Are Guitar Pedal Demos Honest?
If I posted the question, “Are guitar pedal demos honest?” on the average music thread, I’d get a hilariously diverse range of answers, everything from the tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorists who claim that the entire pedal industry is a scam to bougie boutique builders who argue that pedal-building is modern day lutherie.
Now, in this context “honest” simply means free of deceit. With that definition in mind, I would say that video guitar pedal demos do have a tendency to deceive people.
But before you start throwing those rotten tomatoes at me, I’d like to give a few quick disclaimers. First, in this article, I'm talking about the demo video, not the person doing the demoing. I have lots of amazing, honest, wonderful friends who demo pedals. This is not about them. It’s about the demo itself. In all my years of pedal-building, testing, and demoing, I can only pinpoint two times where I knew a demo person was being intentionally dishonest in their presentation, and I've seen approximately one million demos. Thus, the stats on this are pretty positive overall.
I started The JHS Show because I hated making guitar pedal demos for my own gear, so I decided to make demos about my friends’ gear instead. Thus, I have a YouTube channel where I demo guitar pedals on an almost weekly basis, and I know that when I play specific pedals, it influences the people who watch The JHS Show to buy them. I know that when we do jams, it’s a free advertisement for that pedal whether I want it to be or not. I’m self-aware enough to know that if there is a problem, I may be a part of it. I just want you to know that I know.
Online demos are incredibly necessary. There's really no other option for testing a pedal if you live somewhere besides a big city. I get emails from people who don't have a single music store in their country, and for them online demos are wonderful because they allow people to see a pedal and experience it, to see if they might want to take a chance on buying it.
All that said, let’s dive into the “why” behind the “what” and look at some of the reasons that guitar pedal demos can be deceiving.
Reasons Why Pedal Demos Can Be Deceiving
There is always a signal path that you don’t see, in both pre- and post-production. If you’re watching a video on your phone and/or listening to it through your earbuds or Beats by Dre, the audio you’re hearing is not representative of the sound coming out of the amp. By that point, it’s been heavily altered– not out of malice or underhandedness, but because that’s how the audio signal on your phone works. In the same vein, there are always going to be post- and pre-EQ compressors and preamps. When you're watching The JHS Show, we have to run our sound through software in order to mix it properly. It wouldn't sound good if we didn't. Although I do everything I can to not touch the guitar signal other than making it fit in the mix, it’s always going to sound different in a video than it does live in the studio. Here, though, I would argue that the sound can still be a pretty solid representation of what your pedal might sound like, as most musicians are going to end up using guitar pedals in a live mix or a studio mix. By necessity, the sound is not going to be 100% pure.
The demoing musician is probably using an amp or guitar that you don’t use. 99.9% of the time, the demoing musician is going to use an amp or a guitar that you don’t own. This is even more prevalent in 2022, where it’s incredibly easy for musicians to design their own guitars through companies like BILT. As minimal as the choice of electric guitar can be in a pedal demo, it's still a factor.
You are not the one playing. Guitar pedal demos are recorded by a gigantic range of players, from Andy Timmons to Mary Spender to Pete Thorn to Emily the Harpist. Basically: the way the demo artist plays the pedal is not necessarily the way you’re going to play it, so it may or may not sound the same. Case in point: I met a guy at NAMM who was obsessed with getting his guitar rig to sound exactly like Jimi Hendrix’s. Fair enough, but he showed me the rig he was using, and it was some of the most high quality gear available, which ironically is not representative of the Jimi Hendrix sound. Jimi’s gear kind of sucked, so if you wanted to really emulate him, you’d have to emulate the issues he dealt with, too. It’s nearly impossible to accurately replicate someone else’s sound, and you want to keep that in mind when you watch pedal demos.
Bias. Webster’s dictionary defines bias as “prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.” And this is honestly the factor with the biggest potential for deceit (intentional or not) when it comes to pedal demos. It raises a very reasonable question: if the demo artist is being paid to make the demo, are they unfairly biased in favor of the pedal or pedal-making company? Are they motivated to like the pedal if they’re being paid to demo it? Why do we not see more negative reviews?
Shootouts can be really misleading. I understand the appeal of pedal shootouts (God knows I’ve filmed enough of them in my time), but this is one of the most misleading pedal demo formats on the internet. Simply put: you just can't properly shoot out a pedal over YouTube. Every pedal– even pedals from the same company and the same series –are a little different. I could take five Artificial Blondes off the JHS assembly line tomorrow, set them all at the same levels, and they're still going to be slightly different because the pots all have slightly different tolerance stages. It honestly drives me nuts to see people shooting out pedals on YouTube, acting as if the shootout is gospel truth, because it just isn’t. You heard it here, folks.
The JHS Show and Paid Promotions
I’d also like to take a second here to address the question that I get in the comments section of nearly every episode: Why haven’t you ever seen me say anything negative about a pedal on The JHS Show? First, The JHS Show is not a demo channel. I don’t want people to watch this show to see a demo of a pedal. I want them to watch it to hear the stories of companies or to learn what the pedal is like in its historical context. Secondly, I play tons of pedals that I don’t particularly like, but as a rule I don’t highlight those pedals on the show because I don’t want to put any extra negativity out in the world. I’d rather gush over the pedals I love. It’s more fun for everyone. Third, I’m very careful to not trash talk specific pedals because ultimately it's just my opinion. Even if I don't like it, it might be the greatest thing you've ever played. We all bring a unique set of guitar playing skills to the table, and a pedal that works for me might not work for you– or vice-versa.
In the same vein, just because I don’t highlight a pedal brand on The JHS Show doesn’t mean that I hate it. There are only so many hours in the day, and so many weeks in a year, so I can’t do an episode on every pedal that I like. It’s just not going to happen. So, please, don’t read too much into it if I haven’t highlighted a particular brand. I may actually love it and just haven’t had time to work it into an episode.
Let me also make one thing abundantly clear: I have never made a dime off of demoing a pedal on The JHS Show. Not ever. People have tried to pay me to demo pedals, but I have a standard response that I email out when that happens: “Hey, you can send me whatever pedals you want. I appreciate the gesture. However, I don’t accept money to produce demos. I’ll show the pedal on The JHS Show if I want to and/or if there’s time. Thanks.”
We do collaborate with other companies. For instance, some episodes are sponsored by Ernie Ball Music Man. Because Brian Ball financially supports the research we do into music history, we’ve added in the Ernie Ball Trivia Time where we give away Ernie Ball strings to the person who correctly answers the trivia question. It’s mutually beneficial for Ernie Ball and JHS, and we’re promoting guitar strings instead of guitar pedals. We also receive sponsorship from Mono Pedalboards (again, because they sell pedalboards, not guitar pedals) and will occasionally do pedalboard giveaways.
What Should We Do?
I can’t make this clear enough: pedal demos are absolutely necessary. Take Del Casher, the inventor of the wah pedal. Even though the wah pedal hit the market in 1966, the majority of guitar players still didn’t understand how it worked. So Del collaborated with Vox to produce a demo record for the wah pedal in 1967, which Vox was so unenthusiastic about that they printed it on cardboard. When this demo record hit the market, Clapton had already recorded “Tales of Brave Ulysses” using wah and Hendrix was about to drop Axis: Bold As Love, his second record featuring the wah effect.
In contrast, you have Del’s demo, which has him using the wah pedal in some very strange, funky, not-particularly-hard-rock ways. Hearing this record, you can absolutely believe that Del Casher had been featured on the soundtracks for TV shows like The Lawrence Welk Show and Green Acres. Even though the demo didn't exactly connect with the culture of the time, it was good. More than that, it was necessary.
So, if pedal demos have a tendency to be misleading, how can we navigate them in a logical way? At the end of the day, just be aware. You, as a buyer, must be aware and be honest about what you see and hear in these demos. This holds the people who are performing the demos accountable, and it also holds you accountable to buy a new pedal with a reasonable expectation of how it might or might not sound. Don't be oblivious to the natural biases/sound mixing/editing of video production. Don't buy a pedal and then get pissed at the YouTube demo artist because it doesn't sound like you thought it would. You have to understand the variables. You're not that player using that signal path, so it’s going to sound a little different when you play it.
And that’s okay.