've already asked Fender to send me the Bassbreaker 15 and they've promised to do so just as soon as they have more in stock. Seems it's been a pretty popular product launch for them. I saw it briefly at NAMM and it looked very impressive. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing/hearing it in more detail!

[Phil O'Keefe]

You're always welcome to do that here. Maybe try the HC Electric Guitar Forum or SSS.

[travisbrowning]

Im bringing HCFX back again. 1 post at a time.

[nice keetee]

Im bringing HCFX back again. 1 post at a time.

 

[Dendy Jarrett]

Im bringing HCFX back again. 1 post at a time.

 

And that right there is what it will take to bring it back. One user at a time helping to inspire people to make better music. NOT remember the good old days and acquiesce that the site is gone. Why look for some place else? Stick around. What once was can be again.

 

Bieke - this is one time you are simply just not correct. Our charge is to grow the industry - the entire industry and help inspire people to make better music. The owner of Gibson realizes most guitar players will own a Gibson and a Fender - or some other brand (and probably an acoustic or two as well).

 

If people will check our home page a couple of times a week, they'll see new news every day as well as new articles and expert reviews being added all the time.

 

So spread the word.

 

D

[bieke]

 

Bieke - this is one time you are simply just not correct. Our charge is to grow the industry - the entire industry and help inspire people to make better music. The owner of Gibson realizes most guitar players will own a Gibson and a Fender - or some other brand (and probably an acoustic or two as well).

 

If people will check our home page a couple of times a week, they'll see new news every day as well as new articles and expert reviews being added all the time.

 

So spread the word.

 

D

 

sorry but I do check News and it''s just not really much there, I can't remember seeing anything in the news about the Fender 2016 models or the Bassbreaker amps ... in general not much news about guitars and amps, plenty of news on other gear portals, why not here ?

[SmoggyTwinkles]

Yeah this was a great forum at the turn of the century for like 6 or 7 years. Then they tried to update it and it's been downhill since. Some of us kept coming back (and some of you keep coming back) but it's never going to recover and might as well shut down for all it matters.

 

I haven't logged in here in so long. But I still have this forum bookmarked so every few months I'm curious what's going on, is it possible things have improved to the point that this forum operates like a simple, usable forum of yesteryear?

 

The answer is no. It's not possible that this forum will ever just work properly and allow for the simple objective of communicating the way a forum is meant to allow.

 

Took me like 3 minutes to get the page to load, went and ran a speed test on my connection and it's running optimally. I don't see how traffic will ever return to this forum in a way that will make it enjoyable again.

 

Really not a big deal though. Things change and things get lost behind and you move on. It's just seems like what happened to this forum shouldn't have happened. They had huge support from users and seemed like they did the best they could to make those users leave, over and over again.

 

 

[Dendy Jarrett]

Phil already answered you above that we lost a month of NAMM news.

[Fender&EHX4ever]

They had huge support from users and seemed like they did the best they could to make those users leave' date=' over and over again.[/quote']

 

I disagree with this statement. I was a regular member here since 2007, and I watched a lot of the changes that happened to the forum. My impression was always that Phil and HC did everything they could to please the user-base, but at some point the software and servers get outdated or stop working. And If I recall correctly, there were many reasons why the active user-base at HCFX vanished that had little or nothing to do with Harmony Central. You have to take a lot of other changes into consideration:

[Phil O'Keefe]

Again, press releases for both the new Elites and Bassbreakers were posted when they came in at NAMM-time. As I pointed out previously, all News items from the first week of January until the site came back up after the server crash were lost and unrecoverable - but they were posted.

[WRGKMC]

I been visiting this site since around 1995 when it was an Olga site. I was playing in a c over band back then and it was just simpler to download and print lyrics instead of spending the time typing them up. HC eventually shut that down for legal reasons. I joined the forums years later.

 

There have been allot of software issues but I don't think that's the reason for shrinkage. There are Allot of other forums out there now compared to the early days. But I think a bigger thing is just the economy in general.

 

When times are good kids get jobs and have cash to spend on gear. They have questions about what to buy, how to use it, or even the live side in learning to play and perform.

 

Add to that all the other changes to the music industry have killed allot of dreams for young musicians. They see how tough it is to earn a living in the business and they might not be as passionate about becoming a musician like others may have just a decade or two earlier.

 

Music is an art, and all art relies on the rich to support the artwork. Its not easy to earn an income when so many are having a tough time just trying to obtain the basic necessities in life. Even those who can afford luxuries are choosing to save their money instead of spending it on anything music related whether that's buying the work of others or becoming an artists themselves.

 

I believe music will becoming popular again at some point. Maybe not the latest generation who grew up playing guitar heroes instead of real guitars. Performing arts like Music and theatre can only survive is people are willing to spend money and buy that live experience. Its a shame so few bands perform live any more. A good show or concert is something you do remember all your life and even if its become expensive its still a great memory you can only obtain by being there.

[Danhedonia]

HC did everything they could to please the user-base

 

And I couldn't disagree more. My experience with the mods here (and Phil was deliberately edited out of the above) has been that they are hypersensitive, autocratic, and fatally uninterested in creating a climate of continual improvement. The disdain and scorn was very off putting.

 

At least these days there seems to be an admission that everything isn't perfect.

 

[Fender&EHX4ever]

 

And I couldn't disagree more. My experience with the mods here (and Phil was deliberately edited out of the above) has been that they are hypersensitive, autocratic, and fatally uninterested in creating a climate of continual improvement. The disdain and scorn was very off putting.

 

At least these days there seems to be an admission that everything isn't perfect.

 

I only really frequented the FX forum, hence my opinion. As you implied, Phil was always sympathetic. I don't recall anything resembling disdain or scorn from him.

 

As someone who works in the field of technology and customer service, I work a lot with situations where hardware or software has to be updated, migrated, and changed altogether. My experience has been that customization of software can be incredibly expensive and time-consuming, especially when you are trying to preserve and integrate pre-existing data, and that the user-base often doesn't understand what's going on behind the curtain. They only know that they have to adapt to the new environment, and are frequently resistant to change, and often resentful that the changes didn't look more like how it used to be. This is human nature. I get it. I'm very sympathetic to this in my professional life and do what I can to make their transition more comfortable.

 

In my personal life I don't have to be, so I admit that I was not very sympathetic to all of the user negativity that happened at HCFX circa 2013 .

 

But that brings me back to my original point. I believe that the user-community had already disengaged itself anyway, and that the change in forum software was simply the straw that broke the camel's back. But it's always easier to blame the software and its administrators than it is to look reflectively at ourselves and see what changed about ourselves.

 

 

[Fender&EHX4ever]

I believe music will becoming popular again at some point. Maybe not the latest generation who grew up playing guitar heroes instead of real guitars.

 

My musician friends and I frequently visit this topic. Not so much regarding "Guitar Hero" specifically, but video games in general. I really believe, like many others, that video games are for this generation what rock music was to those of us who grew up between 1965 and 1985. Sure, arcades were always a part of Rock and Roll culture (think Tommy), but not necessarily the driving force of that generation's youth culture.

 

I concur with the theory that the driving force that motivates youth is the desire to control their own destiny. Every time I read up on any studies or articles about youth psychology, there is always a discussion about how the child is always reaching for something that their parents, school, or environment don't control for them. That is what music did for me when I was growing up. Playing music gave me a feeling that I could enter my own world where a lot of real-world rules didn't necessarily apply.

 

I first saw the real power of video games in 1994 when I started playing DOOM. I quickly realized that my addiction to the game was largely a symptom of my desire to maneuver in a world that I could control. Every time I completed a room successfully, I could just save at that point and come back to it again if I screwed up the next room. I had endless chances to perfect each scene (think Groundhog's Day, Edge of Tomorrow, or About Time). So I believe this is what today's youth want. They want to navigate through a world where they have more than one chance, where they can make mistakes with minimal consequence, and where they can control their own destiny. In that way, video games are much more seductive than say: learn to play an instrument, start a band, or tinker with Garage Band.

 

The next game-changer in youth culture will be whatever makes children feel like they are in control of their own world. Maybe it will be some sort of virtual reality underground, like in Caprica. Whatever it is, I'm sure I will be the old guy who would rather play in a rock band.

 

 

 

[Fender&EHX4ever]

This forum used to be the best place on the internet to find out about new pedals and gear for musicians. It was my default place to find gear news. It was a Mecca for gear heads and aspiring pedal makers alike. The first post in the morning would be on page 4 by afternoon on any given day. It's sad to see what the format change did to this place. I really do miss it.

 

 

Speaking only from my own perspective, I came to HCFX in 2007 primarily to learn more about effect pedals because there were few other places on the internet to get the information. At that time I only owned a few BOSS pedals: a GE-7, a TU-2, an HM-2, a CS-3, and an RV-3. I wanted to get into making my guitar sound more synthetic and electronic, which is one of the reasons I went down the EHX path.

 

If you all recall, in 2007 and the years before, YouTube was not what it is today. We had to resort to second-hand experiences of pedals on the internet if we wanted any information. You couldn't find very many pedal demos, especially if the pedals were rare or vintage. And there were only a handful of websites that offered audio clip demos of those hard-to-find pedals - like Mode Zero and ToneFrenzy for example. EHX, BOSS, and Digitech were about the only pedal mfrs at that time who offered audio clips of some of their pedals on their websites.

 

We take for granted that all of that changed very quickly between 2007 and now. If I want to know what a Maestro USS-1 Guitar Synth from the 70s sounds like, I just Google it and at least 2 YouTube videos appear. But in 2007 I didn't have that, so I came to HCFX to hear from someone who had used one, or heard one being used, or at least knew more about it than I did.

 

Add to these changes the fact that a much younger crowd began to join HCFX in 2008. Suddenly the whole forum became more like a chat room filled with pithy text message-style posts in netspeak, rarely adding any actual information about effects, but instead dominating the forum with personal anecdotes, jokes, and attention-getting tactics. Don't get me wrong, sometimes that was a lot of fun, and I engaged in it as well at varying degress. But at that point, most of the old guard from pre-2007 HCFX began disengaging from the forum because the posts no longer had much content or depth. And the newer gen that took over HCFX was bound to leave at some point because they were finding other internet outlets like Facebook.

 

All that said, I look back fondly on the heyday like most of us. We did have a whole lot of fun!

[Danhedonia]

I appreciate your posts, and used to work in a very high-volume public-facing cloud environment. I know how things can be, and etc.

 

What I'm referring to was just flat-out immature rudeness from some who were ostensibly "in charge." And their bottom line was "if you don't like it, there's the door." I think that attitude outs itself in more places than threads, and is why the traffic fell off a cliff.

 

Too bad, too. It was fun while it lasted, and I was really just a lurker (at least on FX).

[puretube]

It`s a pity...

 

[plaidbeer]

I check in from time to time even when not logged in, but among other things, this forum software is just too slow and clunky. Maybe it's been answered previously, but why couldn't the format be like that of TGP, ILF, or Shortscale.org? Easy-to-navigate, simple, smooth-running forums. Why this? Was this just the cheapest design or the project of someone's ego?

 

Even if the format was changed to something similar to the formats I mentioned above, I think it would be difficult to get most of those people back. They all seem to have migrated to ILF or TGP (which people were already migrating to because of the Emporiums).

 

Sucks because this was the most entertaining guitar forum around at one time.