The UK now has its own Pedal Rental Subscription Service ToneBuddy - how does it compare to the industry standard Pedal Genie?

So obviously the older service here has a lot of advantages, and I feel that ToneBuddy is kind of missing a trick by not have the 'try-and-buy' mechanic in place like Pedal Genie does.

I am still encouraged by what's on offer by ToneBuddy - there are several pedals that I am interested in - but this obviously also competes with a different methodology - buying second-hand pedals on Reverb.com. In most instances there you can buy-and-try, and if it's not to your liking you can simply sell it on at the same price you acquired it at - meaning obviously some overhead costs in Reverb commission and P&P - but possibly comparable to what you would be spending on a pedal rental? Particularly at a rate of 1 per month equivalency. Some more unscrupulous sods actually try and do a Pedal Genie style exercise on Reverb.com by trialling pedals, and then concocting some excuse to return them so as not to incur further charges and overheads themselves - this is entirely despicable and should be punishable by eternal banishment - but it does happen - so beware!

For the more complex workstation style pedals you probably need a few weeks to do a proper analysis as to whether a certain pedal gels with you, but for fuzzes and overdrives - you should be able to discern within a few sessions - just a few days or hours even, so the 1 month turn-around rate does not make too much sense there - it's too long for most pedal transactions.

It is likely hat ToneBuddy has a limited range altogether - not just pedal types / models available but copies / numbers of each - they need to figure out what sort of inventory this service can sustain - so props to to them for giving it a go.

Where my thinking is right now - is that I'm still intrigued, but not quite sure that this is entirely something for me in its current incarnation. I still recall the days of Blockbuster Video - where you often had to wait several turns to get hold of some of the newest blockbusters - and this level of frustration is built into both Pedal Genie and ToneBuddy - if you have a wishlist of 10 fairly high-demand pedals, and if there are few quantities of each in stock - some people may get very frustrated indeed by never getting their pedal/s of choice - which is quite different to seeing something in stock at a store and available / accessible right now.

I still believe this sort of thing should be encouraged and supported - I'm still to decide whether this is the right approach for me. It would seem evident that with limited stock, ToneBuddy is kind of forced into 1 pedal per month - which is probably not sufficient for my needs.

I tend to do a lot of triangulation and research before I pin down a pedal, and I scan a wide variety of resources regularly with various tools - including of course Reverb.com and Ebay. Generally when I acquire a pedal I have put in the due diligence and I am very seldom disappointed with the outcome as I've primed myself to know what to expect. For those who are less scientifically inclined and would like to try before they buy - these pedal rental services are really useful - but I feel ToneBuddy really needs to adopt more of what Pedal Genie offers - so that you can buy the pedal you are trying - and at a discounted price...