Is gear becoming far too expensive?

Voxsupertwin

I’ve just bought an LG HD DVD player, new, superb bit of kit and an excellent CD player also …..price…? 

£49.95 from Amazon. High tech circuitry and all the bits 
I know we are a niche market but some of the prices being asked for very simple bits of kit….overdrive pedals  in particular seem excessive? For what’s inside.

And  the boutique stuff is even more ridiculous, hundreds of pounds for a couple of transistors and a few resistors and capacitors….

i feel I am being ripped off ……

yours sincerely, Mr Velcro.

TheMarlin

It’s a matter of scale and cost of labor/parts. 

A handbuilt pedal made in the uk is a very different price to a mass produced pedal made in China/india. 

The good news is you have lots of choice, so there is always something for your budget. 

Sporky

Voxsupertwin said:

And  the boutique stuff is even more ridiculous, hundreds of pounds for a couple of transistors and a few resistors and capacitors….

That's not what you're paying for. If you want a handful of components you can buy them. If you want a hand assembled, hand painted, hand tested pedal that costs a lot more. 

Boromedic

Yeah, it's economies of scale and basically people's time and effort.

You can buy a Mosky TS9 type that's probably made in a similar fashion to the LG DVD player you mention for £25. If you want one, hand made with through hole components it'll be upwards of £60+ (thinking of Dope FX and other smaller boutique guys). 

I guarantee the DopeFX one will still be usable in 25 years though, when the Mosky and the LG will be landfill. That's also another problem with racing to make/buy the cheapest version of something, it becomes a throwaway item and is slowly ruining the planet. We're all guilty of it, but we need to change tack sooner rather than later.

thecolourbox

Voxsupertwin said:

I’ve just bought an LG HD DVD player, new, superb bit of kit and an excellent CD player also …..price…? 

£49.95 from Amazon. High tech circuitry and all the bits 
I know we are a niche market but some of the prices being asked for very simple bits of kit….overdrive pedals  in particular seem excessive? For what’s inside.

And  the boutique stuff is even more ridiculous, hundreds of pounds for a couple of transistors and a few resistors and capacitors….

i feel I am being ripped off ……

yours sincerely, Mr Velcro.

See also:
https://www.richersounds.com/panasonic-dp-ub9000eb1-black.html

steer

You can buy a cheap Chinese Klone clone for about £25. Or you can buy one hand made by unicorns for many hundreds of pounds. It's up to you. Blind sound tests that I have seen reveal very little, in any, difference in the final sound. 

The cheap one might not last forever, although I have a Mooer pedal on my board that is 10 years old and works as well as the day I bought it. 

I would say decent gear has never been more affordable. But if people want the bespoke rare handmade boutique pedals, then  of course you will pay a fortune.

Danny1969

Being expensive doesn’t mean it’s built well. I have repaired way more Boutique pedals than Boss ones. Reliability comes from circuit design as well as components. A well built pedal will be immune to reverse polarity , AC and over voltage. Components at signal level don’t tend to fail if protected in the same way components stressed by higher currents do. In fact to me there’s no excuse in this day and age of low drop out regulators and MOSFETS with such low SD trench’s to make a pedal that can be so easily damaged. Cheap pedals can use lower quantity sockets and pots though 

The BOM for a typical overdrive comes in at less than £25 for me but the labour has to be factored in, the online market place cut, the packaging and the returns, people want the opportunity to send something back after using it for a week but will moan like hell if they get one that has had slight use … so the seller has to take the hit on that. 

£300 for a KOT  though and similar is a piss take IMHO 

LionAquaLooper

steer said:

The cheap one might not last forever, 

This isn't limited to just cheap ones though.  Just because something is "Made in the USA" doesn't automatically mean its components aren't prone to early breakage.

And where are most of these components made?  China lol.  So disregard where the actual gear is made.  Most of the time its irrelevant when talking about longevity.  It's only relevant when talking about price.  

Boromedic

^^Na I disagree, sometimes when you pay more you do get better, lower noise floor, easily repairable, more things like polarity protection etc.. Where it's made or where the parts are made make no difference, an iPhone is made in China, where you can have the best manufacturing and parts if you pay for it, or the shittest if you don't.

This idea of you can have everything for cheap is demonstrably not true, a cheaper pedal will have corners cut somewhere, it's just economics. Some things just cost more, and occasionally for good reasons.

Boromedic

Danny1969 said:

Being expensive doesn’t mean it’s built well. I have repaired way more Boutique pedals than Boss ones. Reliability comes from circuit design as well as components. A well built pedal will be immune to reverse polarity , AC and over voltage. Components at signal level don’t tend to fail if protected in the same way components stressed by higher currents do. In fact to me there’s no excuse in this day and age of low drop out regulators and MOSFETS with such low SD trench’s to make a pedal that can be so easily damaged. Cheap pedals can use lower quantity sockets and pots though 

The BOM for a typical overdrive comes in at less than £25 for me but the labour has to be factored in, the online market place cut, the packaging and the returns, people want the opportunity to send something back after using it for a week but will moan like hell if they get one that has had slight use … so the seller has to take the hit on that. 

£300 for a KOT  though and similar is a piss take IMHO 

I think Analogman are the exception to the boutique pricing rubbish actually, a lot of other makers would be charging double what he does for making them all in house. He has resisted price rises a number of times, and whether you think NOS parts make a difference or not, he uses what he thinks works and he has to test and sort some of them which takes time.

£257 is his current price (not his fault he's in the US and we pay import, but if your stateside that's the cost), which I actually think isn't unreasonable all things considered. He could scale things down or contract it out and make it cheaper like, but for what it is, it's a good price I think. 

jpttaylor

It's also worth considering that research and development is a huge part of where costs go for companies. The amount spent on potential new products by middle-of-the-road builders like Boss or even niche boutique companies like Chase Bliss will be substantial and are reflected in the RRP. Mosky doesn't have to put resources into new overdrive schematics because they're more than happy to make Tubescreamers, which are, in essence, a modified Boss OD-1. 

LionAquaLooper

jpttaylor said:

It's also worth considering that research and development is a huge part of where costs go for companies. The amount spent on potential new products by middle-of-the-road builders like Boss or even niche boutique companies like Chase Bliss will be substantial and are reflected in the RRP. Mosky doesn't have to put resources into new overdrive schematics because they're more than happy to make Tubescreamers, which are, in essence, a modified Boss OD-1. 

Not to mention endorsements and marketing.  All those free guitars, amps, pedals that they give to pros don't just magically appear out of thin air

steer

Boromedic said:

^^Na I disagree, sometimes when you pay more you do get better, lower noise floor, easily repairable, more things like polarity protection etc.. Where it's made or where the parts are made make no difference, an iPhone is made in China, where you can have the best manufacturing and parts if you pay for it, or the shittest if you don't.

This idea of you can have everything for cheap is demonstrably not true, a cheaper pedal will have corners cut somewhere, it's just economics. Some things just cost more, and occasionally for good reasons.

Key bit there of para 1 being the "sometimes" part. 

There does not necessarily need to be corners cut to make something cheaper. A factory in Taiwan can setup a run of pedals with modern technology and cheap labour, and economy of scale. And they can produce a similar circuit as in a handmade pedal by someone in the USA, just without hand soldering and a fancy paint job. 

There will be a place for boutique pedals. But the choice for skinflints has surely never been better? 

Kurtis

steer said:

You can buy a cheap Chinese Klone clone for about £25. Or you can buy one hand made by unicorns for many hundreds of pounds. It's up to you. Blind sound tests that I have seen reveal very little, in any, difference in the final sound. 

The cheap one might not last forever, although I have a Mooer pedal on my board that is 10 years old and works as well as the day I bought it. 

I would say decent gear has never been more affordable. But if people want the bespoke rare handmade boutique pedals, then  of course you will pay a fortune.

Unicorns don't have hands! 

gatheredinsong

Danny1969 said:

Being expensive doesn’t mean it’s built well. I have repaired way more Boutique pedals than Boss ones. 

This could have something to do with people's expectation of the cost of repair (plus possibly postage in two directions) being a high percentage of the cost of a new one, or even close to the cost of just buying a working used one, no?

jca74

Hell no.

Yes, you can splurge stupid amounts of money on hand-crafted 'boutique' amps and fx but there is currently a 100+ post thread in the guitar channel 'Theres never been a better time to be a guitar player' which is the exact opposite of this thread. The quality of equipment you can get for low cost now is a world away from what was accessible when I started out. 

Be it guitars, amps, pedals - you can get far more gig-able kit at the budget end of the price range now than at any time previously (well, ok...it was even better before brexit....)

Dave_Mc

jpttaylor said:

It's also worth considering that research and development is a huge part of where costs go for companies. The amount spent on potential new products by middle-of-the-road builders like Boss or even niche boutique companies like Chase Bliss will be substantial and are reflected in the RRP. Mosky doesn't have to put resources into new overdrive schematics because they're more than happy to make Tubescreamers, which are, in essence, a modified Boss OD-1. 

It's less clear where the R&D costs for all those boutique tubescreamer clones are going... 

slacker

I suspect ts and fuzzface clones are used as cash cows to fund the R and D on the other stuff.

Voxsupertwin

£330….????

no R&D required, it was all done 60 years ago ….

https://imgur.com/gallery/WYnJhMK

stickyfiddle

Voxsupertwin said:

£330….????

no R&D required, it was all done 60 years ago ….

https://imgur.com/gallery/WYnJhMK

You don’t have to buy one though! The difference is that when the Rangemaster was invented there was literally no competition, whereas now you can buy treble boosters for anything between £40 and £400

ElectricXII

If we're only talking about effects, then the original wah pedals, fuzz boxes and treble boosters were extortionately expensive in the 60s. They're generally much cheaper now.