Boss Tonebender pre order through Macaris

Slash'N'burn

What’s to say that Boss won’t make far more than the promised limited 3000 units later on? The used value will then plummet. 

Cols

Redlester said:

Magnetic Effects Solar Bender is a really good TB style fuzz for less that half that. 

And if I were Boss and Macaris, I couldn't see any harm in doing a COSM/ digi version of this for the mass market. Sod what the tone snobs say, with modern digital technology you could make it sound more than acceptable and sell them for less than a ton. 

This; the Solar Bender is effectively a Tone Bender with all the design problems of power supply incompatibility, volume drop, temperature sensitivity and fussiness about signal chain placement fixed.  Some added bias and EQ tweakability and hand-built to order in London.  £135.

In retrospect, I probably should’ve mentioned this two days ago.  Sorry.

RaymondLin

Slash'N'burn said:

What’s to say that Boss won’t make far more than the promised limited 3000 units later on? The used value will then plummet. 

The problem with that theory is besides the parts required, there is also the licencing aspect, Macari (cannot be that dumb) to have signed away the rights for Boss to produce infinite number of these and thus also kill off the market value of their own Sola pedals.

3000 may be the licencing agreement as well as parts available.

Slash'N'burn

RaymondLin said:

Slash'N'burn said:

What’s to say that Boss won’t make far more than the promised limited 3000 units later on? The used value will then plummet. 

The problem with that theory is besides the parts required, there is also the licencing aspect, Macari (cannot be that dumb) to have signed away the rights for Boss to produce infinite number of these and thus also kill off the market value of their own Sola pedals.

3000 may be the licencing agreement as well as parts available.

You’re probably right about the licensing, but I don’t think any quantity big or small will affect the market value of their Sola pedals, the average customer that wants an exact replica of a tonebender and prepared to pay £550 to go on a long waiting list for one, is probably not someone who wants one in an 1980’s style box.

jmf1928

I’ve gone totally down the rabbit hole now and ‘maybe’ successfully preordered one from a shop in the US. I’ll have to have my relatives there send it over should it pan out, but at $349, it’s probably a wash. They said that retailers don’t know how many they’ll get vs. their orders, so it’s hard to say how it pans out. I’m not even entirely sure why I got so attached to this one. 

Lebarque

Cols said:

It’s a bit disappointing reading this thread and seeing how many people went after these pedals with a clear eye on resale value.

The others might well wake up this morning, look at their bank account and think “Did... did I spend over £300 on a Boss pedal yesterday?”

Don't worry. There'll be an unwritten gentleman's agreement that these can't be flipped for more than £2.5k, like on the R8 thread.

Doveholes

Some thoughts from Ant at Macaris over on the D*A*M forum...

well . . . i had no idea that was going to happen !!!

so , just to answer my critics - ahem . . . the launch time was set by Boss Europe BUT I thought they'd sell out over . . . a week . . not an hour !!!!

I was actually a little worried , as 90% of our customers are from the USA , that they'd all buy in the States and I might actually find these sitting on the shelf - shows how much I know !

They sold at over 1 a minute

re : the price 250 pounds ( + tax and shipping ) - i really thought it was ok . No ones making a great deal of money . Boss making 3000 units after spending 2 and a half years developing it is a lousy return and we are just getting a licence fee - its not a money spinner - it was just about doing something cool

I really hope that they don;t end up with guys who will flip them . The good news is that almost everyone who bought one at Macaris was a repeat customer - a proper fuzz head - so fingers crossed .

I just think that that fact that a DAM made Sola Sound MKII will be sitting in a museum of pedals in Japan is reward in itself - in fact that ITS TOTALLY FUCKING COOL !!!

Sorry - its been a really long day

I'm sorry if anyone who wanted one didnt get one

hopefully the second hand market will be kind

rock on

Ant

Hmmm - interesting reading

I would never call anyone naiive - see i can;t even spell it !

But business ??

no way - if so it's probably the worst bit of business Boss have ever done . Remember they get no where near 350 per unit - that's what the dealer and the tax man mark it up to - Boss will get about a third of that before development costs and building - they will be lucky to break even on this .

Macaris just get a licencing fee

This was not about making money

It was about Boss making something with heritage , and for me it was about getting the Sola Sound name out there and talked about - especially in Japan . Something neither company could do on its own .

I dont actually remember discussing money at any point - even when i signed a contract with them did we discuss a price and at every stage there was an understanding that if it wasn't good enough , the project would not go ahead - really - you should have been there - we ate spaghetti , drank some wine and talked about music - we never talked about money .




re : two and a half years - what can i say - i gave them one of Dave's Sola mkiis - two and a half years later they turned up with a pedal !!!

I think the whole way a Boss pedal has to perform is quite different to what we expect from a 2021 Sola Sound unit or the pedals we're used to buying . The testing is incredibly extreme and each pedal has to sound 100% the same - i thnk thats what took so long . Sure to make a mkii wouldnt have taken long but to get an electronic device up to those standards is a different story . Theres one test they do where the pedal is taken down to something like -30 and then up to some crazy heat whilst on this vibrating tray - and it gets shaken for 48 hours - it simulation some sort of Siberian rail journey . so . . .ok 2 and a half years - maybe there was a signal failure - i dont know - but that's how long it took . I suppose they were doing a few other things at the same time . .



I know the pedal has sold out but I'd hate you to think I had !!!!!

Jiggatime

Jiggatime said:

RaymondLin said:

Jiggatime said:

RaymondLin said:

Dan_Halen said:

Doveholes said:

PMT have it at £349, which is taking the piss.

PMT will also happily sell you what they don't have. It's their party trick.

Yeah, don't get it from PMT.  

If you want one, keep an eye out for USA shops.  It seems they haven't released them yet as the time zone difference.  Check CME, Sweetwater etc.

Hey everyone - first time poster here, so thanks for having me!!

I pre-ordered from PMT after everywhere else had 'sold out' (was slow off the mark) - it just sounds so great in the (admittedly few) demo videos... and now I'm worried and waiting to be told they can't fulfil my order... are PMT really that bad? I haven't ordered form them before (I try to support the smaller companies).

£349 is taking the mick, but I don't think I'd ever shell out the £500+ for a proper sola sound TB MKII so this could be a way to sample as close to the real deal as possible at that price point (allow me to keep justifying!!!)... time will tell!

PMT has a habit of putting an item for sale that they have 1 in stock and let that item sit there for days.  Then a bunch of people buy it, obviously 1 guy will get it but then 100 others don't and you won't get your refund for like 28 days.

Not just pedals, but someone bought a Brad Paisley Road Worn Tele here a few months back, it is clear that it is 1 guitar, but about 5 people here ordered it.  Their stock system does not link to their website with live feedback.  That is a big problem, granted, its not limited to PMT but PMT is known for this.

   

I straight up asked PMT if they’d pre-sold only the number of units they knew they’d get from Boss such that they could fulfil all preorders... they couldn’t tell me. They couldn’t tell me how many they were going to get from a Boss. They couldn’t tell me on what basis they had set their pre-sale numbers.... sheesh. I am not hopeful but we’ll see!

Eski

Doveholes said:

Some thoughts from Ant at Macaris over on the D*A*M forum..

I didn’t want to copy the whole thing in again but the stuff that Ant Macari said all makes sense.  I work in a development environment and I can tell you it’s hellishly expensive; the development itself, the testing, validation, qualification, acceptance ........ it’s a long process.

For a company like Boss it would have to be right.  I’d put money on them making a loss on this one.

From the interviews I’ve seen I really do think it was a labour of love on both sides.
  

RaymondLin

If you do some back of the cig packet maths....

3000 units divided into how many countries would get them and how many guitar stores (and considering the US, each state is like size of Europe)

If distributed somewhat evenly, a store would be lucky to get 10 allocated.

It is also strange that Sweetwater has never put up their pre-order page.  No one on TGP has got one from Sweetwater or mentioned it ever went on sale there except someone mentioned they sold their allocation back in December when it was announced.  It sounds like they sold them behind the scenes to staff or friends of staff back then.  

Sassafras

FFS!
It's just a fuzz pedal.

Eski

Sassafras said:

FFS!
It's just a fuzz pedal.

It’s not though is it? Whether you love the idea or hate it you can’t deny that this pedal is directly linked to the history and origins of Fuzz.

menamestom

Eski said:

Doveholes said:

Some thoughts from Ant at Macaris over on the D*A*M forum..

I didn’t want to copy the whole thing in again but the stuff that Ant Macari said all makes sense.  I work in a development environment and I can tell you it’s hellishly expensive; the development itself, the testing, validation, qualification, acceptance ........ it’s a long process.

For a company like Boss it would have to be right.  I’d put money on them making a loss on this one.

From the interviews I’ve seen I really do think it was a labour of love on both sides.
  

How much actual R&D would be needed to put a pedal that’s been around since the 60’s with a low component count, into a box that’s been around since the 80’s?

Sassafras

Eski said:

Sassafras said:

FFS!
It's just a fuzz pedal.

It’s not though is it? Whether you love the idea or hate it you can’t deny that this pedal is directly linked to the history and origins of Fuzz.

Aren't all fuzz pedals?
They're hardly works of historical significance.
I don't think we'll be seeing many behind glass in the British Museum.

JayGee

menamestom said:

Eski said:

Doveholes said:

Some thoughts from Ant at Macaris over on the D*A*M forum..

I didn’t want to copy the whole thing in again but the stuff that Ant Macari said all makes sense.  I work in a development environment and I can tell you it’s hellishly expensive; the development itself, the testing, validation, qualification, acceptance ........ it’s a long process.

For a company like Boss it would have to be right.  I’d put money on them making a loss on this one.

From the interviews I’ve seen I really do think it was a labour of love on both sides.
  

How much actual R&D would be needed to put a pedal that’s been around since the 60’s with a low component count, into a box that’s been around since the 80’s?

Very little. Doing it to the standards of reliability, consistency, and durability expected of a Boss pedal in a way that allowed them to build 300 of them over a relatively short period (as against a boutique builder doing the same sort of numbers over a couple of years or more) while making it behave like the boutique versions in use probably somewhat more...

Building things in this sort of number for a company like Boss is probably a complete PITA - far too many to subcontract out to a bloke in a shed (assuming that’s ever an option they could contemplate) but not remotely enough to justify the tooling/setup cost and disruption of sending it down a regular production line. Put me down in the “probably making a loss on every unit” camp...

ICBM

The only thing that really interests me is where they got 9000 germanium transistors from. If they found an old stockpile it would likely have to be far more than that to select the right characteristics. Or could it have been economical for them to have them remanufactured?

Musicman20

JayGee said:

menamestom said:

Eski said:

Doveholes said:

Some thoughts from Ant at Macaris over on the D*A*M forum..

I didn’t want to copy the whole thing in again but the stuff that Ant Macari said all makes sense.  I work in a development environment and I can tell you it’s hellishly expensive; the development itself, the testing, validation, qualification, acceptance ........ it’s a long process.

For a company like Boss it would have to be right.  I’d put money on them making a loss on this one.

From the interviews I’ve seen I really do think it was a labour of love on both sides.
  

How much actual R&D would be needed to put a pedal that’s been around since the 60’s with a low component count, into a box that’s been around since the 80’s?

Very little. Doing it to the standards of reliability, consistency, and durability expected of a Boss pedal in a way that allowed them to build 300 of them over a relatively short period (as against a boutique builder doing the same sort of numbers over a couple of years or more) while making it behave like the boutique versions in use probably somewhat more...

Building things in this sort of number for a company like Boss is probably a complete PITA - far too many to subcontract out to a bloke in a shed (assuming that’s ever an option they could contemplate) but not remotely enough to justify the tooling/setup cost and disruption of sending it down a regular production line. Put me down in the “probably making a loss on every unit” camp...

I agree. I suspect Boss have IKEA levels of testing and have to make sure these pedals can handle everything we throw at it, just like other Boss pedals.

I am glad Macaris chimed in... That seems like a decent and genuine response. 

It is a cool project and puts the spotlight on both companies for their other products. 

Eski

Sassafras said

Aren't all fuzz pedals?

I thought that as I was writing it but this one is specifically linked to the origins of Fuzz by reference to Tone Bender / Sola Sound - that was all I was saying.

Sassafras

Eski said:

Sassafras said

Aren't all fuzz pedals?

I thought that as I was writing it but this one is specifically linked to the origins of Fuzz by reference to Tone Bender / Sola Sound - that was all I was saying.

I don't think fuzz originated with Sola Sound and the Tonebender wasn't the first fuzz effect.

ICBM

Sassafras said:

I don't think fuzz originated with Sola Sound and the Tonebender wasn't the first fuzz effect.

No, it was copied, with a couple of alterations, from the Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz-Tone, which was (probably) the first.