Forum Challange: Design and build a pedal, document time and costs

[Deleted User]

So there have been some interesting discussions about people building / over charging pedals recently.

I thought it maybe a fun and interesting challenge to try to get some of the talented people on this forum (I know some people on here have built some excellent circuits for hobby or business) to discuss, design, prototype, build final version of a pedal.

document the time and any costs it takes to do it to get to the final build.

So get a remit for a pedal, discuss a starting platform eg: amp / guitar / sound required and set the end result, you can borrow/use any existing pedal schematic that already exist just be honest in the discussions and the time front when recording your input.

there will be costs involved if you want to play, hopefully not much as once you get the base ideal I'll see if I can fund a bunch of components to send out to people playing for testing, but it's supposed to be fun.

Be interested to see how many hours and the cost required to do it.

eg: built tube screamer from standard circuit + £12 + 2 hours

      modified tube screamer circuit with new chip + £1.50 + 30 minutes

     didn't like it  went back to original chip +30 minutes

     changed input gain +30

total time for today 3 hours

total cost for today £13.50

all discussions can be had on the forum so we can see how it evolves and how it gets to the end point.

Would anyone be interested in playing ?

GIJoe

I'm not sure about building one - not the time, but I would put up some monies!

juansolo

We already do this. Mostly tube effects but odd other things too. Currently we have a tube pedal that we built for a friend that we're going to simplify as it's a bit over featured at the moment. It does sound bloody brilliant though so we really should get around to that at some point. 

Also we have an OD on the go that exists only in schematic form at the moment that we keep bouncing between each other for ideas. As it stands that has probably taken us about 3 to 4 hours of knocking it together and coming up with something that might be worth building. Sadly what you really need at this point is a breadboard to prototype it on so you can easily swap components on it. We haven't got that so we'll just have to build it on vero and socket a few things. It'll probably take me another hour or two to sort a vero layout out and another couple of hours to build it and plug it in.

The thing is nothing is new. Certainly when it comes to ODs, the market is so saturated right now that I'm not sure where you could really take it. I have no doubt whatsoever that our idea isn't original at all, it's too simple not to have already been done... But it'll be fun seeing if it'll work and if it does, if it sounds any good regardless.

[Deleted User]

it's not to "take to market" it's just for fun to see what people can come up with in the brief, and exactly how much time / money was spent in developing it from concept to the final thing.

juansolo

Oh we're not doing it to take to market. Just for shits and giggles Occasionally if it's good enough, we'll release it into the DIY Domain.

Depending on what it's made from. We have such a stash of parts that we might only have to buy a few pots or the odd IC, if that. Time is really what it costs more than anything else.

FWIW there is a forum out there for exactly this sort of thing called Circuit Workshop. Worth having a read through the Collaborative Design section.

[Deleted User]

I thought it maybe interesting with some of the guys on this forum, more so as some of them have electronics experience but haven't done pedal builds but have done some mods, some have done clones, some have done straight from the ground up new circuits, thought  it maybe fun to see how much time and effort is needed to get to the end goal of the brief and also put in perspective how much / little effort people put into these clones/mods/new circuits that get bashed or praised to crazy extremes.

juansolo

Yup, totally understand what you mean and it'll be an interesting exercise. Go for it IMO.

But ignore the next bit as I'm going to waffle on because I don't think people consider the whole picture when thinking about this subject.

Though the perspective thing is skewed by a few things:

The likes of the JanRay. Veranum takes a Timmy, replaces one resistor with a trimmer and wires the tone pots backwards so the tone goes the usual way but the taper doesn't work right (they didn't even bother to use reverse log pots FFS). I'm pretty sure that's all there is to it. Stick it in a brass enclosure, cover it in goop and say it was the result of 2 years development (it did say that on the site, they withdrew it when it was discovered what it was) and sell it for 3x the price of the original. It's boutique 101. Minimal effort, maximum profit. Essentially these, Freakish Blues and the like are the people who give small outfits a bad name by dressing up someone's work as the next big thing. It's the marketing/hype that sells them.

But for every Freakish Blues and Veranum, there are Hermida's and PaulCs. Who genuinely do put in the effort, make a great effect and don't try and rip you off for it. For them I really do think it IS worth paying them the money for their effects. People do deserve to make money out of making effects.

However that doesn't really answer the reality of the situation. Just seeing £20 in parts and all that profit doesn't take things into account. For example Porsche makes the Cayman for a cost in parts that is significantly less than it's selling price of £40k. Yet it costs them no more money to make a 911. Indeed most of the parts are shared, just the engine is in the middle as opposed to at the rear. So why is the 911 £80k? Two reasons, because they can, and because overall things will balance out. Porsche want an entry level car so to a degree the 911 will subsidise that. The same goes for effects in my experience. Indeed I'm also missing all the other costs of staff, premises, marketing, R&D, etc, etc.

I tend to knock out one-offs for people at around £75 or so. There might be an OD that's very few parts and a relatively easy build and if you tot it up there might be £25 in parts. £50 profit, sounds good eh? That doesn't take into account the time it takes to make it. So that's 2-3 hours an effect. What that also doesn't take into account is that I can't charge much, if anything more for an analogue delay that might cost £40 in parts and take significantly more effort to make. So the OD has to absorb some of that also.

Essentially it's the only reason I make Klones which are my 911. As they're the only effect people are prepared to pay for. Even at £100 a pop, I actually make very little in the scheme of things. As they've got to compensate for some of the more outlandish things we build. For example the Hashishian. Four effects in a box. There's comfortably over £100 in parts alone in that, and probably 10 hrs labour. I've got it listed at £250 and it's too pricey for anyone to take a punt at.

The pedal market in the UK is a bit anti-boutique in all honesty. Which is no bad thing if you're using boutique as a derogatory term for the people out to make a quick buck. But not everyone out there is in the same basket.

It's the polar opposite in the US. I listed the Hashishian on a US DIY board and they couldn't believe how little I was asking for it. Yet I'll still be surprised if it sells. Which is why I only really build commissioned stuff.

The whole thing about effects costs comes down to this. If someone is making something themselves as a 1-2 man operation, they cannot compete on price with anything mass produced. It can't be done. The amount more money I could make if I made Klones in batches of say 25, is an order of magnitude more than I do when I make them in twos or threes. Purely down to being able to bulk buy everything. But you've still got to build the damn things. Which I worked out as £22.60 an hour for 25. Which isn't actually bad until you consider that there's two of us... So £11.30 each an hour and that's good!

We've been making DIY effects for 5 years now and selling commission builds during that period to fund the hobby. We've never broken even. On average the fund is £4-500 in the red and yet it seems we make money on everything we build. But we do it because we enjoy it. If we actually wanted to make money out of it, it'd mean either a significant mark up which no-one is prepared to pay and shifting to mass production. 

To this day I have no idea how PaulC makes a living out of selling pedals.

Indeed, the two year hiatus I've taken from sitting in front of a monitor for a living will probably come to an end and the building will go back onto the back-burner as I just can't see a way that it can honestly make enough money to survive on, so I'm not sure there's much point in trying.

stickyfiddle

(actually, the 911 is a loss-leader too. It's the fat-ass Cayenne that makes all the moolah. But otherwise I agree entirely )

Good interview here with Bill Finnegan, explaining that hand-making Centaurs was doing his head in, and that's what made him step back and work on the KTR instead. 

http://www.premierguitar.com/articles/20210-builder-profile-klons-bill-finnegan

frankus

darcym said:

eg: built tube screamer from standard circuit + £12 + 2 hours

A PCB shipped from the states is going to cost half of that budget (whereas a home-made one using laser printer etch resist and etch will cost about £2 to make and 2 hours), the enclosure the other half of the £12.... and it might be just me but it'd take an hour to get the components out of the tiny specialised labelled component drawers (prior to the 5 hours I spent sorting it, it used to take 2-3 hours to get the components gathered and even then, I'd sometimes mistakenly restock).

If I had time to document a pedal build here, I'd have time to make another pedal, which, in all fairness is what I'd rather be doing.

If you want to get a feel for what's involved in making a pedal, give it a go - it's the only way to really know what it's like - something like a SHO is a great introduction and shouldn't take a beginner more than about 3-4 hours from a bought kit, maybe start with a pre-drilled and finished enclosure as that'd require a pillar drill or a reaming tool, a small oven and a clean dry, well ventilated place to spray them...

Maxi

I only average about £20 for parts but when I concentrate on making it look desirable ive noted how the costs can sky rocket .
For e.g nice looking control knobs can add 40 % to price of parts .inversely If I want to save money it costs me time to achieve the same results for less money .
Anyone who can put an accurate figure on either parts or time I would expect are building with a clean slate with no stock to dip into but also have enough of a routine to roughly know how long each stage takes .
If I were to stopwatch 100% of the project activity (including thinking) for something fresh I'd probably regret it

I know I take longer than most mainly because I breadboard the schematic and then spend hours with software configuring the component layout but I save money on parts because I buy in bulk .

This is all a bit irrelevant to the spirit of the thread I know but I have not delved into pedal kit or mod kit market , to me they seem more of a learning process than a money saving excercise ,though they ought to be a bit easier to budget measure time spent etc .

exocet

That's a fantastically honest appraisal of the situation by Juansolo. Bottom line is, if you are a small operation that hand builds things (even clones) - it's damned near impossible to make a living out of it assuming that you cover all costs (labour being most significant). 

The only way to make money is to mass produce using automated techniques as much as possible i.e. Surface Mount components on a PCB. This is what Joyo do (or whoever the manufacturer is behind the brand) - interestingly, in my experience they sell their Surface Mount component based pedals at a higher price than those based on standard components e.g. Sweet Baby (Surface Mount) v Classic Overdrive (standard components).

The guitar pedal market is still pretty "small beer" compared to other mass manufactured electronic items so if someone wants to dress up a well worn design slightly tweaked and palm it off as the next best Boutique "Must Have" then good luck to them. So long as you don't jump in too quickly, they will be found out thanks to online forums and you won't get burnt. It's not as if the culprits behind these organisations are miss selling pensions or some other heinous financial wrong doing. 

juansolo

stickyfiddle said:

(actually, the 911 is a loss-leader too. It's the fat-ass Cayenne that makes all the moolah. But otherwise I agree entirely )

Yeah I just used the Cayman/911 because on a parts level, they're pretty much the same car, just a different configuration. Certainly even more so now with the 981/991. They do make money to be fair, just not a lot in comparison to the Panamera and Cayenne. The Maccan when it arrives will trump them all I expect!

Sorry for the thread drift there, bit of a Pork fan.

stickyfiddle

juansolo said:

stickyfiddle said:

(actually, the 911 is a loss-leader too. It's the fat-ass Cayenne that makes all the moolah. But otherwise I agree entirely )

Yeah I just used the Cayman/911 because on a parts level, they're pretty much the same car, just a different configuration. Certainly even more so now with the 981/991. They do make money to be fair, just not a lot in comparison to the Panamera and Cayenne. The Maccan when it arrives will trump them all I expect!

Sorry for the thread drift there, bit of a Pork fan.

Ah I getcha

I don't know the exact figures on any of em tbh- just that here in AbDab the Cayenne and Panamera are EVERYWHERE! I'd love a Cayman one day. 

juansolo

stickyfiddle said:

I don't know the exact figures on any of em tbh- just that here in AbDab the Cayenne and Panamera are EVERYWHERE! I'd love a Cayman one day. 

I can highly recommend it. Best car I've ever owned. Needless to say, I bought it when I had a proper job

Dave_Mc

Pretty much what juansolo said in his big (but good) post.