Forum Announcement

Hello EB/MM forum fans! Just wanted to introduce myself, and to let you know what I and the other EB people will be doing on the forums here. I will be posting a separate thread in the guitar and bass forums in order to give everyone a chance to read and respond.

If you don’t know me, my name’s Casey Ball. I’m Sterling’s youngest, and I’ve worked in various capacities at both EBMM and Big Poppa Smokers over the years. I’ve been put in as an admin and brand ambassador to Ernie Ball and Music Man. I want to be a direct representative of the company, listen to feedback, help add new content to the forums, foster the existing board culture, get some new blood in here, and have fun talking about guitars, basses, strings, pedals, any and all the products we make.

Frankly, it’s about time we gave the forums a little TLC. We want to provide an exciting and inviting experience for all users; noobs and vets alike. We’re also working on a facelift for the forums. One other thing: I and the other EB staff will be looking to gradually deputize more mods who show themselves to be knowledgeable and engaged users, and who won’t engage in any funny business with mod powers.

If you have any suggestions for things you would like to see us implement into the forums I’d be glad to hear it. I’ll be doing some janitorial work on the forums, cleaning up some old stickies, organizing any threads that may be in the wrong place, redundant threads, etc.

One thing I would like to do is create a one stop thread for things like FAQs, explaining board jargon, essentially just what a noob would need to get started and not make a faux pas. This will be continually edited in case I miss anything, or we need to make new additions to the existing thread. Forum vet feedback on this issue will be appreciated. Each board will have its own FAQ/required reading since they all have different focus. Basically, I’ll boil it down to “Play Nice. Use Common Sense. Flaming/harassment/politics is NOT OK.”

As a reward for being loyal forum members we want the forums to be the place for especially cool EBMM content that you won’t see anywhere else. We want to give you guys sneak peeks on new stuff, show you some weird stuff from the vault, get feedback on new or upcoming products, opportunities for Q&As with the rest of the Ball family or the EBMM crew or artists, exclusive cool stuff for the hardcore fan.

I wanna speak frankly: I’m new to the forums. I’ve met some long time users at meet-ups, I’ve lurked the forums from time to time over the years, and have spent lots of time on forums other than these ones. Though I have an admin position, I don’t want to throw my weight around and act like a big shot without showing you guys I mean business about taking care of the forums.

TL;DR version: Everyone keep doing what you’re doing. We have a great community, and we want to kick it back into gear.