Feeding the habit: What do you do with your old builds? How/where do you sell them?

[jmaf]

I heard Howard D*(@%$ would drag his builds from behind his pickup truck up in the Santa Cruz mountains. Come on whats 2 meters right?

You're right, I'm being too rispid in my terms. I'll make sure to cover truck drags and other applications of tube amps in the future.

[dchang0]

ROFLMAO--that ad is hilarious! At first, I forgot my speakers were on mute, so watching the video, I didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

And then it occurred to me to turn on the sound...

[WholeToneMusic]

Maybe put some bullet proof kevlar material on it, ok now i'm pushing the boundaries. Might work at good at a Compton gig though.

[RedHouse]

Maybe that's the internet blackmail of the future, some joker gets your gear and posts a YouTube video ...so bad... you consider paying them just to remove it!

[boots]

This is a great thread, thanks guys! I understand very well the need to "move" some of my builds to recoup expenses. I relate to everything you have all said. Anybody wanna buy a great amp? I'll make ya a screamin' deal!

[J M Fahey]

Sure !!! Just make your screamin' offer !!!

[boots]

Well, like most of you guys, my best screamin' deal is that I will build one up for about the cost of the parts. My goal is to not lose any money on parts & materials. Making a profit (i.e. charging for my labor) doesn't seem feasible, because like you have pointed out, most of the cost-conscious musicians out there can buy a name brand tube amp for the same price, and it has a prettier front panel.

Our home-built amps could get pretty pricey if we charged for all the labor we put into them! If you figured a standard technician bench rate of $40 an hour, you can easily rack up $700or $800 in labor by the time you add up all the time required to do a good job. Add that to the $400 in parts & materials, and that's what our amps "should" be worth.

If I can sell an amp occasionally to recoup some of my parts costs, it makes my wife feel better about my hobby/addiction.

[cminor9]

Today I came across this: YouTube - Dragon Rat

They have a whole line of pedals. I think the best playing (probably anywhere on youtube) is to be found on the chorus pedal video. I know guys who have spent a whole lifetime and couldn't play quite like that. I think the guy from Collective Soul might be better, but only maybe.

[boots]

I watched the video in the link above and was taken back enough that I had to watch a couple of the others as well. Wow....

[imaradiostar]

They have a whole line of pedals. I think the best playing (probably anywhere on youtube) is to be found on the chorus pedal video. I know guys who have spent a whole lifetime and couldn't play quite like that. I think the guy from Collective Soul might be better, but only maybe.

Dude, that's going too far. Ross may play some simple stuff sometimes but he's a solid player! I saw them at the Electric Factory on the Dosage tour and it was a really excellent show. His tone has always been fascinating to me- two twin reverbs with all kinds of effects in front of them. He's not afraid to use distortion tones that are slightly non-amp like and I think it's interesting. Perhaps he could be compared to Tom Scholz in that regard.

I listened to the chorus video. It's a tough call which one is better- the dragon rat or the chorus pedal.

[cminor9]

Dude, that's going too far.

haha, probably. The guy from CS could probably play fine, I dunno. But their riffs on songs like Gel and December sound like they were written by some cheesy high school band. Which is exactly what those pedal videos reminded me of, some awful high school band's guitar player. I just never heard anything good from that band, save for Shine which is a great song and I remember the playing and tone being nice. CS was one of my least favorite bands in the 90's, right down there with the Gin Blossoms.

Generally, I don't like trashing someone else's playing. We're all at different skill levels. There are some really nice guys who can't play worth a crap and some real douches who can really lay it down. But since we *were* having some fun, and those videos were just SO bad, I jumped in. For all I know, you could be Ross. Nothing personal dude.

[rcrmck]

I'm really new at this stuff, but I have at least been able to work out one deal to my benefit. I finished a 35 watt PA conversion and put it up on Craigslist with a link to a youtube demo. I did put some hours into it, but a lot of that I can attribute to a big learning curve. I only had maybe $25 in parts and paint into a 'got it for free' amp. So I went high with $650, and almost immediately got interest from a guy I had previously made some trades with. Long story short, I got a sweet custom hollowbody I saw advertised online for $520.
The moral to the story is... people without enough money to buy a nice vintage tube amp sometimes have other stuff they're willing to give up for one.

[dchang0]

Hey, that's a great idea!

Unfortunately, I'd have to trade about 7 of my builds for one guitar I want: a vintage Gibson L-5 with the sharp cutaway, only made in the 60s.

Update to the story: I haven't sold my amp yet, but I've got a network of my guitar buddies contacting their friends about it. They're better salespeople than I am, because they're raving about the amp. It should sell soon, and for maybe $100 labor. Not the greatest rate, but better than at cost!

It also seems that there's a lot of repair work out there--when guys hear that I built this amp, I instantly get asked to fix their such-and-such amp. That will likely prove more lucrative, though repair isn't as fun as building.