Sweetwater is getting as bad as Guitar Center

  • Thread starter Thread starter 8len8
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8len8

8len8

Active member
I was asking an employee in the pedal department about the Q setting of a pedal’s filter and he had no idea what I was talking about.

They can’t hire people with more experience?
 
My Sweetwater guy is a long time friend of mine. He knows his shit.
 
Q, it’s hard to explain even though you know what it is. For electronic circuits, Q is defined as the ratio of the energy stored in the resonator to the energy supplied by a to it, per cycle, to keep signal amplitude constant, at a frequency where the stored energy is constant with time. It’s just not or how wide the frequency is or where it crosses over, it is a very complicated thing when you get into it. There might be one or two of us that didn’t know that. How’s your calculus?

Over the 60 years that I’ve been alive I have found the people who think they know everything, know hardly anything. I doubt Einstein died knowing how to clean a toilet, how to milk a cow or how to play guitar like Jimi Hendrix. He was smart, but there’s a limit to how much anyone knows.
 
I used to work at Best Buy when I was in high school. I always thought it funny when customers would ask real technical questions about stuff there and get upset when I couldn't give them an answer. Best Buy did not send us to schools or seminars to learn about computers, tv, speakers, etc. You can't expect employees to know everything just because they work there. I don't know what a q setting for a filter is either.
 
Isn't the underlying problem that companies don't find it worth their while to invest in knowledgeable employees..
 
While we’re here, what exactly is Q in relatively simplistic terms? I’ve read about it countless times and have stuff with a Q knob and still have no clue what it does.
 
This is all I got...

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It’s the width of the bell curve created by boosting or cutting a frequency on an EQ. The tighter, smaller the Q, the more precise the boost or cut around the selected frequency. If the manufacturer of the pedal’s site doesn’t say what the Q value is, how is the employee going to know? I just go to the company website’s on my phone before I ask a salesperson. I expect them to not know or embellish with bullshit anyway.
Ironically I just watched this video the other day….

 
Is it in the pedal's manual? Maybe your question could be answered there. Would be hard for me to jump on someone for not knowing that parameter of that pedal. How many pedals with various settings and features do they have there, a thousand or something?
 
People who use wahs, filters, and para-eqs will know. For most others it's not a common term.
 
If you've ever done any form of recording or used a wah pedal with tweakeable stuff on them like the 535Q or the Petrucci, you will immediately know what Q means.
 
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