Try Before You Buy Makes US's Pedal Genie and UK's Tonebuddy Essential Resources for Many Pedal Fans

It’s been well over a year now since I did my first head-to-head comparison between industry standard Pedal Rental / Subscription Service - Pedal Genie of the USA, and the then fledgling Tonebuddy sort of UK equivalent. I may have been a little harsh on Tonebuddy as it was really just starting out, and its scale of operation did not really allow it to provide as close a service to Pedal Genie as it might have liked.

I’ve actually been meaning to do this update for a while - as much has changed in the interim, and the Tonebuddy proposition is significantly stronger now than it was at the time of my first review.

Let me state first that the above visual is a confection of my own making - and I put Tonebuddy into a similar format to Pedal Genie so as to better compare the two services - while in reality their styling looks quite different on their respective sites. At their core though you would have to say these are now very similar services, although there are still some key differences.

For both of them you obviously start by selecting a service level / subscription type, and then you compose a wishlist of between 5 and 10 pedals you would like to get your hands on. Having not participated in this sort of thing I would imagine though that a sort of ’Blockbuster Video Rental’ paradigm reigns here - in that the popular new pedals will most likely be almost permanently out on loan and very difficult to get hold of - so you need to factor that into your considerations.

Also for each of those sites to be viable - they need suitably significant quantities of pedals to be in circulation - which can exclude some of the more select boutique brands form participation typically - while there are still some real finds and rarities to be had here that you might not have expected to see - but generally we are mostly talking about bigger brands and more generally available pedals.

So you compose your wishlist - and depending on whatever priority weighting is employed you then get put in a queue for a particular pedal or pedals - which will depend on the service tier you have signed up for.

Pedal Genie and Tonebuddy both have 3 not altogether dissimilar tiers but with some variation:

Pedal Genie Tiers :

1. Pedal Genie Flex = Pay $19.95 per month for one pedal at a time - which you hold onto for as long you want - you then pay separately for P&P whenever you wish to swap
2. Pedal Genie Standard = Pay $39.95 each month for one pedal at a time - which again you hold onto as long as you want - but this time all delivery charges are included for whenever you do a swap
3. Pedal Genie Pro = Pay $69.95 for 3 pedals at a time - which you can hold onto for as long as you want - every time you send one back you get another sent out in it place - all deliveries are covered

Tonebuddy Tiers :

1. Monthly Pedal Subscription = Pay £30.00 per month for one pedal at a time - which you hold onto for as long you want - you get sent the next available pedal on your list whenever you return one - all delivery costs included
2. Dual Pedal Subscription = Pay £55.00 per month for 2 pedals at a time - otherwise as per above - all delivery costs included
3. Triple Pedal Subscription = Pay £75.00 per month for 3 pedals at a time - otherwise as per above

So essentially the standard and top tiers here are somewhat similar - with each service offering a different / distinct third choice as such. I guess the degree of satisfaction here depends on how long you have to wait for each of your properly preferred primary choices, and how long you are prepared to put up with getting mostly your secondary or tertiary and below choices.

Much of this has to do with the library of pedals available - not just the number of types - 2,000 vs 500, but how many copies of each are available - which is not really documented. Obviously there is also a transitional period - from when you send back your pedal back and until you get your new one sent out to you in return. This degree of latency will significantly impact on overall customer satisfaction, I would have thought there would be around 3 key criteria to consider :

• General Availability of Pedals
• Availability of Primary Choices / Waiting Times
• Transition Latency

Pedal Genie has some advantages here in volume of scale - but I would like to hear more from users of these services as to what they best like and dislike about these services. Tonebuddy has obviously come a long way in the interim and there’s nothing wrong with its service provision at the moment. The one key difference that still exists as far as I understand is that with Pedal Genie you get the choice to buy the pedal you actually have for trial - at a discount. While for Tonebuddy - if you like the pedal you are trialling, you need to still send that back, and buy one separately from the store - albeit for a 10% discount. We all know that Tonebuddy is another / different outlet for northern powerhouse - Sound Affects Premier - which I deal with quite regularly and have had nothing but great consumer experiences to report.

In terms of fluidity of service I feel that in some ways the Pedal Genie model may be slightly slicker - but there are pros and cons here on each side and some will prefer getting a brand spanking new box / unboxing experience, while others may prefer to hold onto what they’ve got - as for certainly pedals there can be a slight degree of difference as to how they are calibrated and therefore how they sound by default.

I had thought that these Pedal Rental Services would have been a great shout for these days of Coronavirus self-isolation - but they have to contend with ongoing delivery issues / slowdown. And I noted that Tonebuddy did not appear to be taking on any new customers for a while - but seems to be back to normal now. There is no doubt that Covid-19 has introduced some restrictions to business as normal. The US Postal Service and Royal Mail are taking far longer to deliver packages these days - so there are obviously issues with national postal services in most countries, while other courier services seem to be a lot less significantly impacted.