The cost of pedals

deano

I have pulled the comments below out of the Vertex/Andertons thread so that this topic doesn't get lost in the general miasma of that thread, and to hopefully avoid some of the heat and light from that thread drifting into this one.

Sporky said:

deano said:

There is no pedal in existence that contains more that a few quids worth of components. 

Having actually built and sold pedals, I can assure you that you're wrong here. 

RaymondLin said:

Sporky said:

deano said:

There is no pedal in existence that contains more that a few quids worth of components. 

Having actually built and sold pedals, I can assure you that you're wrong here. 

I once bought 6 of those knobs on Chase bliss Pedals, they came to £20 alone, on knobs, at cost !

As I said, I am not aware of any pedals where the constituent parts cost more than a few quid. Now let me caveat/clarify that please. I meant the actual electronic components. I want to distinguish please between the actual tone generating mechanism and the housing and interface "coverings" for want of a better word (the bits on the outside that user's touch). My limit of £50 for a pedal is because the electronic components that do the actual job only cost a few pounds. The rest goes on the housing and plastic bits that I touch to operate the pedal. I don't feel the need for extra-special knobs because they don't do the job of turning a potentiometer any better than a cheaper plastic one.

In purely practical terms knobs are knobs and no-one needs to use those £20 knobs to operate a pedal. Certainly there are less expensive ones which could have been used and which would have done exactly the same job. It is marketing hype by the knob manufacturers that allows them to price those knobs so highly, and not the knob in and of itself. There is nothing inherent in those knobs that would make them cost more surely. I am willing to be persuaded but even if the knob were made from some special material and crafted by hand, I would reject the notion that those knobs were needed on the pedal for functional reasons. I'm sure you would say they were needed for the aesthetic. That they "looked the part". But that, to me at least, is marketing. Other pedals would also have "looked the part" at a lower cost. To believe that one and only one specific brand of knob would look the part is - to me - an appeal to "golden eyes"; that you can only see the aesthetic if you have the right taste. It is designed to exclude certain people (like me for example) as a purchaser and to include only those "special" ones who can "see the aesthetic". Of course those who can see the aesthetic are the prospective purchasers. It is divide and rule; exclude those who won't buy because they can't afford them or who can see through the hype (peasants and trouble-causers) and keep them away from those who are likely to part with their money.

 A knob is a knob and I reject the notion that a £20 knob was necessary. If someone were building pedals to sell and they used those knobs, it doesn't take a great leap of the imagination to conclude they were used so that prospective purchasers could be told "we even use these special knobs", with the implication that they themselves either add something to the tone, or that the purchaser will play better, or perhaps both.

 I am sure that in a crowded marketplace like the pedal market is, a seller would need all the help they can get to differentiate their products from others. But given those things rarely impact the tonal characteristics - that is all down to the electronic components - those product differentiators become just something to generate marketing hype.

 Frankly the knobs could be made from solid 24-carat gold encrusted with diamonds, but that will not be for tonal reasons, but only for marketing reasons - "hey look! Only YOU can afford this! Only you are tasteful enough to grasp just how good this pedal sounds! NASA used gold in the astronauts helmets because it is the best conductor"

I still reject the notion that a pedal's tonal mechanism - the electronic components - are worth more than a few pounds. They could be put in a cheap enclosure with cheaper knobs and still sound exactly the same as the ones with the gold-plated enclosure with those £20 knobs on. But you can't play divide and rule with the marketplace with the former alone, and it is divide and rule that isolates those people who are willing to buy the gold-plated pedal, in the belief they are somehow more special than the ones excluded by divide and rule.

None of this is new. It is called "divide and conquer" - or if you don't want to give the game away - "Segmentation". Just google "marketing divide and conquer". Here is one of the links you will turn up... https://www.themarketingeye.com/blog/marketing-tips/post/segmentation-divide-and-conquer.html

Sporky

deano said:

I still reject the notion that a pedal's tonal mechanism - the electronic components - are worth more than a few pounds.

You can reject whatever you like, but you're still wrong for an enormous number of pedals. And I say that from the point of view of having built and sold a few hundred - small change in the pedal world, but still, I would argue, significant experience.

It would help, however, to know what you mean by "a few pounds". £3-5? That wouldn't pay for the power handling module of the Valvesporker, unless you were building thousands. It wouldn't pay for the transformer I used in the output of the isolated ABY pedals I made.

Are you dismissing, for example, the differences between capacitors other than value, so giving every capacitor a notional value of 20p or something? What about specialist chips? What if I prefer the sound of one op-amp over another for a particular application? What about pots and switches? I used Apem toggle switches because they were better made than the cheapos and lasted longer - you could stamp on them without breaking them. A Salecom might be about £1 where the Apem was £3, but a single repair job would cost a lot more than the £2 difference.

Matt_McG

Having built a fair number of DIY pedals, I can second Sporky. OK, so the resistors and capacitors on a lot of pedals can be had pretty cheaply if you are buying in bulk, although not as cheaply as you think.

But decent op-amps, ICs, charge-pumps, 3DPTs, potentiometers, jack sockets, etc all cost money. 

The parts for this: https://aionelectronics.com/project/l5-preamp/

which I am building at the moment, cost something pretty close to 90-100 quid. Admittedly, that's about as complicated as self-build through-hole pedals are ever going to get, so it's an upper bound. But still, it's a long way from £5.

WeZ84

Part suppliers give better prices per part depending on how many you are going to buy. So the makers of mass produced pedals will get their parts cheaper than a "boutique" builder as the mass producers are buying parts in their 1000s rather than 50 - 100 at a time. The differences in cost are likely to be passed on to the consumer.

There are other factors involved in the price of the pedals too as well as the price of the parts that make it.

You are paying for a person's time - no one is going to spend hours sourcing parts, designing and building the circuits, painting the enclosures etc then only sell the finished product to you for the cost of the materials. Then there are company over heads like lighting, heating etc. That's before profit is even factored into the equation.

guitarfishbay

Yeah I mean last time I saw a dentist they spent maybe a few pence on some mouth wash and probably not too much more on some impractically small mirror thing.  He said my teeth were fine and I didn't even get to ask him if he played PRS, still charged me though!  Where was the value for money in that transaction.

Sporky

WeZ84 said:

Part suppliers give better prices per part depending on how many you are going to buy. So the makers of mass produced pedals will get their parts cheaper than a "boutique" builder as the mass producers are buying parts in their 1000s rather than 50 - 100 at a time. The differences in cost are likely to be passed on to the consumer.

Even the biggies like Boss aren't really getting into industrial economies of scale - they start in the tens of thousands of components, with commitments to regular orders.

stickyfiddle

Never mind the simple electronic bits, but there's also question of time spent by the people making it - both in physical pedal construction, and in the R&D required to develop something new. Obviously the R&D on a Tubescreamer has paid for itself many many years ago, but even if the components for e.g. a ThorpyFX Gunshot can be got for £40 if bought in large enough numbers (i haven't seen the insides of one, so I don't know), it's really important that the work required to get a good pedal to market should be rewarded. 

That is actually the point in most businesses. You're not paying for the item, you're paying for someone to design and build the item and deliver it to a place that you can buy it.

guitarfishbay

stickyfiddle said:

Never mind the simple electronic bits, but there's also question of time spent by the people making it - both in physical pedal construction, and in the R&D required to develop something new. Obviously the R&D on a Tubescreamer has paid for itself many many years ago, but even if the components for e.g. a ThorpyFX Gunshot can be got for £40 if bought in large enough numbers (i haven't seen the insides of one, so I don't know), it's really important that the work required to get a good pedal to market should be rewarded. 

That is actually the point in most businesses. You're not paying for the item, you're paying for someone to design and build the item and deliver it to a place that you can buy it.

Plus the sale isn't the end of the transaction.  There's the support/warranty aspect.  A lot of the companies have good reputations because of how they look after customers after a sale... that time isn't free and isn't necessarily recouped by further sales from the person that they helped either.

And presales...

I don't have any numbers but I'm sure many builders get plenty of enquiries that take time to deal with and never even lead to a sale.

meltedbuzzbox

Labour, time, r&d etc

A pile of parts doesn't build its self. 
Would you really expect to run a business and only charge for the cost of parts?

RiftAmps

I think you're also forgetting the power of economies of scale.

For example (albeit extreme to illustrate a point), I have just run out of nickel-plated M6 cup washers, used with the matching M6 machine screws for mounting chassis to cabinets. I need 4 per amplifier.

If I buy just 4 at a time, they cost me 43p each (£1.72 per amplifier). If I buy 100,000 the unit price drops down to 4p (16p per amplifier - a 90.7% discount). If I had the capital, I would invest the £4000 required to get the unit price that I want, but I don't, so I can't.

That extra cost is ultimately passed onto the customer.

I assume that many small pedal companies are in the same boat as me, having to buy smaller quantities because that's all we can afford.

Your point "There is no pedal in existence that contains more than a few quids worth of components" is a little naive because you don't know how much those components cost the mnfr to purchase, and in what quantities. If they're manufacturing 1000 units at a time, you may well be correct. If they're only building one or two per week as a part-time business, you're probably wrong.

deano

Okay, fine, I have to admit I know nothing about your pedals. I am sure they are very well made and use reliable components. But when was the last time you saw an advert for a pedal that focused on the fact that it was reliable?

I believe you when you say your components are more expensive, but they are reliable because of it. Great. But ask yourself this, could your pedal be built using some lesser quality components and still get the same sound? Of course longevity might suffer but enough to worry the average non-professional like me who plays the odd jam session nowadays, or even the cover band dog-and-duck player? Let's face it, most of the pedals sold are for people like that.

I'm sure Pete Cornish would make the same claims as his pedals as you do for yours, but I believe we are taking about mass market pedals. The overwhelming majority of pedals being sold today are sold using that segmentation strategy in order to find a pool of purchasers willing to pay far more for a pedal than the components inside it.

Do you think a Wampler or a Strymon or an Exotic distortion pedal actually contains electronic components that justify their prices? I believe you could copy the circuitry in those pedals, put them into cheaper enclosures with cheaper knobs and still come in under my £50! Joyo do exactly that!

Okay, leaving aside Joyo's labour costs and I willing to accept my £50 is predicated on doing exactly that. But allowing double my notional limit and pushing it to £100 - which is still on the low end, and I'm still too tight/experienced to spend that much! - to allow a UK build, it could still be done and done leaving a profit for the builder.

I hold to the fact that those three I named above - and there are plenty of others as well - are priced well above what their actual parts costs are, and that the difference is accounted for by that marketing segmentation (divide-and-conquer) process.

Look. I am not saying it is wrong segment like that. It isn't. It is legal and it is quite the science and it is designed to part people with their money and it is easily abused as discussed in the Vertex thread. It happens in all product sales from cars to vegetables to clothes and yes, to pedals. It is what it is. It is economics and marketing.

To be frank I would be surprised if it wasn't done in selling pedals. It is the only way many companies can generate a high enough revenue stream to stay in business. The other side of the coin is obsolescence, either built-in (of course yours don't Sporky and neither does Pete Cornish's and I believe you but there are companies that I wouldn't believe), or by marketing "You aren't still using that old bit of tat are you? We improved that ages ago! Anyone who is anyone has moved on to this! It sounds waaaay better, can't you hear it?" The fashion industry is built around this, which is why they have this season, last season, next season and Oh My God! How ancient is that season!

These things are done in order to maximise a company's revenue stream, sell as many as you can, keep selling, and sell for the highest price possible. Why wouldn't pedal manufacturers do this? But the underlying fact remains that the true cost-price is very much lower than the retail price, and that changes are largely cosmetic, keeping the costs down whilst allowing the marketing to claim the product has been fundamentally changed leading to an improvement in functionality (tone in the case of pedals).

Matt_McG

People who know what they are talking about, say you're wrong.

I don't build pedals to sell. I build purely for my own amusement, so I've no vested interest in bullshitting. I know: how much the parts cost; how long it takes to make one.

Then, as others have said, there's all of the overheads and other costs. Supports and warranty, R&D, premises, tools, other overheads. 

Sure, for really big companies, with large economies of scale, using SMD parts that are assembled in China, a large chunk of the pedal price is marketing and profit margin.

But for small builders, I'd be surprised if any of them are making real money. Remember that retailers and distributors are taking a cut, too.

Philtre

Right then. No need for expensive knobs, switches, or any of that Mr Fancy Pants enclosure rubbish!

Here's our latest product, a Timmy clone - yours for a fiver! (Doesn't include the second breadboard with the jack sockets, that's only included on our "SuperDeLux" version).

Sassafras

I think all pedals makers should be bound by stringent laws to produce their wares in black boxes with no identifiable logos or features in the same way as tobacco products are now marketed. Heavy fines and imprisonment would be incurred for breaking these laws.

Matt_McG

I'm always amazed by people who don't have any deep knowledge of a particular industry having very confident opinions about:

* how easy that job is to do
* what a fair price/cost is

I get the same thing in my job. I work in a particular area of IT, and if you want to hire me to work on a project, my day rate is eye-watering, and if you want to hire the company I work for to build something for you, it's going to cost you a fair amount of money.

I'm always getting potential clients declaring that they could do it themselves for 20% of that, or they could hire another company to do it for 40% of that, or whatever. But the truth is, they can't. I can do things in a couple of days that'd take someone starting from scratch weeks. 

If you are paying market rate for the staff you hire, with the particular technical skills they have, covering overheads, rental for premises etc and you are doing the job properly, rather than half-arsing it, it's probably going to cost something not that far off what we'll charge you to do it.

The same applies in lots of industries.

Sporky

deano said:

But ask yourself this, could your pedal be built using some lesser quality components and still get the same sound? 

I never asked myself that. I picked the right components for each job - so I didn't use Burr Brown op-amps because I felt they pushed the cost up too far without significant benefit. I did buy a particular op-amp for each circuit type because it made a difference I cared about. When I started out I found repairs were awkward and upset customers, so I tried to engineer them out.

If this is just a reductionist argument - that you can make anything worse and cheaper - then fine, but that wasn't your opening argument.

deano said:

I believe we are taking about mass market pedals.

That was not your opening position. Your opening position was "There is no pedal in existence that contains more that a few quids worth of components". That is patently untrue for any reasonable definition of "few quid" and "pedal".

RaymondLin

When you are dismissing stuff to suit your agenda....the whole argument falls apart.

Heartfeltdawn

Sassafras said:

I think all pedals makers should be bound by stringent laws to produce their wares in black boxes with no identifiable logos or features in the same way as tobacco products are now marketed. Heavy fines and imprisonment would be incurred for breaking these laws.

Perhaps a picture on the outside with a warning: "Using boutique pedals can lead you into liking praise and worship". 

RaymondLin

meltedbuzzbox said:

Labour, time, r&d etc

A pile of parts doesn't build its self. 
Would you really expect to run a business and only charge for the cost of parts?

I saw somewhere, and I think it's Gordon Ramsey, the rule of thumb to charge is whatever it cost you, multiply it by 3.

33% of it is cost, 33% is your time, the wages etc then make sure you get 33% as profit otherwise the business is not sustainable.

mgaw

and of course the most important part for builders in business, is putting a roof over their heads, feeding themselves and providing for a family if they have one.....don't you just hate people who whinge about how much things cost (especially when it concerns small business/lone trader style operations)   with never a thought for real life concerns that we pretty much all face

ICBM

deano said:

Okay, fine, I have to admit I know nothing about your pedals. I am sure they are very well made and use reliable components. But when was the last time you saw an advert for a pedal that focused on the fact that it was reliable?

https://www.rolandcorp.com.au/blog/boss-pedals-pros

"When it comes to performing on stage in front of thousands of people…..two things are paramount: great tone, and bulletproof reliability. BOSS has earned its stripes in both of these areas which is why they are still the go-to pedal of choice for guitar heroes worldwide."


There are a huge number of pedals that contain more than "just a few quids worth of components" too. Many of them are mass-produced and use ICs that would have cost tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of pounds to develop and are only cheap per unit because tens or hundreds of thousands of them are made. Even the custom enclosures used by a lot of the big companies cost much more than that, possibly even after the economies of scale are included.

Price how much it would cost to make a Digitech Whammy and see if your argument still holds.