ARE THERE TOO MANY PEDALS?
A Brief Look At The Supply And Demand Of The Guitar Pedal Industry
Over the last several years, almost every guitar industry podcast, live panel, magazine interview, or Q&A I have participated in has asked me a consistent and curious question:
“Josh, with so many pedal companies and so many new pedals coming out all the time, have we hit a point of complete guitar pedal saturation? Is the bubble about to burst?”
They really want to know if I believe what they seemingly believe: that guitar pedals have nowhere else to go and if this is where it all finally falls apart. The assumption is that with decades of guitar pedal innovation behind us and the rise of the internet/social media age, we now have instant access to every flavor, form, and version of any guitar pedal idea that has been and will ever be. In short, we have hit the wall, and this bubble of guitar pedal overload is about to burst.
This is a favorite subject of mine, and I want to give an in-depth answer by covering several important points I have never had the time or freedom to fully explain. I apologize to those of you who want a quick and simplified answer. This deserves more than a simple “no,” and I’m excited to finally explain myself.
1
Ink Pens Are In Trouble
Look around. No, really, right now - look around the room. What do you see? I see a television, furniture, a stapler, picture frames, some books, a pair of shoes, and more things than I care to mention. Each one of these things exists in its own market space alongside hundreds if not thousands of similar items.
How can so many versions of these items exist, and it seems no one is worried?
Amuse me for a moment. Let’s take an imaginary stroll into your local Office Depot. Close your eyes and walk through those big automatic sliding doors and into the ultimate wonderland of stationary, AA batteries, and toxic yet refreshing energy drinks (the Sour Patch Kids flavor is great). As you walk further in, you see that big isle on the right side, stretching as far as the eye can see, and it’s full of one thing - Pens. Lots of pens. To the common eye, it might seem like the pen market is in full saturation and headed for disaster!
All of a sudden, you hear the voices (no, not the usual ones in your head that tell you how you could probably escape your reality and become a fisherman somewhere off the coast of upstate Vermont) all around the store franticly whispering. In a more and more paranoid rhythm, you hear, “Are there too many ink pens on the market? Is this the end of the great gel pen bubble? BIC and Sharpie keep making the same old thing, and I’m sick of this crap. Who needs more black ink roller balls with ergonomic grip?”
With imagination aside, I ask you, why are people not more concerned about the obvious dire state of the ink pen industry? Well, it’s probably because worrying about the ink pen market crashing would be illogical, short-sighted, and a complete waste of time.
Let me explain.
2
Guitar Pedals Are Not Special
As with so many discussions I hear or get involved in around the economics and history of the guitar, people within the guitar community tend to act like its products exist within a sort of self-isolated vacuum, immune from the natural laws of economics. To all of those who think this, I have bad news: the guitar and its products aren’t that special.
Like those ink pens, the guitar pedal industry is part of a greater and more complex “consumer industry”. More specifically, it is a classic example of what is called a “consumer electronics industry.” Products like headphones, Bluetooth speakers, those crappy kid pianos at Costco, smartphones, and your favorite gaming system that you spent six hours on last night when you should have been sleeping (yeah, I saw you) are all a part of this industry.
Guitar pedals are usually more consumed than kept, and they are usually replaced by the next gadget that promises improvement. Even though the pedals you have on your pedalboard right now are perfectly fine, I know more than anyone that they are in danger. Something is always coming along that convinces you (and me) that what we have isn’t good enough.
Have you ever wondered why Apple releases constant new product revisions with just minor differences? Well, it is a requirement of a healthy consumer industry and a capitalistic economy to make new consumables so that the consumers who are looking to consume can consume. Did I mention they consume? If companies don’t make new products, someone else will, and you don’t want to be on the slow side of that equation.
In most cases, this game of “consumerism” (look that word up) leads to unneeded and mostly forgotten advancements that fall flat in the grand scheme of things. Remember those iPhone 12 upgrades from 2020? Neither do I, but those lead us to the next thing, and then the next thing and innovation eventually pokes its head through the door, and an iPhone model will come around that impresses us. The same thing happens in guitar pedals. We see it in new colorways, modifications, the 28,752nd version of the Tubescreamer, and so on. As bothersome as this may be to some of you, there is nothing wrong with it, it’s just how capitalism works.
It’s also worth mentioning “Disruptive Innovation.” This is the iPhone when it was first released in 2007, or products like the 1979 Sony Walkman, the 2004 GoPro camera, or the 1993 Dyson vacuum. Each of these products changed the game and caused its respective part of the “consumer electronics industry” to stop, readjust, and adapt to new ways of thinking that had never been considered. In guitar pedals, we have seen this happen with MXR’s 1974 launch, the BOSS compact series of 1977, and Line 6’s 1999 DL4 Delay. Chase Bliss, who came onto the scene in 2013 with the Warped Vinyl, has done the same with a more gradual curve of influence by making products over the span of a decade that have pushed the boundaries and possibilities of what a guitar pedal is and can do. Because of this, they have, in many ways, created a “new normal” in a market where new rarely becomes normal.
This cycle of always updating and changing products isn’t always the case. Some consumer electronics have broken this mold by remaining successful with little to no improvement. Products like Bose noise-canceling headphones, the Kitchen Aid Mixer, and Casio G-Shock Watches seem to be frozen in time while experiencing strong sales and never ending consumer attention. This phenomenon is called “product inertia,” and guitar pedal examples such as The Klon Centaur, Ibanez Tubescreamer, MXR Dynacomp, and Crybaby Wah prove that you don’t always have to chase the never-ending tail of improvement.
3
What If There Is No Bubble?
People are fond of describing the current guitar pedal market as a bubble about to burst, but I don’t think it is, and here is why.
The term bubble comes from the description of the late 90s Dot-com collapse and the 2008 housing crisis. The reason for these “bubble bursts” was very different from anything we see or have ever seen in our industry. Both the Dot-com and housing bursts involved intangible realities that have no good parallel in the guitar pedal market.
Guitar pedals are tangible and physical tools that are purchased by guitarists to be used by guitarists. Although you may see the occasional purchase of a vintage or collectible pedal as some sort of investment, they are a physical good that is used for creativity, art, and pleasure. It is a stretch to compare housing investors working “the system” for unsustainable methods of profit with the fact that there are a hundred great overdrive pedals on the market. The same goes for the Dot-com burst. Both of these beloved examples are collapses in a market because of speculative investments across an entire industry going horribly wrong. Guitar pedals may have their silly moments, like people asking $1,000 for a Bad Monkey, or $10,000 for a Klon, but for the most part, everyone knows that is ridiculous, and no one is building a sustainable and realistic business off of such ignorant behavior.
It’s perfectly okay to say that the world would be just fine with fewer guitar pedal options and that most of the pedals on the market are derivative of an already existing product, and because of this, no one would be left stranded or empty-handed if Thanos snapped his fingers and suddenly 50% of pedals on the market disappeared. This may be true, and I believe it is, but that doesn’t mean there are too many pedals, and it definitely doesn’t mean a bubble is about to burst. Fortunately, just because an industry or an economy has many options doesn’t mean it is unhealthy or in danger. It may simply point to the fact that that industry is flourishing with interest, ideas, and innovations, causing it to expand and become more stable and attractive to more people as a whole. We don’t complain that industries like craft beer have expanded worldwide from a couple of hundred breweries in the 1980s to an estimated fifty thousand today. Do we really need that many IPAs? Apparently, we do, and the millions of people enjoying them are glad they have so many options. I’m glad that guitar pedals, like so many other things, don’t exist within a monolithic industry. That would be boring and the last time I checked, we don’t like boring.
So, how can so many pedals physically exist in the same market and not hurt each other’s chances of success? The answer is fairly simple. The consumer electronics industry of guitar pedals is actually a very wide, diverse, and, dare I say, healthy market. I would argue that the last ten years of this industry have seen almost double the width and diversity of products. The result of this is that guitar pedals are now reaching people who would have never considered a guitar pedal ten years ago, and that is very good for business. If companies will step up to the plate without complaining about how they miss “the good old days,” there is an equal opportunity to join in on the progress and fun that lives in a community of people making things they truly love to make while customers get every option imaginable. It’s a win-win. Every company might not be as large as Electro Harmonix, but that’s part of the diversity that ensures there is something for everyone. From high-end boutique to assembly line in China, there are customers right now for each extreme and everywhere in between.
It is understandable that, at a glance, the pedal market has more options than anyone could possibly need, but that doesn’t mean it’s unhealthy; it could mean the complete opposite. There is a lot of discussion about the pedal market being “saturated,” but I wonder if what we are really experiencing is what should be considered a normal case of an “innovative industry.” This is where a foundational idea or product type (THE guitar pedal) is built, built on, and modified until significant technological changes possibly alter that foundation into a new secondary foundation that can reside happily alongside the original. This is best exemplified by the success and evolution of quality DSP (Digital Signal Processing) pedals over the last forty years, which have now, after a few decades of ridicule, become accepted and equal to most analog effects. DSP isn’t completely replacing the foundation of analog, it is simply making its own foundation alongside it. Both exist together seamlessly in guitar rigs worldwide. In this case, “saturation” simply means an industry full of new ideas and customer excitement that is fueling innovation, products, and customers that we have never seen before.
One of the biggest guitar pedal demo personalities on YouTube is a harpist…
This is far from a doomsday scenario.
4
What About The Pandemic?
To be fair, the COVID-19 pandemic did create a very real type of “bubble” in the guitar industry as a whole, and I want to take a moment and acknowledge that and explain some pieces of it that I have seen discussed in ways I believe are misleading.
From 2020-2022 the guitar industry (and many other hobbies industries) saw staggering sales numbers, and all-time records were hit. Many companies doubled in sales, and many expanded to meet those demands, only to face what felt like the almost immediate need to downsize as the “stuck at home with money to spend blues” began to disappear worldwide. This sucked for lots of companies, and we at JHS were not immune to this reality. That said, I think that the “COVID Guitar Industry Boom” needs to be observed differently than most people have discussed it. I think, by definition, it wasn’t a “bubble” at all and is better defined as a “surge”. This is an important distinction because a market that experiences a “surge” simply needs what is called a “correction” to return to a stable position. Correction is where a gradual or moderate decline in sales is experienced, and the market suffers manageable losses. Once the market readjusts (corrects), it is usually healthier and more stable than before, having learned from its experiences. On the other hand, a “bubble burst” scenario is marked by a violent and sudden decline in sales that causes an unmanageable loss across the industry. This results in widespread bankruptcy, massive layoffs, defaulting loans, and a slow and painful recovery that can take years, if not decades, to return to a place of stability.
IMHO, the positive “surge” and negative “correction” impacts experienced during the pandemic were a blip on the radar of a greater timeline. The modern guitar industry is around one hundred years old, and it has been a consistent, predictable, and understandable example in almost every way. For a truly dangerous and negative shift to really occur, the world would need to turn its back on one of the most iconic and culturally engrained instruments in modern music. That’s unlikely.
So, are there too many guitar pedals? I don’t think so. There are more than ever, but I think that this is a good thing. I am fortunate enough to get my hands on almost every new pedal that is released and I can say that the creativity and quality of pedal releases over the last few years is paramount to anything ever experienced in pedal history. A thriving market has a beautiful way of sorting the bad from the good with its economic process of natural selection. Instead of asking if there are too many pedals, maybe the best question a pedal company can ask is - “Are we making what people want, or are we trying to hang on to the good old days?”
Evolution can be uncomfortable, but it’s better than dying. If we are lucky, we might end up with x-ray vision or some other cool mutation from all of our evolving. (this sentence was a metaphor for how we should accept change and embrace the possibilities. I just wanna be sure you caught that.)
5
Further Study For The Nerds
To anyone who really loves this type of study and discussion, I highly recommend you read up on these economic terms and apply them to what you know to be true of the guitar industry and specifically guitar pedals.
1. market segmentation
2. monopolistic competition
3. differentiation
4. long tail market
5. market growth
6. demand elasticity
7. diversification
8. consumer base expansion