We are nowhere near April 1, but PRS has announced three new pedals. Two of them will be ignored by me, because pedals. But the “Horsemeat” deserves a special opinion piece because it’s the dumbest name I’ve heard for a pedal in forever, and PRS doesn’t normally do things anywhere near this level of dumb. Is this a prank? I doubt it, because it’s available for sale (I’m not linking to it.)
The HM (I don’t want to keep typing this pedal’s moronic title) is a Klon Centaur clone. The Klon had a picture of a half-man, half horse (a centaur) on it, and became famous because it’s a great sounding gain/boost pedal. On the Helix/POD Go/HX Stomp there’s a really good imitation of it. Actually, there are very good imitations of tons of pedals in the Helix ecosystem, which is why I no longer need a pedalboard. But I digress.
The world didn’t need another Klon clone, but PRS is smart to make pedals. PRS fans will buy anything with the PRS logo on it, so why not a $250 Klon clone? There are enough hardcore PRS fans to justify this pedal. But that NAME.
Surely they understood that some people would hate the name. Some people who might have bought it otherwise will not buy it because they find the name offensive. In our current political environment, it has become fashionable by some to try to offend. So some will love the name, because it will offend others. Because apparently it’s… desirable to offend people? To be mean-spirited? To disregard the feelings of others because… why? To me, that sounds like dickheads getting an excuse to be dickheads, but whatever.
If you’re a big company, in general you don’t want to piss people off. Some people who buy PRS guitars own horses. It’s the right demographic. Surely they knew there’d be controversy. There would also be a lot of negative attention. Negative attention is what you want when you don’t have anything else. PRS is a highly respected company. Negative attention is beneath them. Or rather it used to be. Now they’ve got it.
I’d be the first person to say it shouldn’t be up to me to decide what people name their products. The market will decide as it always does. I’m not going to personally “cancel” PRS. I’m not going to stop playing my PRS guitars. But I am going to publish this opinion piece. And I did lose just a little bit of respect for PRS for doing this. I’m not highly offended, but I know some people who will be. I’m not willing to disregard their feelings, because they do matter to me. This was a really stupid move.
It did cross my mind that PRS did this intentionally so they could turn around and pull and then rename the product, thus making them look very “responsible”, but that’s silly. Right? Right?
Oh… and I think the Wampler Taurus is a better Klon clone and it’s less money.
