The case against the guitar press.

A procedural note before the first charge, because this page looks strange and the strangeness is the point. This masthead does not run both sides. The Editorial Board rejects pieces that hedge, and the one rule Johnny and I have never broken is that if we are not sure, we do not publish. So when the two names on this masthead read the same ledger and reached opposite verdicts, we did not blend it into one reasonable piece with a shrug in the middle. The Board sent that draft back in an afternoon. Instead we split the page. This is the case against the guitar press. Johnny's case for the defense is filed beside it, and he came armed. Read both. Then take your corner to the discussion at the bottom, because the one thing the two of us still agree on is that this fight belongs in public, under real names, where it costs something.

Here is the evidence pool, disclosed in full, including the parts that help the defense. Sixteen times this year, our Internet Has Thoughts column took one review from the big glossies, quoted exactly what it claimed, and laid it beside what the owners said after the return window closed. The tally as of this morning: seven verdicts of press-was-right, eight splits, one fluffed. Johnny will wave that sheet around like an acquittal, and I want you to know I handed it to him. Now let me tell you what the prosecution sees in the same numbers. A press corps that is accurate about sound fifteen times out of sixteen and has not printed the sentence do not buy this in living memory. That is not a lucky witness. That is a witness who has learned exactly which questions to answer.

Charge one: the scale with no bottom half. Read a year of glossy review scores and try to find a four. The working range runs from pretty good to instant classic, and everything the industry ships lands somewhere on it. We printed the definition of fluff in this magazine months ago and I will read it into the record again: fluff is not a lie, fluff is a review with no downside risk. The BigSky MX file is the cleanest exhibit I own. Guitar Player crowned a $679 reverb the champ of multi-reverb pedals, and the cons column, quoted in our file, reported nothing except a price that may deter some users. Sit with that construction. The only flaw in the product is that you might notice what it costs. That is not a con. That is the review outsourcing its one hard question to your wallet on the way out the door.

Charge two: the sample is not the population. MusicRadar called a $1,899 factory-reliced Telecaster a thing to behold, and on the sound of the loaner in the room, maybe it was. Then the owner record walked in. The forum that has run the Road Worn argument for a decade says the necks feel right some of the time, the consistency from guitar to guitar is spotty, and you cannot know which one you have until you hold it. The glossy reviewed the guitar the brand shipped to the glossy. The buyer pulls one from the middle of the rack on a Tuesday. Our file stamped it fluffed, and I will go further here than the file went: reviewing a hand-picked loaner and printing the verdict as if it priced the whole batch is the single most consistent inconsistency in the entire gear press, and every masthead in the business knows it.

Charge three: the rave that cannot survive a follow-up question. Guitar Player found the spring reverb in the Blues Junior IV just delightful, and I believe them. The amp has been sitting at the entry to the tube conversation for twenty-five years, mostly the same chassis, mostly the same speaker, at a steadily climbing price, and the sharpest question anyone asked about it this spring came from a forum poster, not a masthead: after twenty-five years, are you sure the amp got better and not just you? The press reviews the honeymoon. Nobody goes back at month six, because the loaner went back at week three and the calendar already moved to the next embargo. Eight of our sixteen files split exactly along that line. The rave was real. It just could not survive the owners.

Charge four: consensus by calendar. Every launch-day review of the same product lands the same morning, because the embargo date is set by the brand, and the coverage that plays nicest gets the next loaner first. I am not alleging a conspiracy. I am reading the defense counsel's own published words into evidence, because Johnny wrote the sharpest line this magazine has ever printed about his own clients: when every review of a pedal agrees, that is not consensus, that is an embargo date. He wrote that at the mid-year audit. He was right at the mid-year audit. The only thing that changed since is which table he is sitting at.