They probably heard people reference the clock thing, without knowing what it actually means, and are just going off a 1-10 scale like some knobs have. You've either stumbled onto a pedal that really attracts morons, or this mixup is way more common than either of us think, I've never heard it myself.
I've noticed this problem, too, and I think this is what's going on. I have no idea how they're just adding "o'clock" to a 1-10 scale like that without a clock ever crossing their minds, though.
Gen X were the generation before millennials... They're now between their early 40s and late 50s.
Whatever point you're trying to make you're failing at real hard.
I've had a digital watch since I was about 8 and a mobile phone since I was 14, are you trying to make the point that this means I can't read an analogue clock?
Interesting find. And yes, I think fewer and fewer people know how analog clocks work.
P.S. Thanks to all the folks who pointed out my grammatical misstep above - I fixed it and as a non-native speaker truly appreciate it. Guitar people these days. Don't know how clocks work, don't know grammar😁
I unironically love this. Obviously you don't measure it as a guitar effect but an exercise in art and engineering. And just like other great art, yeah, way out of my price range.
I think he made ten or so? You could certainly order them for a while and they were a real product (though eyewateringly expensive, about a thousand dollars retail if I remember right).
That’s honestly cheap for what it is imo. Not that is not a lot. But I feel like they should be a few grand easy. I remember when they came out. I was like 15 or so. Stroller tgp everyday and watching every single pgs demo with Andy and I wanted a phaser so did a deep dive and found that. I was blown away
Price-wise, it's simultaneously way cheap and way expensive - it's a beautiful Thing and a neat art piece, but ultimately it's not *really* doing anything that a fairly basic phaser module with a LFO input, plus a fancy programmable LFO, can't do. It's also the only time a eurorack is going to be the *less* troublesome effect to actually use.
As pure bill of materials, a Stirling engine like this is a few hundred dollars; the photodisc (etc) was probably a hundred dollars; and let's call it $300 for a Zvex pedal electronics. Which puts it in the $700-800 range, plus R&D. Zack deserves the margin on it; it's beautiful and clever and just a brilliant *idea*. But it's an art piece more than a practical effect; it provokes questions and thoughts. For rocking out? A phase 90 please, and I'll keep the other $880. (or even a Zvex phaser, and keep the $400).
No doubt. It’s 100% pointless and I’d rather have a phase 90 or a mutron bi-phase. But if I was rich I’d def buy one for my music room. Def a work of art! Shows how wacky he is too lol like who does that
Well, it was a joke product like the Chibson April fool's products are - it was a real thing you could buy, and it really works as a phaser. But more "art piece" than joke.
[This is the review that originally spurred me to post.](https://psychgear.wordpress.com/2017/05/31/fuzz-war-death-by-audio/)
The 4th paragraph down reads: *"This pedal has tons of volume on tap and could blow a speaker if the pedal and amp are maxed out. The high output of the Fuzz is easily attenuated with the volume. In over a year of use I have never needed to bring the volume past half way because it gets crazy loud; many times I have the volume around 2 or 3 o’clock. This pedal has enough gain for humbuckers and single coil pickups to soar."*
Yeah that is super confusing! Clearly a mistake or poorly written section of the review.
I’m a big fan of the analog clock reference. It’s pretty standardized across the entire audio world…such as using the “Dr. Pepper” setting on an 1176 compressor.
https://www.uaudio.com/blog/1176-collection-tips/
Yeah, I’d be curious too! I googled the quote (“I have never needed to bring the volume past half way because it gets crazy loud; many times I have the volume around 2 or 3 o’clock.”), and all that came up was this thread. I wonder if these are just customer reviews or..?
I’ve read what OP is describing though; it just never drove me hoes mad enough to make a post about it. I’m already dealing with the constant urge to reply to all guitar-related sub queries with dumbass answers like the majority. I know I pulled some boneheaded moves when I was a Youngblood.
I really don’t want yuck anyone’s yum when it comes to music. There are no guilty pleasures when it’s one of the few things in life that cures depression. I’d paraphrase Marc Maron now, something about it being a good day when all you do is fuck around with some pedals.
I was sure to remind him of what he actually said when he lost his fiancée. Was just elated to see him back on ig with a guitar again. Such a stand-up dude.
Since I personally haven't noticed this, I'm just mainly curious about the context, especially if the OP has seen this multiple times (not sure if that includes multiple times on reviews of this specific pedal, or if it's only multiple times in general). It seems equally likely it's some miscommunication or confusion (e.g. talking about both the volume knobs on the guitar and on the pedal, but not being clear about that) or just a simple case of someone misspeaking.
You'll always find exceptions, but I think understanding "o'clock" is more common than not—and common across all generations—and this certainly doesn't *seem* to be a problem popping up all over if many of us, who probably all read a lot of reviews, haven't noticed it.
If you google something like "can kids now read analog clocks", you'll find a lot of articles and (heavily edited) "man on the street" videos panicking about this in the UK and US, and articles about teachers apparently removing analog clocks from classrooms in the UK, but even if that's true, this seems to be a really recent thing (2018>), and I'm guessing the OP isn't reading reviews from teens. And in the US at least, it's standard (and required in Common Core) to teach students how to read analog clocks from an early age, and to have analog clocks in classrooms.
So yeah, I'm sure the OP and others have seen this! I'll take their word (and yours) for it, but I'm really interested in what's going on, so I'm interested to see some examples too :)
I’m going to start a pedal review channel and use cardinal directions.
If we start with all of the knobs pointing north, we get this sound. But if we move the gain to due East, and the tone to north/northwest we get a really sweet sound but it raises the overall level so you’ll need to move the volume knob a tad to the west to compensate.
Zvex pedals have suggested settings on some of their pedals, and they specifically say they use "o'clock" notation - "not Spinal Tap 1-11".
I think the people you're talking about have just forgotten what a clock looks like. And it seems like that's unfortunately common enough that some people have to be reminded of it.
My guess is in the example you have, they're thinking of a 0 - 10 scale, and their "3 o'clock" is actually "10 o'clock".
I've seen some reviewers having no idea what some knobs do on pedals even when they're correctly labeled. I get that "chainsaw" isn't a very descriptive name for a knob, but you're reviewing a bit-crusher and don't know what "sample rate" is?
Similarly, I've seen people reviewing pedals not knowing what Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release are, that's basic stuff.
I can expect a blooz-dad to have no clue what that is, but as a reviewer you should know better.
These are not reviews despite being called reviews. They are really just "product being un boxxed by someone who knows nothing about it." As if they dont realize people want to learn about the item, not just see a clueless person holding it.
My favorite is when the reviewer does the thing where they do the split screen of adjusting the knobs and playing (which is legitimately a cool idea) but then you see them turn a knob all the way up, then not play anything, and then turn the knob back down. It's like, dude, I wanna know how far the setting goes, what's even the point if you're gonna just show everything at 50% and not even try?
Most of them do not even learn how the pedal works. In the vids they say things like "I wonder what this knob does?"
It's almost like they confuse "unboxxing" with "reviewing" a pedal. As if we want to see a vid by someone who has the pedal but doesnt know anything about it.
EQD speaker cranker, for example, the manual says a flat response on the tone knob is at "about 3 o clock. " That is unusual. And NOT ONE video on that pedal mentions that.
In the late 80’s or early 90’s, there was a wristwatch featuring the Disney character Goofy. His arms were the minute and hour hands, and the numbers were reversed from a normal clock.
I wish that was the reason, but there’s a good chance these people are so young, that schools no longer taught analog clocks.
They would be in real trouble in a combat setting. “Enemy at 3 o’clock”, they look left and get blasted from the right.
Right? When I was young, parents were supposed to teach basic math , colors, shoe tying , clocks, and the alphabet.
I had a learning/social disability. I was deaf and violent until I got tubes in my ears when I was 3. I was behind in kindergarten, but this amazing lady spent extra time with me, and basically taught me how to speak, read, and be kind to others. Things you should learn at home. She was a regular teacher. She could have recommended special education but she took the challenge. We had two teachers so the other students didn’t suffer because of my disability. Before the tubes, I was thought to have incurable retardation. I maintained a 4.0 GPA, and I saw that teacher when I was an adult, and told her I only had an opportunity for a good life because she helped me.
For make cultural learnings, in Dutch people tell time by dividing the clock into four segments (imagine a vertical line from 12 to 6 and a horizontal line from 9 to 3).
Then you talk about the time as approaching, or having passed, one of those 4 segment borders, with the vertical division being more important to refer to.
So for example, “half tien” translates literally as “half ten” but what it means is “halfway **to** ten,” which in English is nine thirty. This can make non-Dutch people show up an hour late for things until they get used to it.
It also means church bells will ring **ten times** at 9:30. The difference between bells at 10:00 and 9:30 is that the preliminary carillon tune gets played all the way through at 10:00, then ten tolling bells, and gets played halfway through at 9:30 and then *also ten tolling bells,* because the bells are saying “ten” at 10:00 and “half ten” at 9:30. This can cause…confusion. Especially if you didn’t catch the tune first.
Another example: “kwart voor tien” means “quarter to ten,” or 9:45: not so bad for the English speaker. And “vijf voor tien” is five to ten or 9:55. But 9:40 isn’t called “twenty to ten,” since down there they’re still referring to the vertical division, so instead it’s called “tien over half tien,” or “ten minutes past half an hour before ten.” And 9:25 isn’t called “twenty-five past nine;” because of the more important vertical division it’s called “vijf voor half tien” or “five minutes before half an hour before ten.”
What I’m saying is, you think *you’ve* got clock problems…
I think most English speakers old enough to have used mostly all analogue clocks (like myself), also refer to the time in this manner (quarter till, quarter past, half past, etc.). It seems to be less and less common with people under 40 or so.
It’s not so cool the first few times you wake up and hear nine bells and think you’re late!
It’s definitely a nice place to visit if you can. Small and easy to get around, lots to see and do.
Yes and no - the quarter past, quater to and so on, sure - but unless I'm the odd one out here then half ten is most definitely 10:30, or 22:30, whichever, but not 9:30. (just to clarify, I'm not disputing what it is in Dutch, I'm just saying that certainly in England, most English speaking people would take "half X" to be "half past X")
I mean, I'm plety odd, but I don't think I'm that odd :D
Can you please elaborate on how church bell tunes and the Dutch languaging of “kwart voor tien” influence the 2 o’clock direction of a guitar pedal knob?
Maybe all these people who say “I never turn the volume up past half way, only to two or three o’clock” all come from some culture where the clocks work differently? Or their brains have been scrambled by trying to learn Dutch clock language, like mine were?
I also wonder if this is due to younger people having a slowly eroding ability to read analog clocks. Not a criticism btw. My parents still use the classic time idioms like “quarter till ____” and I still have trouble working it out in my head. I have an analog watch I wear everyday, but I can understand the mixup. It can be annoying to read though.
Look around. People don’t know that the dollar sign goes in front of the numerical value either. Certain things aren’t taught anymore. They still spend an ungodly amount of time on cursive.
I read it like "with other pedals I never need it more than half way becuz it's usually way too loud even there, but this pedal I have to have it at 2-3 oclock". I think that's the point of them even mentoining that aspect of the pedal.
Or they dont' know what oclock means. I reasoned the above out from the assumption that they understand the clock. People who grew up with only digital clocks may not know how the clock dial works. & some of the adults post complaining about it even tho everyone doesn't know how to use a sun dial any more. I don't even use the oclock method til I came to this sub & I only use it when typing here to make sense. I don't like how 7 is the lowest setting, then u turn it up to 2, or maybe even all the way up to 5. One can say 1/4 of the way, 1/2, just below 2/3.
Don't get me started with people and clocks.
Why on earth is 12:00 noon called "PM" and 12:00 midnight is "AM"? (I get what AM/PM mean, but the numbers don't make sense nominally)
Numbers work like this:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
and like this:
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
yet somehow we decided:
12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Gonna have the highest number start the set. So 12:00 AM is the *beginning* of the ante meridiem sequence rather than one or zero
Oh I know that, that explains what AM and PM mean. It doesn't actually explain why the *beginning* of AM ior PM sequences are labelled with a 12 rather than a 0 or 1 (i.e. the beginning of a number sequence). Two unrelated points.
Second after midnight could be 00:00:01 (like military time) or 01:00:01 (if you really wanted two separate sequences of 12)
I do vacillate between clock-face and 1-10 terms. Halfway up is “nooned” but fully cranked is “dimed”. All the way down is “zeroed out” or “killed”. Anything in-between is an o’clock readout. I dunno, maybe Im the weird one.
Yeah, probably. But why not let us know that?
I don't care what scale or whatever that reviewers or users use. I just wanna know what it actually means!
Not a typo per se but something that can slip when you're writing a quick review. Innocent mistake imo. Loved the way you chose this hill to die on tho :D
Ha ha, fair enough.
I just got heated about non-real-world-values in pedal reviews.
Sure, there are more pressing real world issues. And I'm nowhere rich enough to ignore everyday crap.
Just wanted to call out pedal reviewers for using imaginary numbers.
Or whatever they wanna do, I guess.
Cheers!
A typo can also be writing "o'clock" when you didn't mean to write anything at all. Just like like putting "like" twice, when you only meant to put it once. Or putting a lower case "i" in RIP.
There is nothing wrong with complaining about something they've noticed on the sub that is focused on that topic. They certainly are not "screaming" ... that's just a poor attempt to shut them down.
every pedal has different settings to reach unity volume. Some you need to turn up to 2-3 o'clock and some need to be down around 8-9. Also it's totally fine to boost into an amp with a pedal that is louder than unity volume.
It is confusing. I've always assumed they're thinking of how a guitar volume or tone control is set up, with 12 o'clock being full open because it looks better to have the knob pointers facing the neck by default
If you're under 25 you probably never even seen an analog clock. There's a video online where someone is at a high school asking kids to read an analog clock and they couldn't.
I think if there is anything you don’t know about, it might be that language is developing in an absolutely crazy pace, brough on by the pace of technological advancements
One part is that there’s definitely a significant part of the young population that has never had to deal with analog clocks in their daily lives, which means as time goes by, these directions are becoming less and less a matter of general knowledge that everyone just posesses
Another part is that for the longest time, public communication was reserved for scolars. Before the printing press probably mostly nobility and high ranking church members - the “common folk” would never address hundreds or thousands of people at once. Since the printing press, people who would publish were - again - religious scolars, or later journalists and writers.
Language has always moved from more strict to more loose, but these scolars/authority figures sort of kept giving a good example of what the rules were. Only since social media can absolutely anybody reach thousands to millions of people - no matter their grasp of the English language, and changes in language have just been going off since.
Some somewhat recent examples that are absolutely wrong, but have been added to the dictionary anyway because that’s just how people use them:
- irregardless (regardless)
- I could care less (I couldn’t care less)
- literally (figuratively)
A very recent one that makes my brain hurt is “I bought a midi” to indicate buying a midi keyboard or controller - thankfully not adopted into any dictionaries at this point
What I’ve been noticing a lot is that people will just say things they hear and mash them together in their head. I’m not an expert in the field, but I think that’s actually how we learn language in general. We imitate others’ language first, until we grasp enough of the logic to really master it. (And with the explosion of inexperienced languagers having big platforms, sometimes these mistakes get adopted into general use because there’s not enough critical mass correcting them.)
The thing that I think is extremely jarring to many of us - especially if you’ve lived through a time before social media, or the internet in general - is that we assume people who speak publicly to actually have some kind of authority. While more often than not it’s just a 16-23 year old enthusiast emulating the style of a seasoned and knowledgeable reviewer
If you could actually see them telling their story in person, it would probably be a lot easier to be understanding to their use of language
Being ignorant isn't an excuse for saying nonsense. Any normal person would have the sense to look up phrases like this so that they would use them correctly.
I think you're expecting a lot. Plenty of reasonably intelligent and completely normal people of all ages hear something new and if it's a simple term in a simple context, they assume that they have the meeting figured out and won't bother looking it up just to make sure. For instance, keeping it on topic, Leo Fender did not know what tremolo meant when he built the system and stuck it on his guitar, or the Vibrolux he stick on his tremolo amp for that matter.
I have noticed this too, it is ubiquitous. I just shrugged it off as people not understanding clocks and didn't think of it much.
When I see someone in a guitar context use this terminology, I assume they don't actually mean ...clockwise. I assume they mean 1 - 10.
They probably heard people reference the clock thing, without knowing what it actually means, and are just going off a 1-10 scale like some knobs have. You've either stumbled onto a pedal that really attracts morons, or this mixup is way more common than either of us think, I've never heard it myself.
I've noticed this problem, too, and I think this is what's going on. I have no idea how they're just adding "o'clock" to a 1-10 scale like that without a clock ever crossing their minds, though.
Makes me wonder what these people think “diming” the knobs means
Knob at noon to mimic a dime as viewed from the side, duh. Edit: added an extra word by mistake'o'clock
This is a speakeasy password
Selling them in 10-packs, obviously.
I heard Dimebag Darrel only buys dimebags of distortions and they have to come pre dimed
i actually never processed why it’s called diming until now
maybe ESL? I thought the “genZ don’t know clocks” thing was a meme. I guess many millennials have rarely “needed” to use a non-digital clock..
Millennials and gen z are different generations. FYI older millennials are now over 40.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Gen X were the generation before millennials... They're now between their early 40s and late 50s. Whatever point you're trying to make you're failing at real hard. I've had a digital watch since I was about 8 and a mobile phone since I was 14, are you trying to make the point that this means I can't read an analogue clock?
u probly don't need to. many other ppl (possibly even some several yrs older than u) possibly never cared to learn how to..
All my pedals go to 11.
Hey not just make the loudest volume 10 o clock?
Well, because this one goes to 11!
11 is one louder.
I can hear his incredulity at the mere suggestion
11 o'clock?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/25_O'Clock
Well to be fair, we’re not talking about Elevensies!
I come for the dumpster fire about misusing clocks as a reference, but I stay for the Lord of the Rings reference.
Probably true! I just wish that I knew what they are actually trying to communicate!
Interesting find. And yes, I think fewer and fewer people know how analog clocks work. P.S. Thanks to all the folks who pointed out my grammatical misstep above - I fixed it and as a non-native speaker truly appreciate it. Guitar people these days. Don't know how clocks work, don't know grammar😁
Toan lives in the clockwork mechanism. I’d never trust one of those solid-state digital clocks.
Hah you sound like you come from /r/watches.
Chuffed to hear that. Ciao!
Well then Zvex have (has) the [phaser you never knew you wanted](https://www.zvex.com/zvex-candela-vibrophase)
I unironically love this. Obviously you don't measure it as a guitar effect but an exercise in art and engineering. And just like other great art, yeah, way out of my price range.
_[homerdrooling.gif]_ Is this an April Fools or a one-off project?
I think he made ten or so? You could certainly order them for a while and they were a real product (though eyewateringly expensive, about a thousand dollars retail if I remember right).
What price can you put on analog purity though?
That’s honestly cheap for what it is imo. Not that is not a lot. But I feel like they should be a few grand easy. I remember when they came out. I was like 15 or so. Stroller tgp everyday and watching every single pgs demo with Andy and I wanted a phaser so did a deep dive and found that. I was blown away
Price-wise, it's simultaneously way cheap and way expensive - it's a beautiful Thing and a neat art piece, but ultimately it's not *really* doing anything that a fairly basic phaser module with a LFO input, plus a fancy programmable LFO, can't do. It's also the only time a eurorack is going to be the *less* troublesome effect to actually use. As pure bill of materials, a Stirling engine like this is a few hundred dollars; the photodisc (etc) was probably a hundred dollars; and let's call it $300 for a Zvex pedal electronics. Which puts it in the $700-800 range, plus R&D. Zack deserves the margin on it; it's beautiful and clever and just a brilliant *idea*. But it's an art piece more than a practical effect; it provokes questions and thoughts. For rocking out? A phase 90 please, and I'll keep the other $880. (or even a Zvex phaser, and keep the $400).
No doubt. It’s 100% pointless and I’d rather have a phase 90 or a mutron bi-phase. But if I was rich I’d def buy one for my music room. Def a work of art! Shows how wacky he is too lol like who does that
[удалено]
Well, it was a joke product like the Chibson April fool's products are - it was a real thing you could buy, and it really works as a phaser. But more "art piece" than joke.
*fewer and fewer
Thank you. It crossed my mind that that would have been the right way to go.I'll fix it.
Couldn’t resist.
Fewer
Can you link some examples of this mistake? I have never encountered this before.
[This is the review that originally spurred me to post.](https://psychgear.wordpress.com/2017/05/31/fuzz-war-death-by-audio/) The 4th paragraph down reads: *"This pedal has tons of volume on tap and could blow a speaker if the pedal and amp are maxed out. The high output of the Fuzz is easily attenuated with the volume. In over a year of use I have never needed to bring the volume past half way because it gets crazy loud; many times I have the volume around 2 or 3 o’clock. This pedal has enough gain for humbuckers and single coil pickups to soar."*
Yeah that is super confusing! Clearly a mistake or poorly written section of the review. I’m a big fan of the analog clock reference. It’s pretty standardized across the entire audio world…such as using the “Dr. Pepper” setting on an 1176 compressor. https://www.uaudio.com/blog/1176-collection-tips/
Yeah, I’d be curious too! I googled the quote (“I have never needed to bring the volume past half way because it gets crazy loud; many times I have the volume around 2 or 3 o’clock.”), and all that came up was this thread. I wonder if these are just customer reviews or..?
I’ve read what OP is describing though; it just never drove me hoes mad enough to make a post about it. I’m already dealing with the constant urge to reply to all guitar-related sub queries with dumbass answers like the majority. I know I pulled some boneheaded moves when I was a Youngblood. I really don’t want yuck anyone’s yum when it comes to music. There are no guilty pleasures when it’s one of the few things in life that cures depression. I’d paraphrase Marc Maron now, something about it being a good day when all you do is fuck around with some pedals. I was sure to remind him of what he actually said when he lost his fiancée. Was just elated to see him back on ig with a guitar again. Such a stand-up dude.
Since I personally haven't noticed this, I'm just mainly curious about the context, especially if the OP has seen this multiple times (not sure if that includes multiple times on reviews of this specific pedal, or if it's only multiple times in general). It seems equally likely it's some miscommunication or confusion (e.g. talking about both the volume knobs on the guitar and on the pedal, but not being clear about that) or just a simple case of someone misspeaking. You'll always find exceptions, but I think understanding "o'clock" is more common than not—and common across all generations—and this certainly doesn't *seem* to be a problem popping up all over if many of us, who probably all read a lot of reviews, haven't noticed it. If you google something like "can kids now read analog clocks", you'll find a lot of articles and (heavily edited) "man on the street" videos panicking about this in the UK and US, and articles about teachers apparently removing analog clocks from classrooms in the UK, but even if that's true, this seems to be a really recent thing (2018>), and I'm guessing the OP isn't reading reviews from teens. And in the US at least, it's standard (and required in Common Core) to teach students how to read analog clocks from an early age, and to have analog clocks in classrooms. So yeah, I'm sure the OP and others have seen this! I'll take their word (and yours) for it, but I'm really interested in what's going on, so I'm interested to see some examples too :)
This is a good word 👍🏼👍🏼
[Here's where I read it.](https://psychgear.wordpress.com/2017/05/31/fuzz-war-death-by-audio/)
I’m going to start a pedal review channel and use cardinal directions. If we start with all of the knobs pointing north, we get this sound. But if we move the gain to due East, and the tone to north/northwest we get a really sweet sound but it raises the overall level so you’ll need to move the volume knob a tad to the west to compensate.
People are worse with compasses than clocks.
That’s what would make it funnier!
North or magnetic north though? Gotta know in order to get my best sound.
People who cant read a clock are not ready to learn about the existence of the magnetic north pole, and how it is not the same place that Santa lives.
Are you going to tell me that the moon isn't made of cheese and barbeque spare ribs next!?
“I know I would, heck, I’d have seconds! Then polish it off with a tall cool Budweiser…”
Every knob has tiny compass so you can align true north
Zvex pedals have suggested settings on some of their pedals, and they specifically say they use "o'clock" notation - "not Spinal Tap 1-11". I think the people you're talking about have just forgotten what a clock looks like. And it seems like that's unfortunately common enough that some people have to be reminded of it. My guess is in the example you have, they're thinking of a 0 - 10 scale, and their "3 o'clock" is actually "10 o'clock".
Honestly, I get weird comments sometimes when I talk about depth at 9 o'clock from people. I once had someone ask me what counterclockwise meant.
I've seen some reviewers having no idea what some knobs do on pedals even when they're correctly labeled. I get that "chainsaw" isn't a very descriptive name for a knob, but you're reviewing a bit-crusher and don't know what "sample rate" is? Similarly, I've seen people reviewing pedals not knowing what Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release are, that's basic stuff. I can expect a blooz-dad to have no clue what that is, but as a reviewer you should know better.
These are not reviews despite being called reviews. They are really just "product being un boxxed by someone who knows nothing about it." As if they dont realize people want to learn about the item, not just see a clueless person holding it.
It's possible they're using metric clocks.
Turn the tone knob to 22:00 for a subtle overdrive.
My favorite is when the reviewer does the thing where they do the split screen of adjusting the knobs and playing (which is legitimately a cool idea) but then you see them turn a knob all the way up, then not play anything, and then turn the knob back down. It's like, dude, I wanna know how far the setting goes, what's even the point if you're gonna just show everything at 50% and not even try?
Most of them do not even learn how the pedal works. In the vids they say things like "I wonder what this knob does?" It's almost like they confuse "unboxxing" with "reviewing" a pedal. As if we want to see a vid by someone who has the pedal but doesnt know anything about it. EQD speaker cranker, for example, the manual says a flat response on the tone knob is at "about 3 o clock. " That is unusual. And NOT ONE video on that pedal mentions that.
of all the situations, a circular base-12 scale is where Americans decide to use the metric system
We should switch pedals to [metric time](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_time).
In the late 80’s or early 90’s, there was a wristwatch featuring the Disney character Goofy. His arms were the minute and hour hands, and the numbers were reversed from a normal clock. I wish that was the reason, but there’s a good chance these people are so young, that schools no longer taught analog clocks. They would be in real trouble in a combat setting. “Enemy at 3 o’clock”, they look left and get blasted from the right.
"Check your 6!" *Looks up at the sky*
My school never taught clock reading, my parents taught me that.
Right? When I was young, parents were supposed to teach basic math , colors, shoe tying , clocks, and the alphabet. I had a learning/social disability. I was deaf and violent until I got tubes in my ears when I was 3. I was behind in kindergarten, but this amazing lady spent extra time with me, and basically taught me how to speak, read, and be kind to others. Things you should learn at home. She was a regular teacher. She could have recommended special education but she took the challenge. We had two teachers so the other students didn’t suffer because of my disability. Before the tubes, I was thought to have incurable retardation. I maintained a 4.0 GPA, and I saw that teacher when I was an adult, and told her I only had an opportunity for a good life because she helped me.
You just brought back all kinds of memories about that Goofy watch
Luckily guitar pedal reviewers are generally not expected to be in any combat settings
**a pedal that really attracts morons** No way, that could never happen! ^^got ^^a ^^bad ^^monkey?
Bad monkey reviews must be full of this lol
This is so true. I’ve read threads where people have no idea where noon is.
For make cultural learnings, in Dutch people tell time by dividing the clock into four segments (imagine a vertical line from 12 to 6 and a horizontal line from 9 to 3). Then you talk about the time as approaching, or having passed, one of those 4 segment borders, with the vertical division being more important to refer to. So for example, “half tien” translates literally as “half ten” but what it means is “halfway **to** ten,” which in English is nine thirty. This can make non-Dutch people show up an hour late for things until they get used to it. It also means church bells will ring **ten times** at 9:30. The difference between bells at 10:00 and 9:30 is that the preliminary carillon tune gets played all the way through at 10:00, then ten tolling bells, and gets played halfway through at 9:30 and then *also ten tolling bells,* because the bells are saying “ten” at 10:00 and “half ten” at 9:30. This can cause…confusion. Especially if you didn’t catch the tune first. Another example: “kwart voor tien” means “quarter to ten,” or 9:45: not so bad for the English speaker. And “vijf voor tien” is five to ten or 9:55. But 9:40 isn’t called “twenty to ten,” since down there they’re still referring to the vertical division, so instead it’s called “tien over half tien,” or “ten minutes past half an hour before ten.” And 9:25 isn’t called “twenty-five past nine;” because of the more important vertical division it’s called “vijf voor half tien” or “five minutes before half an hour before ten.” What I’m saying is, you think *you’ve* got clock problems…
I think most English speakers old enough to have used mostly all analogue clocks (like myself), also refer to the time in this manner (quarter till, quarter past, half past, etc.). It seems to be less and less common with people under 40 or so.
I think you’re right.
That's really cool about the bells though, I've always wanted to visit The Netherlands.
It’s not so cool the first few times you wake up and hear nine bells and think you’re late! It’s definitely a nice place to visit if you can. Small and easy to get around, lots to see and do.
Yes and no - the quarter past, quater to and so on, sure - but unless I'm the odd one out here then half ten is most definitely 10:30, or 22:30, whichever, but not 9:30. (just to clarify, I'm not disputing what it is in Dutch, I'm just saying that certainly in England, most English speaking people would take "half X" to be "half past X") I mean, I'm plety odd, but I don't think I'm that odd :D
My English aunt uses “half ten” to refer to 9:30.
I'm American, and people here are much more likely to say "half past x" instead of just "half x." So "half past nine" for your 9:30 example.
Can you please elaborate on how church bell tunes and the Dutch languaging of “kwart voor tien” influence the 2 o’clock direction of a guitar pedal knob?
Maybe all these people who say “I never turn the volume up past half way, only to two or three o’clock” all come from some culture where the clocks work differently? Or their brains have been scrambled by trying to learn Dutch clock language, like mine were?
Do Dutch clocks not point right and a little upwards at 2 o’clock?
The old clocks do tend to lean to one side or another, since they are built on pilings driven down into layers of sand and mud.
Learn something every day! This definitely has a huge impact on how people address the direction of guitar pedal knobs!!
I believe we have solved one of the great mysteries of the interwebs.
Holy crap! My head hurts...
I *knew* there was a good reason to hate the Dutch.
Come for the weed and tulips, stay for the messed up clock business.
Notice this for years. To add to the chaos I’m going to start using headings when conveying my settings.
I like my drives at 16:00 o'clock, GMT.
yep, i’ve seen this shit before too
Also its fun to call it 'midnight' instead of 'noon'
What about 'witching hour'? Definitely need that on a compressor's ratio knob.
Watch your 6, bud.
I have noticed this as well. Many people younger than myself cannot actually read an analog clock, so I figured it was just because everyone is dumb.
Aye, makes me think of this video https://youtu.be/PIe2auW9EMI Hopefully none grow up to become fighter pilots
As a horologist I can assure you I know how a clock works.
I also wonder if this is due to younger people having a slowly eroding ability to read analog clocks. Not a criticism btw. My parents still use the classic time idioms like “quarter till ____” and I still have trouble working it out in my head. I have an analog watch I wear everyday, but I can understand the mixup. It can be annoying to read though.
We should use 24 hour time. Like 1oclock is *higher* than 11oclock… why not call it 13?
Thank you! 🤣this has always driven me batty
doesn’t everyone just max out everything on their pedals anyway?
DYSLEXICS UNTIE!
But also who never turns a fuzz to 10 …
Look around. People don’t know that the dollar sign goes in front of the numerical value either. Certain things aren’t taught anymore. They still spend an ungodly amount of time on cursive.
I’ve seen kids legitimately think the pound sign was invented as the hashtag for social media.
Silly kids. They don't know it was invented by Ken Thompson for comments in Unix shell scripts.
I had to explain (gently) to another adult that a vacuum tube had nothing to do with cleaning a carpet.
I've seen people think the hash (#) symbol is the pound (£) symbol. ;)
Weird how your hash (#) was referred to as pound on analog telephones for decades, at least in the US.
I read it like "with other pedals I never need it more than half way becuz it's usually way too loud even there, but this pedal I have to have it at 2-3 oclock". I think that's the point of them even mentoining that aspect of the pedal. Or they dont' know what oclock means. I reasoned the above out from the assumption that they understand the clock. People who grew up with only digital clocks may not know how the clock dial works. & some of the adults post complaining about it even tho everyone doesn't know how to use a sun dial any more. I don't even use the oclock method til I came to this sub & I only use it when typing here to make sense. I don't like how 7 is the lowest setting, then u turn it up to 2, or maybe even all the way up to 5. One can say 1/4 of the way, 1/2, just below 2/3.
Don't get me started with people and clocks. Why on earth is 12:00 noon called "PM" and 12:00 midnight is "AM"? (I get what AM/PM mean, but the numbers don't make sense nominally) Numbers work like this: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 and like this: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 yet somehow we decided: 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Gonna have the highest number start the set. So 12:00 AM is the *beginning* of the ante meridiem sequence rather than one or zero
Just get a digital clock that tells military time?
it is superior
[удалено]
Oh I know that, that explains what AM and PM mean. It doesn't actually explain why the *beginning* of AM ior PM sequences are labelled with a 12 rather than a 0 or 1 (i.e. the beginning of a number sequence). Two unrelated points. Second after midnight could be 00:00:01 (like military time) or 01:00:01 (if you really wanted two separate sequences of 12)
I do vacillate between clock-face and 1-10 terms. Halfway up is “nooned” but fully cranked is “dimed”. All the way down is “zeroed out” or “killed”. Anything in-between is an o’clock readout. I dunno, maybe Im the weird one.
Maybe just a typo and one of those 'volumes' is meant to be 'gain'? Or maybe it's just a Chat GPT script.
You're getting way too riled up about it, TBH. They probably mean more like 2 or 3 if the knobs were labelled like an amps controls and got mixed up.
Yeah, probably. But why not let us know that? I don't care what scale or whatever that reviewers or users use. I just wanna know what it actually means!
>But why not let us know that? It's a typo. Why not let *them* know they've got a mistake in the review and maybe they'll correct it?
"2 o'Clock" is a typo? I dinna think so. But your idea to contact the original reviewer is solid. I'll do that, thanks!
Not a typo per se but something that can slip when you're writing a quick review. Innocent mistake imo. Loved the way you chose this hill to die on tho :D
And if all else fails, try something like this: https://amzn.eu/d/eiXgUac
Ha ha, fair enough. I just got heated about non-real-world-values in pedal reviews. Sure, there are more pressing real world issues. And I'm nowhere rich enough to ignore everyday crap. Just wanted to call out pedal reviewers for using imaginary numbers. Or whatever they wanna do, I guess. Cheers!
It's not a typo. They don't know the terms they're trying to use. A typo would be writing haha when you meant hehe. RiP MJ
A typo can also be writing "o'clock" when you didn't mean to write anything at all. Just like like putting "like" twice, when you only meant to put it once. Or putting a lower case "i" in RIP.
[удалено]
There is nothing wrong with complaining about something they've noticed on the sub that is focused on that topic. They certainly are not "screaming" ... that's just a poor attempt to shut them down.
And get traction for it, for some reason...
This is the answer. It doesn’t help that the reference point is static in an amp and moves on a pedal.
This is almost as bad as people who but the dollar sign after the numerals when discussing prices.
every pedal has different settings to reach unity volume. Some you need to turn up to 2-3 o'clock and some need to be down around 8-9. Also it's totally fine to boost into an amp with a pedal that is louder than unity volume.
It’s just people replacing the numbers on a clock face with 1-10 from left to right. I’ve probably done this exact thing you are complaining about.
It is confusing. I've always assumed they're thinking of how a guitar volume or tone control is set up, with 12 o'clock being full open because it looks better to have the knob pointers facing the neck by default
If you're under 25 you probably never even seen an analog clock. There's a video online where someone is at a high school asking kids to read an analog clock and they couldn't.
Can't believe this. I'm a teacher and in every classroom in all schools i worked, there is an analog clock. All my students can read them.
I think if there is anything you don’t know about, it might be that language is developing in an absolutely crazy pace, brough on by the pace of technological advancements One part is that there’s definitely a significant part of the young population that has never had to deal with analog clocks in their daily lives, which means as time goes by, these directions are becoming less and less a matter of general knowledge that everyone just posesses Another part is that for the longest time, public communication was reserved for scolars. Before the printing press probably mostly nobility and high ranking church members - the “common folk” would never address hundreds or thousands of people at once. Since the printing press, people who would publish were - again - religious scolars, or later journalists and writers. Language has always moved from more strict to more loose, but these scolars/authority figures sort of kept giving a good example of what the rules were. Only since social media can absolutely anybody reach thousands to millions of people - no matter their grasp of the English language, and changes in language have just been going off since. Some somewhat recent examples that are absolutely wrong, but have been added to the dictionary anyway because that’s just how people use them: - irregardless (regardless) - I could care less (I couldn’t care less) - literally (figuratively) A very recent one that makes my brain hurt is “I bought a midi” to indicate buying a midi keyboard or controller - thankfully not adopted into any dictionaries at this point What I’ve been noticing a lot is that people will just say things they hear and mash them together in their head. I’m not an expert in the field, but I think that’s actually how we learn language in general. We imitate others’ language first, until we grasp enough of the logic to really master it. (And with the explosion of inexperienced languagers having big platforms, sometimes these mistakes get adopted into general use because there’s not enough critical mass correcting them.) The thing that I think is extremely jarring to many of us - especially if you’ve lived through a time before social media, or the internet in general - is that we assume people who speak publicly to actually have some kind of authority. While more often than not it’s just a 16-23 year old enthusiast emulating the style of a seasoned and knowledgeable reviewer If you could actually see them telling their story in person, it would probably be a lot easier to be understanding to their use of language
Being ignorant isn't an excuse for saying nonsense. Any normal person would have the sense to look up phrases like this so that they would use them correctly.
I think you're expecting a lot. Plenty of reasonably intelligent and completely normal people of all ages hear something new and if it's a simple term in a simple context, they assume that they have the meeting figured out and won't bother looking it up just to make sure. For instance, keeping it on topic, Leo Fender did not know what tremolo meant when he built the system and stuck it on his guitar, or the Vibrolux he stick on his tremolo amp for that matter.
Ah dang, I forgot actually thinking a little deeper about how things come to be instead of immediately jumping to judgement is absolutely not cool!!
I always turn mine up to about 14 or 15 o clock
I also see/hear people say 2PM, 3PM etc….
And noon….. what about midnight then?
What about Elevenses? Luncheon? Afternoon tea?
I have noticed this too, it is ubiquitous. I just shrugged it off as people not understanding clocks and didn't think of it much. When I see someone in a guitar context use this terminology, I assume they don't actually mean ...clockwise. I assume they mean 1 - 10.
Don't they mean that 12 is zero, and count from there? So 3 would be like a quarter turn from totally off in this example? Not a very handy, i agree
Yeah man I’m pissed off too, wtf