Nobody printed a 3 in September.

Between August 29 and September 7, Premier Guitar, MusicRadar, Guitar World, Guitar.com and Guitar Player published thirteen gear reviews between them. I read every one on the day it went up, wrote down the score exactly as the page printed it, and copied the cons box word for word. That is the whole method. No opinion about the gear, no owner receipts yet, because most of this gear is weeks old and nobody has lived with it. Just the scores the press gave and the reasons it printed for holding anything back.

Twelve of the thirteen carried a score. Seven of those twelve sit at four and a half stars or a nine out of ten. The other five sit at four, or a hair over it. Zero sit below four. The one review with no score at all, Guitar Player on the Death By Audio and Rainger FX Amp Crash, is the only piece in the set that declined to grade, and it still called the pedal an incredibly inventive feedback generator.

Here is the ledger, newest first. Guitar.com, Moth Electric P. Isabella Fuzz, Ram's Head edition, 9 out of 10, $189.99. Premier Guitar, Hagstrom Megin, 4.0, $949. Premier Guitar, Old Blood Noise Setback, 4.1, $259. MusicRadar, Walrus Audio Lüm Texture Engine, four and a half stars, £259. Premier Guitar, Keeley Tube Drive, 4.5, $399. MusicRadar, Harley Benton JB-62HA, four stars, £215. Guitar.com, Martin Road Series DC-13E Modern, 8 out of 10, $1,499.99. Guitar World, Eventide H9 Harmonizer Gen 2, four and a half stars. Guitar Player, Amp Crash, unscored, $395. MusicRadar, Donner Hush X Pro, four stars, £475. Premier Guitar, Walrus Audio Highpoint, 4.5, $349. Guitar World, Gretsch Electromatic CVT Baritone, four and a half stars. Guitar World, Thorn Soundlabs Flex Series, four and a half stars, $184.99.

Now the cons boxes, because that is where a review tells you what it was willing to risk. Twelve scored reviews printed twenty-one cons between them. Five of the twenty-one are about price. Keeley: Expensive. Walrus Highpoint: Might seem expensive to some. Eventide: It's a huge investment for something that only does effects. Walrus Lüm: It's certainly not cheap. Thorn: We'd like the Tremonator more if it cost less. A price is not a flaw in the product. It is a flaw in your bank balance, and a review that fills its cons box with it has found nothing wrong with the thing it was sent.

Three more cons are wishes rather than findings. Gretsch: some more finish options and a gigbag would be nice but it's not a dealbreaker. Martin: tuners are a little stiff in operation. Hagstrom, and this is my favourite of the month: lower-output humbuckers might make the guitar more versatile. That is a con that says the guitar is too much of what it is. Strike those and you are left with thirteen cons that describe something the reviewer actually heard or touched and did not like, spread across twelve reviews.

The honest ones deserve credit. MusicRadar on the Harley Benton bass printed two real ones, rough fretwork on the sample and a relic job that goes far beyond realistic play-wear and just looks a little silly, and still gave it four stars, which tells you the four stars were earned against something. Premier Guitar on the Setback printed glitchy digital artifacts at many settings, which is a sentence I would want to read before spending $259, and scored it 4.1, which is the closest anyone came to a number that carried a warning. MusicRadar on the Donner printed three physical complaints about a guitar built to be played on a sofa. Those are reviews doing the job.

But look at the shape of the month. The set includes a $189 fuzz, a $949 guitar, a $1,499 acoustic, a $215 bass and a multi-effects box that Guitar World itself calls a huge investment, and the scoring instrument could not tell them apart. Twelve products, from five companies you have heard of and four you have not, and the whole range of verdicts fits between four stars and four and a half. Either every manufacturer in the world shipped its best work in the same fortnight, or the scale has stopped measuring.