Sweetwater Gear Exchange vs Reverb: My Thoughts

As an avid Reverb user, I was pretty excited to try Sweetwater’s new competitor, but it’s been…slow.

Reverb gets a lot of flak from the online guitar community, myself included. They have raised fees, been forced into reporting our sales to the IRS (though that’s not really on them), and generally had some bad PR backlash from scalpers going crazy online.

The truth is, Reverb is not perfect at all, though most times, they get a lot more hate than they deserve. The thing with Reverb is, if you’ve never had a bad experience on there, you don’t appreciate why they raise fees and take a cut and so on…but when something goes wrong and they bail you out big time, it’s worth that extra $3 out of every sale.

So all of that is to say, I’ve been a pretty big Reverb user and fan for these past 5 years. I’ve worked with them on a few articles, I’ve sold a LOT of pedals on the site, and generally, it’s been an important website for paying my rent. But I was also very excited to see Sweetwater launch their own competition, because at the end of the day competition would make Reverb have to working to attract my business.

So in 2023, I spent a decent amount of time on Sweetwater’s Gear Exchange site browsing, posting listings, and just hanging around. After a few sales, I thought I’d do a quick comparison between the two, in hopes of enlightening those of you who have yet to use Gear Exchange.

It’s *Mostly* Just Like Reverb

So many of Reverb’s classic features are here; you can make offers, you can watch items, you can also buy shipping labels directly through the website. One thing that is most noticeably missing is a bump feature like Reverb’s, where you pay an extra percentage of the selling fee for more visibility. I kind of like that there’s no bump feature (at least that I can see). Gear Exchange is not yet big enough where you really need it to stand out. For reference, there’s 1,633 effects pedals listed for sale at the time of writing on the site. There are over 180,000 available on Reverb at this time (though some of those are international).

One other nice feature is that you can choose to do local pickup on Gear Exchange, letting buyers or sellers now your approximate area if they want to go that route and save money. It’s not dissimilar for Reverb of course, so nice to see that carried over.

Where It Gets Super Different…

So one of the biggest differences is that you can opt to have your payment from a sale delivered to you as a Sweetwater gift card. Even better, if you choose this you don’t pay ANY fees. None of the seller or processing fees that are always eating away at Reverb prices. If you want to turn old gear into new gear, it’s a no brainer and a great option. I’ve gone this route every time so far, and am enjoying it.

However, if you’re selling gear for money with the sole intent of improving your financial outlook, there’s really no difference in the fee percentages. Gear Exchange fees are 7.5%. while Reverb’s is 7.99% plus $0.49 per transaction. So yes, Reverb is technically taking a bit more off the top.

On the bright side, there’s a lot less competition on Gear Exchange in terms of listings. But that also means less eyes on your listings, and I’ve noticed it is really hard to sell anything on Gear Exchange that isn’t from a big brand.

What’s Unknown?

Because sales on Gear Exchange have been fewer and farther between, I have luckily not had to deal with their customer service team at all. What I mean is, nothing has gone wrong. No lost packages or damaged pedals or guitars, all things I’ve dealt with on Reverb over the years. While Reverb may take a lot of your money, their safe shipping service has saved me hundreds of dollars, maybe thousands, over the years. So I always feel like I’m getting good service from Reverb for the high prices I’m paying.

It will be important to watch this carefully as more sales and potential issues arise on Gear Exchange. Will they always favor the buyer? Or will they be more even keeled in that regard. Reverb typically always sides with the buyer, offering the seller some protection through their safe shipping insurance policy. But because you have to pay additional money for that, it sort of automatically benefits the buyer over you, the seller.

I’m also quite curious if we’re going to be getting a Gear Exchange app sometime soon? That would be a bit of a game changer in my opinion.

These two searches for a Tube Screamer show the scale of the difference between Gear Exchange and Reverb.

So far it just feels like Gear Exchange’s marketing has fallen a little flat. And I get it, they want this to be a no nonsense, no frills alternative to Reverb. Reverb has become a sort of content center, with articles, videos, sales, gear releases, and all sorts of craziness around the marketplace. Gear Exchange and Sweetwater don’t seem willing or interested in going down that rabbit hole yet. And that makes sense, Sweetwater is ALREADY DOING THAT THEMSELVES. So unless they decide to co opt Gear Exchange into their marketing, it’s always going to feel like it’s kind of a forgotten sibling.

That leaves them with a big decision to make; make Gear Exchange more like Reverb to bring attention to it, or develop it as a more serious, transaction-only marketplace for buyers and sellers.

Now it also remains to be seen if this is all just a way to get people to spend more money at Sweetwater. Of course that is a part of it, I mean they are offering you gift cards to their store as compensation. And they are a business, they do need to make money. However, is that the sole purpose of Gear Exchange? The lack of investment into marketing it is starting to make me think it is. Perhaps it’s not too much of a Reverb alternative after all, which is a shame. Because if anyone could do a Reverb alternative well, it could be Sweetwater.

Competition is good for us as consumers, forcing Reverb to rethink a few of its policies or fees. So depending on how Gear Exchange grows or evolves, it could have a myriad of positive impacts on many of us. Finger’s crossed for a big year for Gear Exchange in 2024, and I’ll be following up with a pretty in-depth article on Ultimate-Guitar soon.