DIY Stompboxes vs. Harmony Central

[Alex C]

Hey, I've seen several references on this site to the forum at Harmony Central.  I had a question about a multitrack ministudio, so I thought I'd go there to check it out.  I was extremely disappointed by what I saw.  Stupid answers to mindless questions, vulgar arguments, etc.  I couldn't believe it.

From the beginning I have been very impressed with DIY Stompboxes and the very friendly, professional attitude that everyone seems to have here.  Now I appreciate it even more, seeing how bad it could be.  

So I just wanted to say thanks to everyone on this site for contributing thoughtfully to topics, adding relavant information, asking (mostly) intelligent questions, and just being overall very supportive.  Keep up the good work, guys!

Alex

[MarkB]

we're Family here....
welcome to the family
"-)

[MarkB]

and wow - I just realized that I've only posted TWENTY times since the new forum went up... man, where have I been?

[Mark Hammer]

The opportunity to connect with the entire world has a good side and a bad one.  The good side is that someone from Germany asks a question, some moron from Canada gives a hasty ill-informed reply, someone from Australia steps in to correct and clarify, and someone from Brazil adds to that; something unlikely to happen at your local music store or electronics outlet.

The bad side is that doors opened wide result in not only a house full of friends but a house full of flies.  Anybody and their cousin can stumble onto any forum, and decide they want to be a nuisance and not contribute.  As well, the larger the potential audience, the greater the diversity of background knowledge levels.  That provides opportunities for teaching, which is good, but it also provides opportunities for the lowest common denominator to rule mercilessly.

Some of us here started corresponding about the typical topics here in 1990 or so.  I know RG Keen and I were popping off notes to each other off-line since the old alt.guitar days.  As time went on, many of the alt.whatever newsgroups became glutted with folks who were thrilled to stumble onto it but had little interest in or knowledge of the technical, instead asking the perennial favourite "What's/Who's the best XXXXX?".  Such questions tended to provoke the inevitable flameouts, and the gradually descending level of discourse, and sheer volume of distractions and irrelevancies one had to wade through resulted in Ampage.

As Ampage grew in size and variety, it became clear that Steve "T-Boy" Morrison would not be able to manage the whole thing himself, and eventually Aron took over the running of the effects-related forums.  Jack Orman at one point started up his own forum through Delphi (and I'm guessing partly out of disgust, partly out of enthusiasm, partly as a personal challenge, and to some degree partly as a marketing tool), but the increasing fragmentation of the "community" made things awkward, and the desire for "one stop shopping" inevitably drew people back to Ampage and eventually this site.

Several years ago, following a series of unpleasantnesses maliciously directed at Aron himself, he decided to break away and start fresh with the DIYStompbox forum that used a different interface and software.  The Ampage fora still remained (and do now as well), but many of the regulars migrated to this site, in much the same way they migrated to Ampage from alt.guitar and alt.musicmakers and other newsgroups.  I suspect in part it is because it is so much easier to keep in touch with ALL pertinent topics, while the Ampage sub-forum format, though good in some ways, is too fragmented for people to guarantee their posting will be noticed and responded to.  Many of the regulars here still visit and post on Ampage.  I know I do, and one of these days, Steve Giles will even manage to divide his activities between Ampage and here and visit us again (Aron, you listening?  Steve wants in but his registration keeps screwing up)

Again, the opportunity to connect to the world provided a critical mass of technically astute and technically inquisitive people to allow for a sustained focus and dialogue on how and why things work, and that has set the tone here.  We get really smart people here who normally don't need us because they have their own thing going, but coming here ends up helping them to think and making them smarter and  that is something they appreciate.  In turn, that level of dialogue is sustained partly *because* we get actual commercial designers visiting, and also because we get old farts here too.  There are a bunch of us who have been at this since the days of early Anderton projects (or longer).  Having all that history is extremely helpful in adding perspective, in settling arguments/debates, and in connecting things in the big picture.  Again, finding oneself in the middle of this as a lurker or contributor tends to elicit more civil and helpful behaviour from people.

And on it goes.

Put your feet up Alex, and "set a spell".  Y'all come back now, hear?    :wink: [/i]

Moron from Canada

[idlefaction]

mark, i always like your posts.    how you find the time to be so informative is beyond me - i've been here/aron's old forum/ampage for about five years i think, i started on 'Electronic Projects For Musicians' about seven or eight years ago.  and yourself and rg and a few others have been here helping people the whole time.

thanks.  

[Peter Snowberg]

I've looked at a few other forums and NOBODY seems to have a higher signal to noise ratio than Aron.

I tried to track down Nicholas Boscorelli over at Anderton’s forum and that place is just a zoo. I get the feeling it's filled with 14 year olds who are inspired at act like cranky 10 year olds. Picture a noise floor of 150dB. :cry: It may be called "Expert Forums from Gig, EQ, Keyboard, Surround Professional & MusicPlayer", but for DIY or learning it's just about 100% useless.

No forum is drama free, but here it seems to go away really quick and everybody is still talking and helping each other in the end.

The depth of the technical help people provide here is just stunning.

I really appreciate this place a bunch! A MAJOR thank you to all the contributors here!      

-Peter

[BillyJ]

This place is the best!
I actually went looking for that forum that ANderton Moderates and found it. Yikes though folks are cuthroat and not terrible pleasant.
I'd last about two post there with that bunch LOL!
I have a whole lot more appreciation for the way we get down around here.
I read a frew threads for a good chuckle but I think I walked away dumber than I walked in. I thought that was impossible.
Came back here and was healed in ten minutes.
I am sooo glad I am here!
This is home :O)

[moosapotamus]

   

~ Charlie

[amz-fx]

Jack Orman at one point started up his own forum through Delphi

I actually had two forums before that, the first hosted on my AOL account where the web site originally resided, and then the second hosted on the muzique.com site after I registered the domain.  The Delphi site came later because the forum was eating up all of my disk space on the muzique domain and actually coexisted with some of the original versions of Aron's forum that were around before he got the diystompboxes domain.  The Delphi board closed not only due to my jobs requirements that began to demand more of my time, but also because of the changing Delphi policies that inserted intrusive advertising into the posts and the forum displays...  Delphi was eventually sold and the policies relaxed sometime after I abandoned the forum.

The archives of the original AMZ forum from AOL are still available online and make for fascinating reading about the origin of many effects designs/ideas and the state of the community 5+ years ago. Much of the muzique.com archives were lost in a  hard drive crash a few years back and I only have some selected messages that were saved to a backup.  Also available on my site are the archives of one of Aron's first forums, which is more good reading:

http://www.muzique.com/schem/tips.htm

The Musictoyz forum is much better than H-C and the noise level is similar to here, however, that forum is not about d-i-y....  BUT I find it very useful since the forum has a good selection of regulars who gig professionally  and own some impressive equipment.  Several people there have loaned me stompboxes to try out, and I just forwarded the "Midwest Tourbox" that contained a number of boutique pedals...  the tourbox is filled with pedals and then circulated around the various participants to try out and post comments.  Another tourbox has just started circulating though I'm not in this round due to time constraints.

I have loaned several of my handmade pedals to Musictoyz participants and circulated others in the Tourboxes. The feedback that I have received from these "tone freaks" (which is a compliment!) has been quite valuable in refining pedal designs.

This forum is A-#1 in the d-i-y community and everyone owes Aron a big round of thanks for taking the time to moderate it!   I wish I had more time to read the messages since I usually only get to skim the topics and pick out a few of interest to review.

Best regards,  Jack

[bettycat]

I think you can´t compare this place to the HC forums, it´s like apple and peaches, you know
Arons place here is highly specialized and focused on fx building and DIY related threads. OT threads are rare here. The HC forums are more or less a playground for many guys and besides real fx threads you will also find a lot of OT stuff. I agree, that there are a lot of trolls out there in the HC places. but it´s not a bad place in general. There are also a lot of very nice guys with good skills and you can find friends there and also learn a lot about effects, amps, guitars etc.

So give it a little time and enjoy both places, like a lot of others do.

[bettycat]

I think you can´t compare this place to the HC forums, it´s like apple and peaches, you know
Arons place here is highly specialized and focused on fx building and DIY related threads. OT threads are rare here. The HC forums are more or less a playground for many guys and besides real fx threads you will also find a lot of OT stuff. I agree, that there are a lot of trolls out there in the HC places. but it´s not a bad place in general. There are also a lot of very nice guys with good skills and you can find friends there and also learn a lot about effects, amps, guitars etc.

So give it a little time and enjoy both places, like a lot of others do.

[Dan N]

Alex, some good recording info here:
http://gearslutz.com/board/index.php3?s=968786aa5043953d23856f9318edd5a0

Scary people here:
http://recpit.prosoundweb.com/index.php