ampage Tube Amps / Music Electronics	For current discussions, please visit Music Electronics Forum.

ampage archive

Vintage threads from the first ten years

Re: speak fer yerself

4/1/2003 10:41 PM
Tiago	Re: speak fer yerself This forum and Aron´s are very professional because people do respect to each others and his work. If you look at other forums they are full of shit, and just because there are people like you, anonymous and sick of myself.

4/8/2003 9:20 AM
bwise	yea...if you find hatred message in this forum please...please...please...IGNORE IT...IGNORE IT...IGNORE IT..IGNORE IT...!!!! To response it is useless, wasting your time.. Do Not Response...please, share only the good information...OK I am tired of this ....

4/8/2003 5:21 PM
Mark Hammer	Consider.... Doctors, lawyers, architects, and engineers spend large sums of money going to university to gain the expertise needed to do certain things for their clients with the expected degree of competence. The fees you pay them are designed to offset those accumulated (and other expected) expenses. I don't think any one with a head on their shoulders would expect there to be nearly enough doctors, lawyers, architects, or engineers to go around if it was going to take these people 20 years to pay off university, so we grumble but we pay the fee because it gives people like you and me a reason to WANT to be a decent doctor, lawyer, etc. I won't recap the entire story, but we've been through this enough times here before to know pretty much how much it cost folks like Zach, and Dave Barber, and Mike Fuller, and Joe Gagan, and Tom Pollock, and many more, to get to where they are. I know that my pedal habit has cost ME easily $5,000 in expenses over the years in learning and assembly materials purchased, pedals purchased, and other assorted consummables, and I have been lucky enough to work without a scope, or other big ticket testing equipment all these years. I'm also a cheap SOB who simply won't paylist for anything so my costs are probably less than what the same "learning" would have cost someone who did it all full price. What you pay for a "boo-teek" pedal is intended to recoup the costs of the developer so that they can pay their bills. A big chunk of what it costs to buy one of these pedals reflects both the higher cost of having domestic (rather than foreign) hands assemble them, and the retailer's profit margin. Just ask Joe Gagan go tell you the story of his Nine-Volt-Nirvana line that almost wasn't and you'll find out more than you wanted to about about how financially risky a proposition it is to make your own line of pedals. NO ONE gets, or has ever gotten, rich off of fuzzboxes, no matter how high they were priced, so if you harbour any notions of people whose pedals go for $350+ driving around in Porsches between their 4 homes with a supermodel on each arm, do yourself a favour and drop that notion now. They don't cost what they cost because folks are greedy. They cost what they cost because folks need a reason to bust their hump doing this instead of working a job as LAN administrator or burger flipper. None of these folks expects to get wealthy; they just don't expect to be punished for simply wanting to follow their dream and provide a decent product. When it doesn't meet those criteria, another pedal line bites the dust. Personally, I would love it if there were no pedals in existence that cost more than $50, but the fact remains that no one who is starting up in business and needs to have a medical plan, house insurance, pay a website developer, pay people arm-and-a-leg prices to produce small production runs of prototypes to show at trade fairs, and comb the earth for out-of-production components is going to be able to do all of that selling a $50 pedal, and generally even a $100 pedal. It is a mistake in reasoning to direct one's ire at folks like Zach simply because of what pedals cost the consumer. It is also discriminatory to expect them and all their employees to undertake MORE financial risk than you would expect a music store (or the musicians who shop there) to undertake. "Guerilla" tactics of posting trade secrets (or believing one has) is simply petulant adolescent behaviour - a temper tantrum dolled up as some kind of "blow against the empire". Yeesh!

4/8/2003 5:21 PM

Mark Hammer

Consider....

Doctors, lawyers, architects, and engineers spend large sums of money going to university to gain the expertise needed to do certain things for their clients with the expected degree of competence. The fees you pay them are designed to offset those accumulated (and other expected) expenses. I don't think any one with a head on their shoulders would expect there to be nearly enough doctors, lawyers, architects, or engineers to go around if it was going to take these people 20 years to pay off university, so we grumble but we pay the fee because it gives people like you and me a reason to WANT to be a decent doctor, lawyer, etc.

I won't recap the entire story, but we've been through this enough times here before to know pretty much how much it cost folks like Zach, and Dave Barber, and Mike Fuller, and Joe Gagan, and Tom Pollock, and many more, to get to where they are. I know that my pedal habit has cost ME easily $5,000 in expenses over the years in learning and assembly materials purchased, pedals purchased, and other assorted consummables, and I have been lucky enough to work without a scope, or other big ticket testing equipment all these years. I'm also a cheap SOB who simply won't paylist for anything so my costs are probably less than what the same "learning" would have cost someone who did it all full price. What you pay for a "boo-teek" pedal is intended to recoup the costs of the developer so that they can pay their bills. A big chunk of what it costs to buy one of these pedals reflects both the higher cost of having domestic (rather than foreign) hands assemble them, and the retailer's profit margin. Just ask Joe Gagan go tell you the story of his Nine-Volt-Nirvana line that almost wasn't and you'll find out more than you wanted to about about how financially risky a proposition it is to make your own line of pedals.

NO ONE gets, or has ever gotten, rich off of fuzzboxes, no matter how high they were priced, so if you harbour any notions of people whose pedals go for $350+ driving around in Porsches between their 4 homes with a supermodel on each arm, do yourself a favour and drop that notion now. They don't cost what they cost because folks are greedy. They cost what they cost because folks need a reason to bust their hump doing this instead of working a job as LAN administrator or burger flipper. None of these folks expects to get wealthy; they just don't expect to be punished for simply wanting to follow their dream and provide a decent product. When it doesn't meet those criteria, another pedal line bites the dust.

Personally, I would love it if there were no pedals in existence that cost more than $50, but the fact remains that no one who is starting up in business and needs to have a medical plan, house insurance, pay a website developer, pay people arm-and-a-leg prices to produce small production runs of prototypes to show at trade fairs, and comb the earth for out-of-production components is going to be able to do all of that selling a $50 pedal, and generally even a $100 pedal.

It is a mistake in reasoning to direct one's ire at folks like Zach simply because of what pedals cost the consumer. It is also discriminatory to expect them and all their employees to undertake MORE financial risk than you would expect a music store (or the musicians who shop there) to undertake. "Guerilla" tactics of posting trade secrets (or believing one has) is simply petulant adolescent behaviour - a temper tantrum dolled up as some kind of "blow against the empire".

Yeesh!

4/9/2003 4:13 PM

Doug H

The exciting world of electronics

quote:
"so if you harbour any notions of people whose pedals go for $350+ driving around in Porsches between their 4 homes with a supermodel on each arm, do yourself a favour and drop that notion now."

That may be true with Pete Cornish, but his pedal business was kind of an afterthought anyway... ;-)

When I was in high school electronics class, 25-30yrs ago, we had all those old 60's-70's issues of magazines like Popular Electronics and etc from where we got our project ideas. There was an ad in the back of one for one of those "phone # on the back of a matchbook" trade schools which depicted the jet-set, high-powered, exciting world of an electronics career. It had a quad B&W photo showing a string of pearls, sports car, jet plane, and a beautiful woman with a fur coat. It looked like scenes from a James Bond film or something. It was an endless source of amusement for us, a bunch of 16-18 yr old high school students. I'm still kind of amused by the misconceptions people still have today about this kind of career.

Doug

4/9/2003 4:14 PM
Matt	Re: speak fer yerself Mark, While you're on the subject, did you ever get enough response to put together the "To post or not to post schematics" document. I didn't contribute (I'm in the RG camp on this one) but would be interested in the final "consensus". Matt

4/9/2003 8:05 PM
Mark Hammer	I did get enough material to work with, and last night, while hacking my guts out at 4:30AM (head/sinus cold) it dawned on me that here it was April and I still hadn't done anything with it. I'm pondering the sort of "tree structure" that would best lay out the issues and related subissues to think about. Sorry to promise and not deliver. I guess I overcommit sometimes. I haven't shelved it though. Indeed, the more new people arrive here, the more urgent it becomes to prepare such a document. I won't present it as a "consensus" since I don't believe there really IS any. I think you'll find that people will agree on issue X and disagree on issue Y. What I'm hoping to do is lay it out in terms of "Here are the 'big ideas' under which to group your thinking about it. Here are the practical and moral issues and considerations people have raised." The idea is to provide people with enough information and insight that they can make reasoned decisions that are thorough and wise, as well as enough information that we don't have to keep hashing this out all over again. Ultimately they will do what they do (although some might change what they do). I just want them to know that they are doing what they do for sound reasons, and that people behave with enough consistency and mutual consideration that this community thrives.

4/9/2003 8:05 PM

Mark Hammer

I did get enough material to work with, and last night, while hacking my guts out at 4:30AM (head/sinus cold) it dawned on me that here it was April and I still hadn't done anything with it. I'm pondering the sort of "tree structure" that would best lay out the issues and related subissues to think about.

Sorry to promise and not deliver. I guess I overcommit sometimes. I haven't shelved it though. Indeed, the more new people arrive here, the more urgent it becomes to prepare such a document.

I won't present it as a "consensus" since I don't believe there really IS any. I think you'll find that people will agree on issue X and disagree on issue Y. What I'm hoping to do is lay it out in terms of "Here are the 'big ideas' under which to group your thinking about it. Here are the practical and moral issues and considerations people have raised." The idea is to provide people with enough information and insight that they can make reasoned decisions that are thorough and wise, as well as enough information that we don't have to keep hashing this out all over again. Ultimately they will do what they do (although some might change what they do). I just want them to know that they are doing what they do for sound reasons, and that people behave with enough consistency and mutual consideration that this community thrives.

4/10/2003 3:14 AM
anonymous	thinking out loud did joe gagan go out of business for sharing his schematics? or was it because he entered a saturated market with just another distortion pedal that cost more than a boss pedal? just becuase i like to get drunk in my free time doesnt mean i can make a living doing it. the world is about the survival of the strong. it follows that it is also about the demise of the weak. whatever you think, distributing the "secrets" of the fuzz factory isn't likely to put zvex out of business. and if it does, maybe he should have a better businees plan. as they say, don't put all of your eggs in one basket. <>< Jesus as a blond white guy that liked to wear sandals

4/10/2003 3:14 AM

anonymous

thinking out loud

did joe gagan go out of business for sharing his schematics? or was it because he entered a saturated market with just another distortion pedal that cost more than a boss pedal? just becuase i like to get drunk in my free time doesnt mean i can make a living doing it. the world is about the survival of the strong. it follows that it is also about the demise of the weak. whatever you think, distributing the "secrets" of the fuzz factory isn't likely to put zvex out of business. and if it does, maybe he should have a better businees plan. as they say, don't put all of your eggs in one basket.

<><
Jesus as a blond white guy that liked to wear sandals

Page 2 of 8