[HN Gopher] The Pedal Movie
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The Pedal Movie
Author : pjbk
Score : 75 points
Date : 2021-04-30 04:26 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (reverb.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (reverb.com)
| fallingfrog wrote:
| I used to make my own effects pedals and sell them under the
| "electric toad engineering" moniker. It's a lot of fun, but the
| market is way too crowded and you're not going to make much money
| at it! Still, my pedals are very good.
|
| The last design I came up with I only made one of, and I use it
| for myself.. but, it is the best overdrive I've ever heard, or at
| least, after years of fiddling with it there's nothing left I can
| do to make it any better. I just don't want to spend my time
| doing screen printing, advertising, shipping, drilling,
| soldering, and so on just make 50 bucks on each unit.
|
| There is a lot of hokum that people believe when it comes to
| overdrive, but it comes down to a really good signal to noise
| ratio, and a thousand tiny details, and very close attention to
| pre/post gain eq.
|
| I think the same is true of the "tube sound" mojo- the tube amps
| that are most sought after are great because they were a labor of
| love, and people sweated over the tiny details. Solid state amps
| are designed to be cheap, so they have worse speakers, and so on.
| You can get just a good a sound out of transistors, you just have
| to spend some money and time to do it.
| damontal wrote:
| The difference between tube and solid state amps is less about
| sound and more about response to the attack of the pick.
| xbar wrote:
| I do not agree. But I do love me some Rivera-era Fender solid
| state amps.
|
| http://www.stratopastor.org.uk/strato/amps/twoseriesfenders/.
| ..
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaW83WNDqRY
| the_local_host wrote:
| That difference is itself dependent on how the pick is
| grasped. Anything can happen.
| pjbk wrote:
| I know that some guitarists hate them, but I enjoyed playing my
| stereo Marshall ValveState (a newer one with an ECC83 instead
| of the classic 12AX7). I think it was the right balance between
| both worlds. You could barely tell it was mostly transistors
| inside. Well, it was a Marshall after all. That being said I
| have played the new MG ones and you can feel there is something
| missing.
|
| I once had to repair my circa-1990 Crate GX160, so I bought its
| schematics. Most of the passive components went into multiple
| stage filters on _every_ _freaking_ section. Talk about
| overkill. I doubt you could even hear the effect of some of
| those filters, but they definitely played safe and took care of
| designs back then. Except for a few vendors, now it 's all
| about packing as much they can on the digital side and penny
| pinching on the hardware.
| Jeema101 wrote:
| I also have designed pedals in the past - I agree with you it
| is loads of fun but probably hard to make money on. As I see
| it, there's two issues working against you in this regard.
|
| First, guitar players in general seem to be somewhat driven by
| crowd mentality and not entirely open to embrace anything that
| isn't already tried-and-true. That makes it hard to get anyone
| to try something that isn't a clone or tweak of an existing
| design.
|
| Second, like you said, the market is very saturated, and even
| if you do have a unique design, the aforementioned mentality
| largely works against you I think.
|
| All that being said, there's a whole world of exploration and
| discovery out there when it comes to analog circuit design and
| that alone I think makes it an incredibly rewarding hobby.
| djmips wrote:
| Step 1. Good SNR Step 2. 1000 tiny details Step 3. Profit!
|
| Thanks for the advice!
| varispeed wrote:
| Get a good analogue pedal, reverse engineer a schematic
| (these are not copyrightable), create your own PCB, order a
| BOM, enclosures, some nice knobs, give the pedal some crazy
| name and paint some whacky stuff on the enclosure. Open an
| online store, then give it away to some pedal influencers.
| Wait for those sweet sweet sales. People are always in need
| of a new pedal even if it is the same that 100 they already
| have. Just give it a good back story, e.g. the transistors
| you used were with you on a trip into a jungle or were worn
| as earrings by your 100 year old grandma for one month.
| lc9er wrote:
| > give the pedal some crazy name and paint some whacky
| stuff on the enclosure.
|
| This seems to be the primary differentiator between most
| analog pedals these days.
| xbar wrote:
| But already your pitch is so good it makes me want to know your
| secrets or buy your pedal or suggest a marketing plan.
|
| Perhaps document it for your own posterity.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| Hahaha ok, if you really do want one email me at fallingfrog
| at gmail dot com and I'll see what I can do.. it would feel
| nice to have someone besides just me to enjoy all that work.
| I'll send you a schematic with the pedal.
| detaro wrote:
| Feels like the modular synthesizer market is more the place for
| random new stuff with many small players nowadays.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Did you try selling at significantly higher prices? I bet
| there's a huge market for boutique guitar pedals.
|
| I've seen people advocate Vickrey auctions as a price discovery
| mechanism: https://kevinlynagh.com/notes/pricing-niche-
| products/
| ghostpepper wrote:
| There's a somewhat-unique-sounding boost pedal called the
| Super Hard On that retails for upwards of $300 and contains a
| single FET transistor and a half dozen passive components
| totalling less than $10 in bulk quantity.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| Josh Scott is a pedal mfg. and collector, and owner of the
| Youtube channel, JHS Pedals.
|
| It's one of the best channels I've seen.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/user/jhspedals/videos
| asimpletune wrote:
| This is random but does anyone know where to get a good
| professional setup in San Francisco on a guitar I own?
| taylorlapeyre wrote:
| SF Guitarworks
| scelerat wrote:
| Hord Guitar Repair and Custom Shop is really good.
|
| https://www.facebook.com/hordguitars/
| ergwwrt wrote:
| And we now we have guitar rig
| jedimastert wrote:
| If anyone is interested in pedal history, JHS Pedals creator Josh
| Scott (I heard his voice a couple of times in the trailer, which
| isn't surprising) has an absolutely incredible YouTube channel
| where he gives fantastic oral histories of companies and pedal
| designs (as well as opinions about various types of pedal and the
| like).
|
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjfbkA4jJkJY5g0wbjuoZWA
| ehutch79 wrote:
| Joh Scott is awesome. I second the recommendation of this
| channel
| benji_is_me wrote:
| Brian Wampler (founder of Wampler Pedals) also has a channel
| where he discusses different pedal designs.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdVrg4Wl3vjIxonABn6RfWw
| abbot2 wrote:
| Not available in the UK. Online movie distribution they said.
| contrast wrote:
| I'm watching right now in UK via iTunes as advertised.
| tjr225 wrote:
| Semi-unrelated; I've been using reverb to sell a bunch of my gear
| for the past few months or so and the experience has been pretty
| good. It's essentially eBay but curated which is a great idea.
|
| For the one actually "large/expensive" piece of equipment I sold
| Craigslist worked much better, though. I was unwilling to ship or
| insure it.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| Prices on Reverb have become a meme. Often people list items
| asking absurd prices hoping someone desperate will buy. They
| don't respond to reasonable offers (E.g. for what the item
| recently actually sold for) and listings are hanging for months
| if not years. Funny place.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| When Reverb was bought by Etsy, they dramatically raised their
| fees with no real justification, and reduced the quality of
| their customer support. It has rather damaged their previously
| sterling reputation among musicians.
| beckler wrote:
| I like reverb, and I think it's a pretty great resource, but
| they raised their rates back in August and it's left a bit of a
| bad taste in my mouth. I end up paying almost 10% to just sell
| something, and that's before shipping.
| the-dude wrote:
| So it is not 10% but lower?
|
| What would you find reasonable?
| beckler wrote:
| It's currently at 7.7% + $0.25. But it's a bit more
| complicated than that.
|
| If you want something to sell, you usually have to use
| their "bump" feature to get it to show up at the beginning
| of any relevant search results. You give an additional
| percentage of the sale to get it higher in the listings. If
| you have a more common item, you usually have to give up a
| higher percentage to get it noticed.
|
| Once you factor in shipping and everything else, I usually
| sell most of my items at a loss of 10-25% depending on the
| item. I've never really made a profit from anything I've
| sold on Reverb.
| the-dude wrote:
| TBH, it does not sound bad to me at all ( ignoring the
| _bump_ feature ).
|
| I assume they take care of the transaction/payment?
| Normal creditcard transaction fees are at 2% + $0.25, and
| this is without providing a market(place).
|
| AppStore takes 30%, Uber/Deliveroo etc take about 15%.
| tonyjstark wrote:
| Same here, I like the page and I like their customer service
| (had very good experiences so far, I needed it only once
| though), but since the 10% is priced in all gear, everything
| is a tad too expensive, maybe except if you're a collector. I
| could live with 5% but 10% is just too much, as a seller and
| buyer. I still try to sell from time to time, but only the
| collectible stuff, I stopped buying completely.
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(page generated 2021-05-01 23:01 UTC)