Pedal Experts.... Is there a legitimate reason an overdrive should be over £300.

Niallseroreilly

Seen a lot of overdrive pedals of late with high prices... which is fine if people buy it.

It got me thinking though, are these prices based on the quality of components, unique designs etc or is there an element of repacking similar designs and a market strategy of high pricing a brand?

Fiftyshadesofjay

Marketing.

I'll let you judge if that's a legitimate reason or not.

english_bob

Heh. There's a legitimate business reason why- people will pay. 

Does the average OD pedal cost anything like that much to build? No. There's unlikely to be more than £30 worth of components inside (at retail price), and often there isn't a massive amount of difference from established designs, or from someone else's "boutique" version of something that's been around for decades. (Tubescreamer, Bluesbreaker, RAT etc). Sure, some components are expensive, but "expensive" in the world of analogue electronic components means stuff that costs four pounds instead of four pence.

Of course whoever makes it has to cover marketing costs, pay themselves something for putting the thing together etc, and not everything out there is derivative. Funnily enough, most of the stuff that's considered more innovative is not the same stuff that retails for "I-could-buy-a-half-decent-guitar-for-that" money. 

juansolo

Yes, because people will pay it. Supply and demand.

If you're low volume and build stuff well I think it's totally justifiable to sell them at £300 if you actually want to make a living out of building effects pedals. It's around the price that I could make it a career if people were willing to pay it. However without the hype/cache/kudos of some of the brands that do so, you're competing against Chinese prices for usually ultra cheaply made pedals. Which is totally not sustainable.

You can't judge the value of an item based on the cost you can get the parts to build it. Houses would cost £20k. Cars a couple of grand. However what costs is the design, the testing, the assembly, the time and the skill of the people doing so. All of which are invisible costs to the purchaser, but are costs. Boutique shysters spoil it for others, and there's a lot of them sadly.

If I could charge a couple of hundred quid for an OD, I'd charge it because I could make it a career. As it stands, people are getting things VERY cheaply from me because it's a hobby. Which is why I less and less am prepared to part with pedals I make for buttons.

If you want effects pedals at the price of the parts you can learn to make them yourself. There's a thriving DIY scene out there. Or buy Chinese tat. Just don't complain when it fails mid-gig or only works for six months and can't be repaired.

Sporky

When I made and sold pedals I was effectively valuing my own time at below minimum wage - and the VS still sold for about £140. It had a lot more than £30 of components in it, it had substantial time in development (and it kept on developing so they weren't sunk costs), building it meant some very expensive tools (one-off PCBs meant having my own little industrial-grade PCB production facility)...

There is some marketing involved - it's impossible for a small builder to compete with the Chinese factories, so pricing higher improves sales - but pedals are very expensive to make if you're doing it well, looking after customers with repairs, trying to market them and come up with new designs too. Then you're stuffed because of all the people knocking out perfectly decent pedals from their spare rooms, subsidising their hobby with a day-job - they've effectively destroyed the market for anyone trying to do it for a living (that's not me having a go at them - why shouldn't they?)

That said, look at the price for anything that's hand made in the UK or US. Cost of living is high, so cost of labour is high. Assembly is often the most expensive part of any sold item.

hotpickups

Apart from fuzz which is a different OD thing which I like. Since getting my new amp and using the second channel it really has negated the use to use any OD pedal now. You can't beat an amps own overdrive tbh if you can get to the volume that is. I don't think I'll ever have to buy another OD pedal Sorru pedal builders 

colourofsound

I think it really depends on what it does. There's no way I'd spend £250 on a Keeley D&M drive because it seems to me like two fairly standard circuits in one.

However, the Chase Bliss Brothers is 6 circuits in one, a tiny enclosure, MIDI, all original design; it's worth paying for. People complain about how expensive CBA pedals are but in my opinion they're only ones that offer value for money in that price bracket. They offer a lot more than just a good sound.

So in answer to your question: I think it falls into two categories: companies offering standard circuits (or slightly tweaked variations thereof) in new packages for stupid money, and companies offering new products with compelling features.

lysander

Sporky said:

When I made and sold pedals I was effectively valuing my own time at below minimum wage - and the VS still sold for about £140. It had a lot more than £30 of components in it, it had substantial time in development (and it kept on developing so they weren't sunk costs), building it meant some very expensive tools (one-off PCBs meant having my own little industrial-grade PCB production facility)...

There is some marketing involved - it's impossible for a small builder to compete with the Chinese factories, so pricing higher improves sales - but pedals are very expensive to make if you're doing it well, looking after customers with repairs, trying to market them and come up with new designs too. Then you're stuffed because of all the people knocking out perfectly decent pedals from their spare rooms, subsidising their hobby with a day-job - they've effectively destroyed the market for anyone trying to do it for a living (that's not me having a go at them - why shouldn't they?)

That said, look at the price for anything that's hand made in the UK or US. Cost of living is high, so cost of labour is high. Assembly is often the most expensive part of any sold item.

Out of curiosity, couldn't you use one of the online PCB pooling services, with these even one offs or small runs come out pretty cheap ?

juansolo

They weren't around when he was doing it. Certainly not to the extent they are now.

lysander

Ah ok makes sense.

Sporky

Aye - at the time it was £50 upwards for a single PCB. I tried having other small builders make them for me but none of them were good at it, and it took ages. Even now I look at the commercial options and they all seem ridiculously slow.

With my setup I could go from finishing the design to having a PCB in about ten minutes, and the PCBs were pretty much as good as you could get. Single sided only - I never worked out the dual side thing, though the machine could do it.

It was very, very rare that I made the same thing twice, so even with loop switchers some would have a buffer, some would have an isolated output or two, some would have their own power handling circuit...

http://www.monkeyfx.co.uk/pictures/cnc/complete.jpg

This is how the PCBs turned out (pre-tinning):

http://www.monkeyfx.co.uk/pictures/bigrouter/18 pcb_cleaned.jpg

timmysoft

R&D for small production runs. Am be quite expensive

Sporky

As with most things, it's easier to make something well and cheaply if you make a metric shitload of them.

Making one thing well is never cheap.

juansolo

Sporky said:

Aye - at the time it was £50 upwards for a single PCB. I tried having other small builders make them for me but none of them were good at it, and it took ages. Even now I look at the commercial options and they all seem ridiculously slow.

I don't know what they're like for commercial or small business quantities, but Elecrow are really rather good for small proto runs of around 10 PCBs (all I ever do) for silly cheap money. Usually takes them around 2 weeks from order to it being on your doormat.

timmysoft said:

R&D for small production runs. Am be quite expensive

I reckon the delay we did cost around £300 to get to the point we had working prototype boards. Again not taking into account the huge amount of time worked on that (you could probably easily double that). Admittedly I did that because I wanted to. Glad I didn't do it to sell as we've sold the sum total of one of them... For about £85 IIRC... But hey, only £35 or so in parts.

It's quite busy in there...

http://juansolo.co.uk/stompage/images/std-profundis-i.jpg

ThePrettyDamned

Another tubescreamer with a few different values, no. Not really. 

But there are some, as @sporky alludes to. The Mesa v-twin, for example, is a pretty fully fledged valve preamp in a box. The same is true for some other boutique overdrives. 

You'd never guess what the hell goes on inside some pedals, like a valvesporker. I am assuming it's a lot of tiny monkeys frantically shovelling micro coal into a furnace that turns a signal mangling device, but then again, it could be resistors, caps and op amps. 

juansolo

A friend of ours designed this, it's a completely original (a rare beast) distortion. This is the first proto, he's refining this a lot based on a few of us giving feedback and there'll be another version of this at some point with changes and additional features. But still, it's a distortion and it's not based on anything that's come before it. It's fucking awesome as it stands. It behaves like a pre-amp, responds to vol and attack beautifully and works with a variety of amps and guitars.

He's been working on it for around 6 months now to get to this point. Which is also why we've got a stack of schematics on hold because he's the guy who does our PCB layouts I should learn, but I prefer the circuit side of things personally, ...and I'm lazy. But my point is, this is a huge chunk of work on what is considered to be a simple effect (this isn't, believe me... I have the schematic). I really don't think people appreciate what goes into designing some of these effects. As I say, bootweekers kinda ruin it for everyone by being solder monkeys. Indeed I think this effect will be a DIY job so once it enters the public domain, it's anyone's guess where it might end up. But that's the price you pay.

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/18485852_1170195223087196_5793887443139753068_n.jpg?oh=2a9e140edef13361f3a22dcfcec9aa8b&oe=59DA7DA4

pintspiller

I remember installing the battery in my Fuzzface for the first time and thinking that somebody was laughing all the way to the bank. Obviously, I was unaware of the rarity of the chips and the effort it takes to check them all so only the good ones are used, amongst other things.

juansolo

Making a good, old school germ Fuzz Face or Mk2 bender is not easy... It looks it, but it isn't.

ThePrettyDamned

juansolo said:

A friend of ours designed this, it's a completely original (a rare beast) distortion. This is the first proto, he's refining this a lot based on a few of us giving feedback and there'll be another version of this at some point with changes and additional features. But still, it's a distortion and it's not based on anything that's come before it. It's fucking awesome as it stands. It behaves like a pre-amp, responds to vol and attack beautifully and works with a variety of amps and guitars.

He's been working on it for around 6 months now to get to this point. Which is also why we've got a stack of schematics on hold because he's the guy who does our PCB layouts I should learn, but I prefer the circuit side of things personally, ...and I'm lazy. But my point is, this is a huge chunk of work on what is considered to be a simple effect (this isn't, believe me... I have the schematic). I really don't think people appreciate what goes into designing some of these effects. As I say, bootweekers kinda ruin it for everyone by being solder monkeys. Indeed I think this effect will be a DIY job so once it enters the public domain, it's anyone's guess where it might end up. But that's the price you pay.

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/18485852_1170195223087196_5793887443139753068_n.jpg?oh=2a9e140edef13361f3a22dcfcec9aa8b&oe=59DA7DA4

Ooo want, maybe. How much distortion is on tap, and what sort of low gain overdrive can it do?  

RiftAmps

It's quite easy to do the maths, let's looks at the Strymon Sunset @ Andertons- https://www.andertons.co.uk/p/SUNSET/overdrive-pedals/strymon-sunset-dual-overdrive-pedal

1 x OD Pedal - £299

minus VAT (299/1.2) = £249.16

minus 30% dealer margin (249.16/1.3) = £191.66

minus import duty/shipping fees/other expenses and Andertons are probably paying £150 per unit (but would have to order 25+ at a time to hit that unit rate)

£150 minus R&D costs, parts, labour, marketing, overheads, and any other associated costs I would expect that Strymon make a net profit of around £40-£50 per unit on these.


Of course, this example is based on an imported pedal sold through a dealer, smaller UK based businesses selling DtC will make a higher profit on a £299 pedal.

juansolo

ThePrettyDamned said:

juansolo said:

A friend of ours designed this, it's a completely original (a rare beast) distortion. This is the first proto, he's refining this a lot based on a few of us giving feedback and there'll be another version of this at some point with changes and additional features. But still, it's a distortion and it's not based on anything that's come before it. It's fucking awesome as it stands. It behaves like a pre-amp, responds to vol and attack beautifully and works with a variety of amps and guitars.

Ooo want, maybe. How much distortion is on tap, and what sort of low gain overdrive can it do?  

Lots (and there'll be more shortly as it's getting a second stomp). Surprisingly amplike response ran as a pure pre-amp into a power. The thing behaves like a valve pre, it's insane (to be fair, that's what he's set out to get). Will be interesting to test the next iteration as there's some fairly big changes being made... Might be a while though! The only thing I can really hold against it is it's not one for low volumes, when it starts to get loud, it starts to get really fun.