Cornish pedals and similar expensive pedal makers ?

stickyfiddle

juansolo said:

There is an argument that in the real world a £20k Subaru Impreza just as quick point to point as a £100k Porsche GT3. Indeed on many measurable levels just as good. Yet still Porsche have no trouble selling them. Therefore are they overpriced or are they priced at what the market is prepared to pay...?

Taken another way, Porsche has a massive mark up on a 911. A Cayman shares a lot of parts with one, the vast majority in fact, yet is significantly cheaper. But the 911 is marketed in such a way that people perceive it to be the premium model. People will pay more to own a 911 when the Cayman is possibly even a better car in some respects. This is another good way of looking at the pedal market.

Basically, what I am saying is that you pay your money and make your choice. That DAM, Cornish and the like have a market and can sell these pedals means that their pricing is just fine. They're only too expensive if you can't afford one and you want one. C'est la vie. But that's also not to say that there aren't alternatives out there, particularly in the pedal market, that can't do the same thing for you. Or indeed be better!

I'd rather have a Cayman and I like building my own pedals. This may not be the thread for me.

That said, despite not wanting one, I can absolutely see why a Cornish pedal attracts the price it does as the quality is through the roof. Compare to a Fulltone or EHX and it's another level. I wonder if any of these companies actually make any real money though.I'd love to see some figures.

TheCount

"a £20k Subaru Impreza just as quick point to point as a £100k Porsche GT3"

I used to own a 911 (in the days before kids, when I had money) Also owned A Cornish. There is something special about both that makes them worth the money, if you have it

. 

Wazmeister

Some good analogies here... I did sell my 2 PC recently and raised £800, which is a lot of corn...

I have changed my strategy recently; sold a lot of expensive pedals to spend on even more expensive amps... Go figure... It never ends does it ?!

p90fool

I think Cornish is well outside the realms of boutique silliness. Unlike most "high end" pedal builders he's offering a bespoke, bulletproof, pro stage-ready service, with total support, backup and collaboration.

That's very different to charging 400 for a fuzzbox because it has a couple of germanium transistors in it.

dunstanmus

Cornish pedals do have great buffers and are silent. I still own a few interesting ones. Extremely well built. I kept the ones that I thought were good ones although these will be going shortly as I will never use them. Horses for courses. Not my thing. Do i think they are worth the money? No but if someone wants to pay me silly money for them then cool. The delays are good though. I always use his cables. Do they sound better than other cables? No but they last forever without a fault. Cheers Rich

juansolo

stickyfiddle said:

juansolo said:

There is an argument that in the real world a £20k Subaru Impreza just as quick point to point as a £100k Porsche GT3. Indeed on many measurable levels just as good. Yet still Porsche have no trouble selling them. Therefore are they overpriced or are they priced at what the market is prepared to pay...?

Taken another way, Porsche has a massive mark up on a 911. A Cayman shares a lot of parts with one, the vast majority in fact, yet is significantly cheaper. But the 911 is marketed in such a way that people perceive it to be the premium model. People will pay more to own a 911 when the Cayman is possibly even a better car in some respects. This is another good way of looking at the pedal market.

Basically, what I am saying is that you pay your money and make your choice. That DAM, Cornish and the like have a market and can sell these pedals means that their pricing is just fine. They're only too expensive if you can't afford one and you want one. C'est la vie. But that's also not to say that there aren't alternatives out there, particularly in the pedal market, that can't do the same thing for you. Or indeed be better!

I'd rather have a Cayman and I like building my own pedals. This may not be the thread for me.

That said, despite not wanting one, I can absolutely see why a Cornish pedal attracts the price it does as the quality is through the roof. Compare to a Fulltone or EHX and it's another level. I wonder if any of these companies actually make any real money though.I'd love to see some figures.

I own a Cayman  (an old one) and I build my own pedals But totally understand companies charging what the market will stand and building up a brand image/reputation.

Then again I also own an old Merc that's worth about the same as an LP Standard and that does the job of getting me from A to B every bit as well.

simonbeckwith

I always try to buy the best I can afford, be it at the time a £50 pedal or a £400 pedal, or a £1200 guitar or whatever, if you can afford it, why not buy the best you can afford? And if it's going to get used, then it's money well spent surely. Obviously if it sits on your board for a eek then in the drawer for years on end it probably was a waste of money!

allicio

People have mentioned Cornish being good at marketing, I wouldn't have said that. The guy never advertises, doesn't participate on any forums that ive ever seen or even have a blog.
The guy just has customers and builds as far as I can tell. Fair play I suppose

allicio

For me personally if I find a builder who builds a high quality product, has a decent attitude and takes time to answer questions then I don't mind paying the asking price providing its not too prohibitive. I won't buy pedals from a builder that treats there customers with complete disregard.

xHymnal

I don't have a huge issue with Cornish, I'd love a P1 someday BUT I have to say that 450 for a three way amp splitter is daylight robbery, it's such a simple circuit. I know a reply will be "a fuzzface is simple too"... but the truly great fuzzfaces are tuned, I had a build for me once and the builder went through 70 sets of transistors before finding a pair he was tonally happy with for me: that's great, IMO. With a Cornish 3 way switcher there's none of that, yes you get the 50 shades of grey pedal with the Cornish name on it but that's where the glamour ends. I'll always buy D*A*M because I believe Dave makes the best vintage pedal repros out there, not only do they sound great but the D*A*M ethos is so quaint, cool and vintage all over that it is just quality. 

That said, Skreddy make some incredible sounding pedals for much less cash, though most of them are PCB (ew)

allicio

Which dams do you have mate?

xHymnal

Drag n Fly, Meat m13 and a GB-80  

How many Arcane you on now? Gonna get me an arcane buzzaround when I got some dollar! 

allicio

Nice man! I sometimes regret selling that fly!
Ive got 9 arcanes there the best pedals ive played.
Have you seen the anniversary Buzzaround he's done? Its a bit cheaper than is previous wedge versions.http://arcaneanalog.bigcartel.com/product/arcane-analog-anniversary-nkt213-buzzaround

xHymnal

I sold it on too, regrettably, it was smooth as hell. I had't seen that anni buzz, i LOVE the colour! Needs gutshots though

TheCount

Needs gutshots though 

Yeah, I want to see how the switch is wired up )

capo4th

I keep looking at Cornish pedals but dropping a grand on 2 pedals does concern me somewhat. I do not doubt the quality and engineering that goes into his product. May be I should sell a few pedals and take the plunge. Grey box or battery free ?

Wazmeister

Battery free mate, imho... Much smaller than you think, and look as cool as...

http://i1160.photobucket.com/albums/q493/Warren3333/Pete Cornish/P1030163.jpg

juansolo

Hymnal said:

I don't have a huge issue with Cornish, I'd love a P1 someday BUT I have to say that 450 for a three way amp splitter is daylight robbery, it's such a simple circuit. I know a reply will be "a fuzzface is simple too"... but the truly great fuzzfaces are tuned, I had a build for me once and the builder went through 70 sets of transistors before finding a pair he was tonally happy with for me: that's great, IMO. With a Cornish 3 way switcher there's none of that, yes you get the 50 shades of grey pedal with the Cornish name on it but that's where the glamour ends. I'll always buy D*A*M because I believe Dave makes the best vintage pedal repros out there, not only do they sound great but the D*A*M ethos is so quaint, cool and vintage all over that it is just quality. 

That said, Skreddy make some incredible sounding pedals for much less cash, though most of them are PCB (ew)

It's not hard to bias a fuzz face correctly when you know how. But yeah, most of it is finding good transistors. We've been lucky enough to get our hands on a stash of old transistors in the past. Out of 100s of them I think we made 7 pedals (most of which for the guy whos stash it was)... Though ironically, the best sounding MKII of the lot was one that threw out convention and went with some really random components... So it's not an exact science by far. But Matt has the two best sounding Fuzz Faces I've ever built and won't be parted from either of them ( got the Bender from him though ).

Also a good ABY (and this appears to be an ABCY), will have at least a pair of audio isolation transformers in it, a good buffer/splitter, selectable ground lift and maybe even a logic controlled switching. Again I'm not going to argue that there's still not a huge amount of moneys worth of parts in there. But it might not be as simple as you think in there.

Cornish survives as a pedal manufacturer on word of mouth and the fact that he make pedals for a certain David Gilmour. An endorsement like that means that you can just charge whatever you like and someone will pay it because who doesn't want to sound like Gilmour?!

Now all that's been said in this thread by me, I haven't and wouldn't buy a Cornish or a DAM. Because I wouldn't drop that sort of money on a single pedal that wasn't something that was so complex that I couldn't build it myself (for example I'll be getting myself a Korg SDD3000). Which is a nice position to be in. I have however made clones, and some of their stuff is really good sonically.

allicio

TheCount;437584" said:

Needs gutshots though 

Yeah, I want to see how the switch is wired up :))

It'll be wrong!

Its wrong on all 9 of my arcane pedals don't worry!

xHymnal

All very true. 

The Steve Giles "rats nest" JMI tonebenders are sought after and they're wired horribly!