Advice for a friend who builds pedals?

Drew_TNBD

What advice would you give to someone wanting to get into making and selling pedals?

I told him to find an angle of some kind, something to generate interest. Maybe design a pedal that looks like a prop from the flavour of the month current nostalgia trip that everyone is on, and tap into that shitegeist. But obviously that was just cynical piss taking.

Any ACTUAL advice??

juansolo

If he wants to build them to sell them here in the UK, unless he's prepared to put in an inordinate amount of effort, don't bother.

If he wants to build them because he wants to learn about them, enjoys the process, wants to create stuff, etc, then go for it. DIY is awesome and there's a whole community out there to help you along. Get yourself on the BYOC and Madbean forums and join in.

Basically if you want to sell pedals here you need to be three things at the very least (if you actually want to make good stuff and are not the next JHS/Lovepedal knocking out clones of other people's work). You need to be competent at actually building pedals. The amount of stuff out there that looks like it's assembled by someone who's never owned a soldering iron before is staggering. You need something that sets your pedals apart from everything else out there. Because the market is saturated with people shoving clones into gold 1590BB boxes and selling them for £200... Lastly, whether you like it or not, you have to market and promote your product. Ideally building a following... Yep, you gotta create some hype and you've got to keep that train a-rolling. That might mean a shit tonne of bullshit in a lot of cases, but it can also mean actively getting your product out there and seen by as many people as possible, then keeping that momentum going with new and innovative stuff.

You get a lot of people who are good at maybe one or two of the above, the ones that can do all three are the ones who will be successful.

Do not underestimate your costs! Lots of people make the mistake of seeing a box and thinking, well that's only £30 in parts, the rest is pure profit! Which kinda forgets the labour it takes to assemble the thing, the years of experience the builder might have that allows them to build a thing to a level. The costs in developing and prototyping a thing. The number of projects that go through that process and never make it to fruition, that all cost.

That said, if you're prepared to put in the effort, Thorpy and Fredrick FX have proved that it can be done. I suspect the pair of them put in an enourmous amount of time and effort mind you. Even then you wonder if it's sustainable as a single source of income?

FWIW I do this as a hobby. I can merrily say we've designed original effects, which a great many boutique manufacturers have not. I like to think I'm pretty good at putting a very robust pedal together. But I have no interest in mass production or bullshit. Hence I've never advertised or actively promoted stuff. I build primarily for me and mates, I sell occasionally so the hobby is self-funding (it took a few years to become self-funding). If I didn't have to sell effects to do that, I'd stay purely DIY as that's the community and the ethos that I like. The pedal market is full of too many people out to make a quick buck. That said there are also some great people out there turning out new and innovative gear. If you're gonna do it, try and be in the latter category.

In the 7 or so years I've been building effects, I've essentially not made money doing it. If you take into account my time and even my fuel getting to and from Cleggy's (where all the pedal building takes place), I'm way out of pocket even though the pedal fund is a couple of hundred quid in the black at the moment. It's usually the other way around, but that's the sort of area we work in. When it gets a few hundred quid down, we'll have a purge of the pedal mountain. When it's up, we'll get some new stuff built, and on it goes. Works for us, but we long ago abandoned any idea of trying to make it earn us a living.

meltedbuzzbox

It's sad @juansolo cause the stuff you have made for me puts a lot of builders to shame but I totally understand where you are coming from. 

It's a totally flooded market and I imagine it's even harder to crack now days. I believe even Keeley nearly went bust in the last few years

ThorpyFX

Well there are loads of bits of advice to give but I think @juansolo captured most of what I'd say. I'd like to echo the sentiment on an inordinate amount of effort....

if your friend wants to do it, he needs to go "all in" and by that I mean every aspect of the business needs constant momentum and pressure, be it the accounts, marketing, social media, circuit design, building etc etc. 

I guess the only comparable thing thing is doing a PhD, you've got to really want to do it and be 100% passionate.....

that and and a lot of luck. 

ICBM

No damned true bypass and shitty metal click switches!

Build a proper buffered switching circuit with at the very least, a soft-action metal momentary switch if he can't afford to tool up for a nice casing with the switch integrated or do it some other way.

That will give him a market advantage over almost every other small-builder pedal out there, for a small number of people. It may well put off others, but the market is so flooded now that you want something that makes you stand out not something that makes you follow the herd.

juansolo

Not sure I agree on the last point. The whole 'must be true bypass' thing is so entrenched in the effects market that shifting stuff that's buffered bypass would be more of an effort. Hell Bill even added it to the Klon as an option...

Which leaves you sourcing massively expensive 3PDT stomps (rather than Chinese ones), using millenium bypass, optical or relay switching. Only the last one will be soft touch, but they all come with downsides. For example a lot of the more compact relays (which stuff ideally needs to be in a pedal) can be noisy blighters. Which knocks the soft touch true bypass thing on the head.

You can't please everyone, same goes for jack positioning. I would say most people want them on the top, I don't like doing this for a few reasons. It means the box has to be much bigger, it means I have much longer/less direct I/O lines that have to go where the circuit is, which for some things can cause issues and force you to have to shield them. Generally it also makes fettling more difficult. The stuff I make now has a separate stomp board with all the power and I/O on it, and a single piece of ribbon inside to the effect. You can unbolt the pots and lift out the effect intact. Which is nice should the worst happen and you have to work on it. It also makes assembly easier, and anything that cuts down on the time spent assembling pedals is a very good thing!

Sassafras

Was the whole true bypass craze not started by 'boutique' builders who couldn't be arsed to build properly buffered pedals?
That's the impression I get from the blurb and hype on most 'boutique' sites.

Sporky

Sassafras said:

Was the whole true bypass craze not started by 'boutique' builders who couldn't be arsed to build properly buffered pedals?

I think that's a slightly skewed way of looking at it.

Lots of classic pedals had really, really crap bypasses - they'd switch only the input or the output, meaning that the effect circuit was hanging on the signal line and massively loading it down.

At the same time, Boss's buffered bypass wasn't quite unity gain, so with a handfulof pedals there was an audible difference between going through them (in bypass) and going straight into the amp. Just enough level difference to sound crap without just sounding quieter (it's a brilliant trick for skewing shootouts - make the option you want to win be about 0.5dB louder).

A good buffered bypass does take a bit of designing - there are suprisingly few decent cookbook circuits - and more PCB space and layout time. A good 3PDT (they do exist) is fairly easy to wire up and produces a pretty darned good bypass.

At the start of the boutique goldrush a lot of not-very-talented people were building near clones of commercial pedals, just putting in more expensive components and maybe tweaking a value or two. And often stripping out what they thought were unnecessary bits, like wrappers. Designing a buffered bypass from scratch wasn't going to be easy, so TB got a lot of positive marketing.

Dave_Mc

^ Not to derail the thread, but I was wondering the other day why pretty much all of the pedals whose schematics I'd seen, if they were half-assed bypass, had the output disconnected, rather than the input, and I was wondering if there was a reason for that (i.e. maybe I was being silly and it didn't work if you just disconnected the input), but from what you're saying you can do it either way? No reason for asking other than I'm just curious

And yeah pretty much agreed. I'd say (though it could well be psychological) that I think I can tell a Boss buffer even with just one in the circuit, but certainly with several you can (or with one single much-worse buffer).

Danny1969

I suspect it's because the input impedence to ground on a typical  opamp circuit is very high but the output impedence to ground is a lot lower due to the neg feedback path ... so disconnecting the output is less loading when in parallel in bypass mode

Not a pedal expert so happy to be corrected 

bbill335

As a player and not a builder, I'd like to see more controls on footswitches than knobs or toggles. 

For example, I think a Muffy fuzz voiced just right with an analog octave up or down running into it - activated by footswitch - would be really useful. 3 knobs - gain, octave amount and master level. Keep it simple, give it bags of character, but make it multi-purpose. 

That, or you go the route of the SS/BS Buzzz (one of the best pedals ever) and give it multiple switchable functions - octave on/off, octave up/down, mids scoop/flat, level control bypass for a scary boost - and make them assignable to a second footswitch. 

TLDR: more versatile effects with simple controls, more effects with intricate and powerful controls, less of the same three-knob dirt pedals 

mgaw

I think @ThorpyFX is doing a great job of "breaking into the market", the one thing that he didnt mention was his level of expertise before he even started and even with that it no doubt took quite some time for him to get things where he wanted them.


 



I

mgaw

one thing i think would be useful, on off switch on all pedals likely to have a battery in them

ICBM

Danny1969 said:

I suspect it's because the input impedence to ground on a typical  opamp circuit is very high but the output impedence to ground is a lot lower due to the neg feedback path ... so disconnecting the output is less loading when in parallel in bypass mode

Not a pedal expert so happy to be corrected

Exactly that, whether or not the pedal uses op-amps. With most solid-state circuits the input impedance is typically in the 100k or higher range, and the output impedance in the 10K range, even with very primitive circuits. More modern ones will have higher input and lower output. Hence if you're going to accept having one permanently connected to the signal path it needs to be the input.

For what it's worth, if you have some vintage half-bypass pedals like this and you don't want to mod them, you can fix the problem very simply with a good buffer in front - even something as simple as a Boss tuner will work.

Sporky

Wot ICBM said.

On another note, the best advice I can give is don't let magazines review your kit. If they return it it'll look like they played football with it. They'll say useful things like "ideal for covering the Rhubarb And Custard theme tune", then say it's too expensive (while giving five stars to a similar but more expensive factory-built pedal on the opposite page).

To cap it all off, if people completely unrelated to you point out that the review was a bit unfair, you'll then get shitty emails from the magazine's editor about how they were doing you a favour, it's the last time they blah blah blah.

Oh, and in my experience if you get a review you'll never sell that model again!

[/grumpy] [/embittered]

Others may have had a better experience or just be less of a princess than me.

Drew_TNBD

Sporky said:

Wot ICBM said.

On another note, the best advice I can give is don't let magazines review your kit. If they return it it'll look like they played football with it. They'll say useful things like "ideal for covering the Rhubarb And Custard theme tune", then say it's too expensive (while giving five stars to a similar but more expensive factory-built pedal on the opposite page).

To cap it all off, if people completely unrelated to you point out that the review was a bit unfair, you'll then get shitty emails from the magazine's editor about how they were doing you a favour, it's the last time they blah blah blah.

Oh, and in my experience if you get a review you'll never sell that model again!

[/grumpy] [/embittered]

Others may have had a better experience or just be less of a princess than me.

Nope. My experience with magazines matches that too!

Sporky

That's a relief.

I'd also say there is a huge difference between wanting to make pedals and sell them to fund the next lot, and wanting to get to the next level where it's actually a profit-making business. The two are not the same at all.

Teetonetal

Having had to fix a few of my older pedals over the last 6 months, I'm extremely grateful when Jack Sockets, Switches and Power ins are not connected to the PCB, and enough wire is left so that a replacement is very easy.

A small thing but I like the brands that do it.

Dave_Mc

Danny1969 said:

I suspect it's because the input impedence to ground on a typical  opamp circuit is very high but the output impedence to ground is a lot lower due to the neg feedback path ... so disconnecting the output is less loading when in parallel in bypass mode

Not a pedal expert so happy to be corrected 

ah yeah that does make sense, thanks (and to ICBM and sporky too). i figured it was something simple I just wasn't thinking of. FWIW I've been using a buffer in front of half-assed bypass pedals like ICBM said for a while now.

and wow that sucks about the magazine reviews, sporky.

ecc83

I totally agree that making a living building small electronics devices is next to impossible. Folks just do not understand the problems of manufacture. They often criticise firms for using a "less than stellar" component but miss the point that the product is usually aimed at and costed for a specific market and a better "widgerdoo" would, A) price it out of that point or, not be noticed by the target audience or C) be swapped out anway! Or all three!

Then there is Joe Public. I had 30 years of him but NOT as self employed. I went home every night and could get away from his wingeings and moanings. (99.9% of peeps are of course lovely but there is always a few!)

On "True" bypass. Anyone who understands the way good quality studio equipment is connected together understands why TB is a nonsense. I also don't understand the handwringing re signal switching? FETs are very easy to implement. Think of the "effect" as a block of circuitry and the buffers outside of that. FETs are then used to send signals either through the "block" or directly to the output buffer.

Duggy Self's book will tell you all you need to know about FET audio switching!

Dave.

Danny1969

Although I haven't done pedals up to now (actually I am going to soon) I have had a lot of experience designing and selling similar products. IEM combiners, headphone amps, double bass pre amps etc. Labour is the biggest factor, my margin on my best selling product is £50 but it is a days work to build it from scratch so it's never gonna make me a fortune