Sound like a grumpy old man

Time to sound like a grumpy old man, and I probably am, however this topic has arisen numerous times in lessons , so I will clarify my position on it.

Online reviews and reviewers. Please understand that those reviewing products and doing videos, the vast majority of the time, are being paid or given products. If they wish to have a career doing this, they do need to speak favourably about products or they will no longer be used. Once you realise that, you can view these as far from objective. They are essentially doing cheap adverts for companies. The shops with channels are even more biased, think about it, they are demonstrating items they have in stock to sell, they are hardly likely to tell you it's rubbish are they? The videos, I'm sure, are all very entertaining but understand you are just watching the Youtube equivalent of QVC TV. They are selling you things.

I can hand on heart say that no company has ever given me a product or asked me to review one for money. Everything I use and own, I've bought.

How can you trust the opinion of someone whose opinion can be bought? There is no integrity to their thoughts, they are available for a price.

Why am I making this point? Well, if you are asked advice and then someone chooses to dismiss your advice for someone on Youtube, who they don't know and is just there to say what they are paid to say, well frankly you start to wonder why anyone asks your advice in the first place. They clearly would rather have some glitzy BS thrown at them than actual truth.

Another point most don't take in to consideration, is just plugging and playing through something for an hour is not going to equip you with the knowledge of someone who bought a unit, gigged it for a year and now knows what it can and can't do, what bits work and what bits break. Is it robust? You literally cannot know a unit or a guitar in a brief meeting with it. Lets not mention all the production editing done as well. So many reviewers, recording then master sound to make units sound far better than they do through the average member of the publics equipment. There is no transparency, it is all a slick advertising sales job and when it doesn't do quite what you think it does, it's the guitar teacher that gets all the questions and has to explain that well that is the unit and if you listened to me in the first place, well you'd not have this issue. I have no dog in this race, I'm not selling you the item, or getting a bonus if you buy one.

Rant over.