Editorial policy
How picks get chosen, what will never appear here, and what happens when we get something wrong.
Last updated September 1, 2026
Picks are chosen on what the published specifications support, judged against what a given page is for. Commission plays no part in the ordering. We will never publish a fabricated test, a fabricated price, a fabricated review, or a credential the author does not hold.
01How a pick is chosen
Every shortlist starts from a question, not from a product list. “Best pedal-platform amp” is a question about clean headroom and flat response; “best amp for metal” is a question about preamp gain structure and low-end control. The criteria are stated on the page, and they are what the picks are ranked against.
- Define what the page is actually asking, and say so in the first sixty words.
- Identify which published specifications bear on that question.
- Collect those figures from manufacturer documentation, recording where a figure is not published.
- Rank on what the figures and the circuit topology support.
- Name at least one pick we tell the reader not to buy, with the reason.
- State who each product is wrong for, not only who it suits.
02What we will never publish
- A testing claim of any kind. No “in our testing”, no owned units, no listening panel, no lab. We have not played this gear.
- A credential the author does not hold. No expert, no specialist, no veteran, no years-in-the-industry, no medically or technically reviewed by.
- A fabricated price, rating, review count or award. Prices come from the live price layer or the page says “Check price”. Ratings and awards do not appear at all.
- Review or AggregateRating structured data on a product. We have not reviewed these products and will not mark up a rating we cannot substantiate.
- A specification we cannot source. If a manufacturer does not publish a figure, the table says so rather than carrying a number from a forum or a retailer listing.
- A link to an affiliate program we have not joined. Every money link on this site is Amazon, which is the one program in place.
- Testimonials. There are none on this site, real or otherwise. We are a publication with no customers to quote.
03How commission is kept out of the ordering
Structurally rather than by promise. Three things make it checkable:
- Every shortlist names a pick to skip. A page that only ever recommends buying is a page you cannot audit.
- Several pages recommend spending less. The under-$100 roundup argues that budget pedals are frequently the same circuits; the reverb roundup opens by asking whether your amp already has one.
- Some pages recommend buying nothing. The pedal-or-amp guide's most common honest answer is to fix the amp before adding to the board.
All three of those cost us money in the short term, and they are the reason to believe the ordering. The affiliate disclosure sets out the commercial arrangement in full.
04When a recommendation changes
| Trigger | What happens | Timing |
|---|---|---|
| A pick becomes unavailable | The pick is replaced and the page's modified date is updated | As soon as we notice |
| A manufacturer revises a spec | The figure and any arithmetic depending on it are corrected | As soon as we notice |
| A reader reports a factual error | Checked against the manufacturer's documentation and corrected if wrong | Priority over other work |
| A price changes | Handled automatically by the live price layer, with no page edit | Daily refresh |
| Routine review | Every shortlist re-checked against the current catalog | Quarterly |
A price refresh never changes a page's last-modified date. A sitemap claiming every page changed every day would destroy the credibility of the field.
05Corrections
Send them through the contact page with the page and the figure. If a correction changes the substance of a recommendation, we note the change on the page rather than editing silently.
We are more likely to be wrong about currency than about arithmetic: specifications get revised, products get discontinued and manufacturer URLs move. Those are the errors most worth reporting.
06Sourcing standards
- Manufacturer documentation is the only source for a specification. Product pages, spec tabs and PDF manuals.
- Every spec table names its source with a link. If you cannot check it, we should not have published it.
- Retailer listings are not sources. They frequently paraphrase, and they are not authoritative about the manufacturer's own figures.
- Forums are not sources. They are often right and never checkable.
- Where nothing is published, we say so. That is a finding, and it is frequently the most actionable thing on the page.
07Author attribution
Every page is written by Scooter M. and the byline is on every article. The Person structured data on each page names the same human as the visible byline, carries no job title implying a credential, and links to the About page. There is no editorial-team byline standing in for staff that does not exist.