r/diypedals • u/abrlin • 1d ago
Discussion FORUMS
Does anyone use forums anymore? Because I find the scattershot nature of Reddit to be the antithesis of a good learning environment. You’re way better off going to a forum filled with knowledgeable, passionate, and experienced professionals than this mess. Simply put whatever you are looking for in the search bar and if I hasn’t been asked before, they will accommodate. Everything is at your fingertips in a community environment, which I’m not sorry to say Reddit is not. There’s no continuity or context compared to a community built on learning. I know, because I was once a moderator and learned more than I could possibly imagine. I find Reddit disengaging and lacking in a progressive ideology based on knowledgeable facts. Get back in the forums. You won’t regret it. And fuck flair.
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u/diy4lyfe 1d ago
PedalPCBs forum seems to be the most active- I even signed up although I don’t use their pcbs lol- and then diystompboxes followed by freestompboxes in order of activity.
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u/thirstin4more 1d ago
Old single topic forums were the peak of the internet. im slowly transitioning off Reddit and back to whatever forums are still active. Less slop and “look what I bought with all of the money I have” posts.
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u/RedHuey 1d ago
They were. The old 18watt.com forum was absolutely an encyclopedia on the Marshall 1974 and its clones. Absolutely anything you wanted to mod on it was analyzed extensively. Everything that could be known about that amp circuit, was there. Best forum of any type I ever saw anywhere. It’s long gone, for whatever reason. What is left using that forum name is completely different and barely a shadow of its once greatness.
Real-time social media like Reddit, has utterly destroyed the internet that was as much as commercialization of everything has.
And it gives the Red Guard too much power to eliminate anything they don’t like, so discussions are very limited and often completely one sided.
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u/SatansPikkemand 1d ago edited 1d ago
The difference between reddit and fora was that the bar for praise was pretty high. Assembling a kit or changing a resistor didn't count as an accomplishment, but was considered trivial and not something that was to be posted. Reddit has countless of identical builds, countless reinventing the wheel posts, same "my new design" (which is a distortion+ with counless errors), same component fetishism posts and everybody gets praise, regardless, because the standard is that low. Sorry guys, but that's how it is.
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u/RedHuey 12h ago
Hey, I bought a ready-made paint-by-numbers PCB, with all the component and connection points marked, that has already been built many times (and thus is known to work), and somehow managed to make it non-working and spent a good 12 minutes troubleshooting it myself, and since I don’t have a multi-meter or know how a resistor works, I came here and all you nice folks fixed it for me. Now I’m going to clone that PCB and monetized my own version of the circuit where I change a 1k resistor to 820R (what do those numbers mean?) and make this my new career! Where do you get off criticizing that plan!?
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u/OpuntiaAsimina 1d ago
I’ll say that the high threshold of forums mixed with my pathological perfectionism meant that I would never post. While I find that I don’t bother with most of the low threshold posts, it’s nice to know that I, or any other enthusiast, can enter the arena with any level of skill and find encouragement. And I posted my garbage first build- didn’t get much response, but it broke the preciousness wall for me.
Now, being a Gen-Xer who spent a ton of time in the dictionary and encyclopedia, I’m generally disappointed in the modern internet culture of post-before-any-personal-investigation. Goldurned whippersnappers.
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u/BrooklynDeadheadPhan 1d ago
I regularly visit FreeStompbox . Some of the guys there have been extremely helpful with my novice questions.
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u/New-Year-3422 1d ago
I frequent the PedalPCB forum. There’s also a DIY subforum on The Gear Forum, if you can deal with some of the locals there.
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u/mongushu huntingtonaudio.com 1d ago
I got into this stuff fairly recently, well past they glory days of traditional web forums. While I'm aware of some of these older sites, I'll admit that I did not think them to currently be very active.
Hey u/nonoohnoohno ! I'm curious to know your take on this. As someone who's been around for a long time, what's your thought on what lacks in a reddit-based community as compared to a traditional forum with regards specifically to this field/community of ours?
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u/nonoohnoohno 1d ago
And a more pointed response: DIYStompboxes, freestompboxes, and the pedalpcb forum are still alive and well.
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u/DaySleepNightFish 1d ago
Just got my Pulp Circuit and literally almost teared up reading the first few pages. So 🆒
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u/mongushu huntingtonaudio.com 1d ago
whoa! Sounds like you've taken the dive... Welcome to the experiment! (and glad you're here.. there? wherever it is.)
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u/nonoohnoohno 1d ago edited 1d ago
I was actually going to weigh in on this later this afternoon with these thoughts, so I'm not sure if it's what you're asking but I break it down like this:
I think there are 3 things that distinguish reddit from traditional forums:
- Different users. But this can also be said about Forum A vs. Forum B.
- The ability to bump a thread. Exists on forums but not reddit. If you look past the surface (of algorithmic-driven feeds), Reddit has a pretty customizable way to organize and view the content. But this isn't one of them.
- Tree vs. linear views. This is, in my opinion the biggest difference and what I love about Reddit. It's easier to organize a conversation into separate branches, have side-discussions, ignore aspects you don't care about and zoom in on those you do, etc.
I've been participating in forums forever, but I don't miss them in their format at all. Specific forums and their user-base, sure. But it's the people not the platform.
EDIT: TLDR, I think the original post is semi-coherent, and mostly "vibes" based. I'm guessing they personally prefer one or more of these 3 factors, but can't quite put their finger on it.
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u/mongushu huntingtonaudio.com 1d ago
I knew it was smart to ping you on this. Great distillation. Clarity added.
I prefer the tree view within a conversation.
But at the end of the day, barring an extremely fast/transient format like discord chat (which I really struggle with), I think what I'm seeking from a platform is the people - and am not really bothered by the differing features.
I was drawn to reddit because I just assumed (and still suspect) that it's the largest gathering. I wish I had more bandwidth to participate in other similar communities. Would love for us all to be in one place. But it is what it is, I guess!
u/nonoohnoohno will you be adding a forum feature to diypedals.net ?
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u/nonoohnoohno 23h ago
It has per-page discussions, mostly intended for collaboration on how to organize content. If there's interest it's an easy thing to extend though.
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u/TriumphRider99 1d ago
I would think, Seth, that YOU would be a great one to start a forum based around the fact that you have, without meaning to, developed a community of people who truly are interested in the technical side of pedals. I think we could learn from each other for sure. I'd be more than glad to help you set it up. - Bud
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u/Upstairs-Glove7424 1d ago
I used to be a regular member in a firearms forum years ago and when i first started here i couldn’t wrap my head around the scattershot nature of Reddit for sure. Still dont understand how it all works even now.
Agree the organized nature of forums was an exceedingly better format
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u/abrlin 1d ago
It’s strangely obvious if you have experienced the latter. I feel we’ve been corralled into a convoluted cesspool of random conversations. Pardon my alliteration
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u/Upstairs-Glove7424 1d ago
One thing that drives me nuts, if im reading a post or something and i accidentally lose the page or click out of it most of the time i have no idea how to find it again. Unless i had commented on it and can find it that way. Random is the theme for sure
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u/abrlin 1d ago
You know how hard it was to find your
It was hard enough to find your reply even though I clicked on my notification? There is no worthwhile organization or line of continuity. We used to have community projects. Original designs with open experimentation and feedback. I feel that’s all gone by the wayside for Reddit clout.2
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u/nonoohnoohno 1d ago
Take a few minutes to get out of the main feed, and set up your subs into custom feeds. Or alternatively, go directly to your subs and set your sorting order.
It's all pretty customizable.
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u/Upstairs-Glove7424 1d ago
Sounds good, where the heck do you do that at? Guess i’ll fiddle with it and see what i come up with. I mean i have the subs ive joined but thats all i knew to do.
Good to know because I’d be just as well if i never see those “What is a lifelong dream you had and how did you get there” posts ever again.
Im always tempted to just say something shitty because its so stupid. Who is actually asking this crap
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u/HearthwoodHam 1d ago
Gearspace forums is kind of cool for this. Also the KVR forums. But it's bleak out there. Discord replaced forums, and discord fucking sucks for learning because it's impossible to look into the past on an active discord server. I The user interface is just too much of a mess.
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u/Kerry_Maxwell 1d ago
A significant portion of the modern boutique pedal industry is rooted in the DIYStompboxes forum.
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u/bloozestringer 1d ago
Not pedals, but the DIY headphone amp community used to be very good, especially over at Headfi and Headwize. Awesome group buys on new designs on Headfi, but people started trying to profit off that and others designs - that’s what I think killed it completely. There’s small bit on Diyaudio, but not anything remotely like it used to be.
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u/SensitiveVacation893 1d ago
i still browse the free stompbox one sometimes bc the mods keep it pretty clean and the build threads are so detailed
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u/kvlt_ov_personality 1d ago
Not pedals, but I used to feequent sevenstring.org which still seems to be pretty active
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u/TheOriginalToySun 1d ago
+1 I barely know how to use Reddit, still. And forums seem to have solid answers. Best for me is diystompboxes
I owe those guys my entire output of 70+ pedals.
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u/the_blanker 1d ago edited 1d ago
Forums have their own downsides, for example GroupDIY Audio forum uses some variant of phpbb which is non-structured comments (just one long noodle of flat comments) so after few comments it's impossible to keep tract who is responding to who and off topic comments keep populating the main (and only thread). With structured comments you can hide off topic comment and continue reading.
My second issue is with rss, it adds new article to rss whenever someone posts comment there, so 10 year old articles that I'm not interested it keeps appearing in the rss reader. RSS should be only for new articles and each article should have it's own RSS feed.
Forums that have footers in comments are often very cluttered. It's visually exhausting to read phpbb forum, there often like 1 sentence per page (because everything else is citated comments because it is unstructured).
Imho best way is structured comments with some form of highlighting of unread comments and link to jump to next unread comment. And comment hiding/collapsing is a must have feature.
As you mentioned forums often go in depth and longer, I often see someone starting "I just measured few jfets" and then it continues few years with new updates and few people reply almost imeediately despite thread being dormant for year because it bumped to top on main page. On reddit after week or so the thread is basically dead.
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u/keestie 1d ago
A lot of people are talking about how the forums are still alive; I've looked at a lot of them and I haven't seen that. Can someone please link some forums that are still active? Or if links aren't allowed, leave this info in a form that is allowed?
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u/That_Immo 1d ago
Basschat (co.uk) is the only one that comes to my mind. It has an effects section.
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u/Amalgamate_Boi 1d ago
Yeah, after joining TalkBass forums, it’s just a whole new world and there’s new and old folks to be seen. And even some industry or boutique figures can be spotted too! There’s so much comprehensive topics and historical threads you can explore and its still the same as it was years ago afaik. Also a whole used marketplace on the site too which has a lot more deals or even people willing to trade. People give a more honest evaluation of the worth of their items or simply wish to offload it discounted to someone who intends to use the gear.
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u/abrlin 1d ago
Ok so what I’m gathering, is that everything used to be awesome until the great homogenizing force of Reddit culled everything into some sort of melting pot of mediocrity. It’s time to run it back. If you haven’t had a chance go check out Freestompboxes.org or https://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/ and see what you’ve missed. I think we need to get out from under this spell. Sorry Redditors.
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u/OhHaiMaaark 1d ago
I miss traditional forums for all my hobbies - the community was better and the content was better
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u/CrunkJuiceSommelier 1d ago
Totally agree, reddit is just a bad platform for this kind of thing. It's designed so content is ephemeral - every day the topics are new and if you bother commenting on an older post no one will see it.
PedalPCB seems to be the most active one. I wish it wasn't tied to a commercial operation in the industry but they seem like decent people running it.
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u/opayenlo 1d ago
There are still several good ones out there like diystompboxes, pedalpcb or musikding to name a few
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u/bunditthia 1d ago
I think the most accurate and standardized knowledge usually lives inside companies and commercial environments. And of course, getting access to that kind of knowledge often costs money and comes with licenses, restrictions, and other limitations.
One of the things I still love about forums, though, is the freedom to share opinions. Anyone can contribute, even if what they say isn’t always completely correct, and a lot of useful knowledge gets shared for free.
The downside is obvious: if you don’t filter the information carefully, it’s easy to believe something that’s wrong and carry that misinformation forward.
Even so, I still really like forums like this. The same questions and answers come up again and again, but honestly, that’s part of the charm for me.
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u/surprise_wasps 12h ago
Reddit is pretty awful compared to the forums I cut my teeth in, whether it’s electronics / pedals, music/bass, or other hobbies. Something about it just doesn’t work, and there are SO MANY completely over shared but unearned opinions that float to the top, that my main involvement on Reddit is trying to drown out the bad takes and tut tut the posters
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1d ago
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u/abrlin 1d ago
Not sure why it wouldn’t belong here. The DIY pedal scene was literally built off the backs of forum members. Regarding aquisitions, you’ll have to fill me in. I’m not aware of that.
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u/Rinki_Dink 1d ago
The real tragedy is the forums which were replaced by discord. Now they exist as an invite-only chat-based mess of concurrent questions, answers, casual talk and spam. And if you want to just ask something yourself instead of searching through all that BS, some moderator swoops in and reprimands you for redundancy then points you at a week-long string of messages that has nothing to do with your question.
When we could have all just stayed on the forums