No negative comments in gear reviews?!

[Miles]

I was astounded by Andy's, John's and Larry's comments about gear reviews in the letters section of the most recent Tape Op. Apparently negative comments in gear reviews are inappropriate ("if something sucks I just don't have the time to use it or review it"). This makes absolutely no sense to me for at least three reasons.

1. A person has to try out the gear to decide it sucks. Why is it a waste of time to share that negative opinion with readers? It takes just as much time to write a one-column review whether is filled with glowing positive remarks or negative ones.

2. Providing negative comments about a piece of gear can be very informative to readers. If you say, "Mackie VLZ mixers have limited headroom" (true story!), this allows readers to make an informed decision about the pros and cons of that piece of gear. If you only point out the positive stuff, you're leaving out useful information that can help people decide what gear they need.

3. This policy of "only mention the positive stuff" undermines the credibility of the reviews. Most readers notice the gear ads placed strategically near the glowing reviews of the same piece of gear, and it's clearly in the interests of companies advertising in Tape Op to be assured that any gear reviews about their products will receive positive evaluations. Whether or not it's true, from the readers' perspective, this looks like a quid pro quo: Tape Op will happily take gear companies' money to advertise their products in the mag, and the Tape Op editors willl make sure reviewers don't say bad things about any gear the companies sell. To be candid, this smells pretty bad, and it will encourage readers to disregard or trivialize the gear reviews.

I've been a loyal reader of Tape Op since the early days, and I've learned a lot from the mag over the years. However, this "no negative comments" gear review policy is misguided. The Tape Op zine I know and love is better than this.

[syrupcore]

1. utfsf
2. I've read 'downsides' of many things in TapeOp but usually within positive reviews. 40523 pieces of 'gear' get released every damn day. I wanna hear about what people found useful.
3. It's their magazine. which leads to...
4. there are plenty of other sources for reviews

I'm surprised that you're just finding this out if you've been reading for a while.

Seems like some one is always getting upset about this (utsf). Maybe renaming the section to 'Things we liked this month' would clarify the magazine's intent.

Mini reviewer's bios would be more enlightening to me than a bunch of column inches wasted on gear that sucks. For instance, Editor John and Inverse record in really really different environments and the 'usefulness' of any piece of gear will presumably be very different for each of them. Obviously, any gear will be more or less useful to anyone for any number of reasons but things like type of facility, type of music generally recorded and personal vs commerical studio are pretty big, easy to quantify reasons. It'd be cool to know.

[mjau]

2. I've read 'downsides' of many things in TapeOp but usually within positive reviews.

I agree, and I also think that the reviews I read in Tape Op are far more reliable and honest than anything I read in any of the other mag's. I understand why you'd want a negative review from time to time, but the thing I like about Tape Op reviews is that there are many under-the-radar product reviews (i.e., the Alesis Akira, reviewed by inverseroom) submitted by readers like you and me - and that takes up valuable magazine space. I'd rather have pages filled with that, versus pages filled with "x product sucked" type reviews.

[Gummy]

I went to Larry's for one of his workshops (it was great) and we talked about this. If you have noticed the whole magazine is about stuff they are interested in. He said that only reviewing things they like keeps from alienating anyone. If you think about all the follow up you have to do with someone you give a bad review to, it makes sense. I like and trust that they only review stuff they like. They still mention short comings and why they like/dislike certain things. I don't trust many reviews in other magazines because they aren't upfront. Can you imagine an article about "producers/engineers we don't like"?

[Knights Who Say Neve]

They do mention limitations that they run across, they just don't go out of their way to slam something. If you have a crappy experience with a piece of gear, you can always post a WARNING DON'T BUY THE BEHRINGER QUIZNEBBISH thread here. If they start censoring threads that honestly slam an advertiser's products, then I'll worry. But I haven't seen that. Hmm, mabye I should post a "BSW Pro Audio Sux" thread as a test, but I don't have any reason to...

[JGriffin]

Can you imagine an article about "producers/engineers we don't like"?

Yes, thankfully the mag's listing of dislikes only extends to bands, and then usually only as far as Steely Dan and Toto.

[i am monster face]

I'm glad Tapeop isn't Pitchfork.

Ian

[juice]

I'm glad Tapeop isn't Pitchfork.

Ian

4.3

[nestle]

I LOVE bad reviews, very fun and informative

[comfortstarr]

I'm glad Tapeop isn't Pitchfork.

Ian

Amen. Pitchfork is like a glimpse at some horrible future where global warming has destroyed much of the human race and only bands of lime green sweater wearing cannibals survive. It's only valid use is the streams and downloads.

[mjau]

Pitchfork is like a glimpse at some horrible future where global warming has destroyed much of the human race and only bands of lime green sweater wearing cannibals survive. It's only valid use is the streams and downloads.

Man, that's absolutely brilliant.

[floid]

*takes BEHRINGER QUIZNEBBISH off list of "gear essential to the immediate future of studio operation"*
*thumbs through back issues in search of an item with similar price point*
*gets lost in last issue's field recording article and abandons search*

[TapeOpLarry]

Because 100% negative reviews take up our time and space in the mag (which equals shipping and printing costs, not to mention pushing better writing back) we choose to generally skip looking for them or running them. We want to fill the mag with what we want, not spend our time bashing gear in print just because we could. We do offer critiques, especially of something that is pretty good but could have been better.

Gear ads sometimes get bought after we send the review to a company to fact check. Then they give Tape Op and second glance and maybe run an ad. That's fine, their perogative. The reviews are not determined by who runs ads in the mag, but wouldn't it make sense that companies who make good products that we like might keep running ads because they're hitting people like us?

"3. This policy of "only mention the positive stuff" undermines the credibility of the reviews."

There actually is no such policy, but it is a general consensus between us. To be honest, I don't think we get any negative reviews to begin with. So if that's the case what do we fucking run? Start looking for gear to bash? Why?

"it's clearly in the interests of companies advertising in Tape Op to be assured that any gear reviews about their products will receive positive evaluations."

Assured? Give me a break. That really pisses me off that you'd assume we just dole out a good review for money. Andy edits the reviews section. Tape Op doesn't even pay him, he won't accept it. He doesn't know what ads are being sold, or who just signed on for a year or who dropped out of the mag. And he doesn't fucking care who runs ads. He edits the reviews, that's all...

"this smells pretty bad, and it will encourage readers to disregard or trivialize the gear reviews."

Then don't read them. Read the rest of the mag, I hear it's pretty good. Gear doesn't matter anyway, music does.

I've had many friends who do home recording tell me how great something is that sounds like ass, in my opinion. Does that mean it's a great piece of gear or a piece of shit? Reviews are subjective as hell, so we also try to match a piece of gear up with people who would be the kind who might buy shit like that. No point sending a hobby home studio a $7000 compressor where they evaluate it on M-Audio $200 speakers and have never used anything similar to it. And no point sending Joe Chiccarelli a $100 ART mic pre.

By the way, if you want to harass people about their ethics there's plenty of worse examples out there. I think we're pretty clean...

[joelpatterson]

Some people just love to bitch, Larry. If it wasn't this, it'd be, "Man, your reviewers are so harsh! And why are you telling us about all this WORTHLESS SHIT anyways?"

[TapeOpLarry]

"And why are you telling us about all this WORTHLESS SHIT anyways?"
Thanks Joel, totally agree. If we were running negative reviews of cheap gear, what the fuck would be the motherfucking point of that fucking shit? If we run a positive review of a $5000 mic, wouldn't you think someone who was serious about that mic would try one out before buying it? Or would they be so stupid as to fork out $5000 and then blame Tape Op if they didn't like it? I fucking hope none of our readers are that fucking stupid.

Like I said, maybe there's more important shit to discuss. Now I have to go answer emails to the mag complaining about "homeopathic medicine" and Liz Brown. Fuck.