Will, the money is in parts, not guitars or pedals. If you lay a guitar out in parts, it is worth more than if you bought the entire guitar. I see an eBay store that buys Squier guitars and then he parts it and you can buy about any Squier part you need. That was a good idea for him.
What I would really like to see is a product challenge. You get the manufacturer to donate 10 pedals and you get their main competitor to donate 10 pedals and you do a challenge with the readership and they do the reviews.. The manufacturer would get direct user feedback and they would get invaluable knowledge of what a random user thinks about the good and the bad.. When I worked for CPAP.com we did that with CPAP masks... Then when we sold the mask, we would include and icon that said.. "Product Challenge Winner". I think it works for everyone. You get lots of hits because you have this, the readers get to try new products and keep them, and the manufacture gets a load of reviews pitted against their biggest competitor... It is a win win, if pitched correctly... You gain members because of this and charege more for advertising and sell more in your eStore because of increased traffic.
TJ