The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

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I really don’t want to be too hard on the folks that write advertising copy. I did for a while, and it involved some truly sour moments of needing to fill space while also not having anything meaningful to say. So – I get it, but at the same time, because I get it, the more sensitive I am to filler and hype when they show up. I also have a special place in my heart for filler and hype that are related to music gear, because the more I know about it, the less I’m willing to “play ball.”

Hence, from that special place in my heart, I’ve decided to take a read through a quarterly musical catalog and make a little catalog of my own: Answers to the various bits and pieces of product blurbs that I perceive as unnecessary, overwrought, fluff, divorced from reality, or just plain deserving of a wisecrack in return.

Also, please refrain from getting the wrong impression here. I do appreciate good design and good quality – but I appreciate it when it actually makes my life easier, or makes something sound significantly better, or is truly an innovative solution. My problem with a lot of spendy music artifacts is that they don’t really do those things. They charge a premium, and lean on nostalgia for old technology, but that’s about it. I don’t need anything that’s heavy, hot, finicky, or prone to distortion, and I boggle at how many dollars are demanded for items that seem to exist mostly to have those features.

More seriously, I’d like to suggest that you look for the patterns in these claims about music gear: The attempts to make “vanity” features valuable, or giving a basic function a fancy name, or trying to pass off a mundane attribute as being notable. It’s everywhere in music-catalog ad copy.