Pick a Platform—Any Platform (Plus! Ratings Revised)
BY SHAWN HAMMOND
When it comes to the types, quality, and depth
of guitar-freak content on the
market, we’re pretty confident
no other media outlet matches
Premier Guitar. This isn’t to
brag, it’s to urge you to explore
outside your usual PG consumption zone. Sure, if you
grew up ogling glossy mags
at your local guitar shop or
bookstore, you may be perfectly
content to simply devour our
monthly print offering. It is,
after all, the biggest guitar mag
on newsstands each month. But
if you’re that much of a glutton, why stop there? It’s not like
you’ve had some sort of retinal-bypass surgery that limits how
much 6- and 4-string goodness
you can ingest. So let me tell
you about our daily specials.
Just to get it out of the way,
let’s discuss the content plat-
form that’s most controversial
for some of you print lovers:
Facebook. I know, I know … I
can practically hear the eyeballs
of skeptics and nonconformists
rolling around in their heads at
the mention of the vile F word.
I laud your stand against The
Man, personal-data mining, and
voyeuristic time-wasting that saps
away precious hours that would
be better spent with your guitar,
your family, or a good book.
And if you choose to remain
unyielding in giving FB founder
Mark Zuckerberg the cyber
birdie even after I call out some
of the benefits of “Liking” us on
his out-of-control brainchild,
I’ll applaud your principled
stand—but I’ll also ask you to
please not moan about our mul-
tiplatform approach.
RATINGS
Pros: Sure to usher in world peace.
Cons: Peace = total sonic annihilation.
Tones
Playability
Build
Value
Company, product, price, website
Gear reviews now include pros, cons, and pick ratings in four categories.
route to ease the workaday
blues. Love the look of our
print mag but miss the ads and
the idea of flipping pages, try
our digital versions (digital.
premierguitar.com)—which also
include bonus sections stocked
with all the web-exclusive gear
reviews from that month. Need
something to keep you occupied in the dentist’s waiting
room? Our iPhone and Android
apps put entire PG issues in
the palm of your hand. Into
Twitter? We’re there, too. We’re
also serving up choice archival
tidbits on Tumblr. In sum, we
work hard to make our mul-tiplatform smorgasbord pretty
damn tempting, so go ahead
and pig out—no shame here.
Ratings revised. Okay,
let’s move on. Many of you
base buying decisions on our
reviews, so we’ve revised our
ratings system to be more practical. Many products received
3. 5–4. 5 picks (out of 5) under
our previous single-score system, which was useful for at-a-glance summations but also
obscured some nuance.
For instance, how should
a reviewer rate an affordable
guitar that has a few minor cosmetic flaws but sends everyone
who plays it to tonal heaven?
You guessed it—they average
what might’ve been a 3-pick
rating for build quality with
a 5-pick rating for tones, and
end up with a 4 or 4. 5. And
when you average assessments
of playability, innovation, feel,
build quality, and bang for the
buck, you inevitably end up
with a score that can seem like
we’re treating manufacturers
with kid gloves. We’re not. But
while some people want to see
us ruthlessly bash a product
in a cathartic rant that they
must believe will somehow rain
vicarious vengeance down upon
companies that put out crap
20 or 30 years ago, the truth is
that these days CNC construction and the ease of internet
research—for both builders and
consumers—has exponentially
improved the overall quality of
products on the market today.
So, while you or I may pick
up a guitar or plug into an amp
or pedal and immediately know
it’s not for us, these days that’s
usually due more to whether
it fits our style and level of
pickiness than whether it truly
sucks. We also go to great effort
to make sure each product is
reviewed by a player who’s part
of the target audience. We don’t
send jazz archtops to metal-heads, and we don’t send high-gain amps to blues dudes.
Anyway, our new rating system includes brief summations
of a product’s pros and cons,
as well as pick ratings (0– 5)
in four categories—Tones,
Build, Value, and Playability
(for instruments) or Ease of
Use (amps, effects, and other
devices) or Versatility (pickups).
Items with a total of 18 or
more picks (out of 20) win our
coveted Premier Gear Award.
We think you’ll get more out
of this, and we welcome your
feedback. Pick a platform—any
platform—and write us!
Shawn Hammond
shawn@premierguitar.com
