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The Placebo Effect

The placebo effect is a phrase coined by my brother Scott McPherson who is a sound engineer. 

Often when recording in the studio or doing live sound for an event many sound engineers (including Scott) will set up a spare channel on the mixing console that does absolutely nothing .

When the performer goes up to the mic for sound check they may request multiple sound tweaks even though they are on stage and cannot clearly hear the front house mix only their foldback. A lot of the time many of these requests are applicable and can be applied without fear of ruining the rest of the mix. In some cases these requests are going to just cause problems , ie  more reverb and eq changes. This is when the spare "Placebo" channel comes into affect. A common request is for more reverb, which can cause havoc especially with live performance. in which case the engineer will give a generous turn of a knob or push up a fader on this "Placebo" channel, the performer will see that a change has been made on the mixing console and when they check the mic again the response is almost always a positive one.

I see this effect often, mainly with some of the more experienced musicians, especially within the expensive boutique and pedal modifications market . 

A few years back one of my customers was showing me a distortion unit he purchased on a recent trip to the states, this distortion is a very well known boutique pedal and it is a great unit. We both noted it's great tone and dynamics. My customer let me borrow the unit for a couple of days to check it out and I instantly opened it up to get a peak at the magic inside that made it  sound so great.

After opening the unit I was shocked to find that this pedal was merely a modded clone of another production unit that I currently mod myself.  After finding this out I started sound testing the unit verses a production unit that I had modified, this time really listening and comparing them. Both units sounded great, but at the end of the day were very similar at all settings.

Being aware of this Placebo effect opens up your ears to truly listen and make a far more accurate judgement on what YOUR sound is, and not just give accolades to something because it is very expensive, or dismiss something because it may be very inexpensive. 

Next time you are in a music store or at a friends place trying out something new, make sure you start with a clean slate, an open ear, and try to not let these factors cloud your musical judgement....... you never know what you might find.

Best Regards

Waylon McPherson