Reverb pans...WTF

[clyde1]

"Ivermectin"-Now that's something I'd not expected to read on an amp forum. In another lifetime I used to regularly use Ivomec, trade name for Ivermectin.

[Leo_Gnardo]

"Ivermectin"-Now that's something I'd not expected to read on an amp forum. In another lifetime I used to regularly use Ivomec, trade name for Ivermectin.

Hope you never needed to use it on yourself. There's some amps I have to fix that could use a dose...

[bob p]

One of the problems with artisan gear is that they are the product of thoughtful attention to detail...and that takes time. That time taken restricts production output, which, in turn, keeps availability low. That, in turn, drives up both the resale market, and the resale value.

Part of the problem that you mention is the era in which we live. We don't live in the era of the Renaissance, where crafstmanship and artisanry were well appreciated and financially supported. We live in the age of industrialization, where factories mass produce widgets as a commodity. Going one step further, we live in a locale where the industrial revolution occurred a fairly long time ago, and production facilities have to compete with widgets that come from distant lands where the industrial revolution is in it's infancy. The result is that the marketplace has been trained to compete on the basis of price, rather than quality. In some respects we're very lucky to live in the age that we live in, where the quality of the commoditized widget is OK, it's price has become cheap due to mass production, and the widget is so affordable that just about everyone can afford one. In another respect, we're unlucky that the commoditization of the widget has lowered quality to the point that widgets just aren't as appealing as they used to be. That creates a huge price/quality gap between the widgets of old and the widgets of today, and it makes it very hard to find a widget that involves artisanry and crafstmanship. When we can find one, we can expect to see a radical disconnect in terms of price vs. quality, because economies of scale and things like local human production vs. foreign human production vs. local machine production vs. foreign machine production all play a significant role in the equation. The result is that you can pay next to nothing for a mass produced chinese amp, and you'll have to pay multiple times the price for something that's hand-made by a local artisan.

[Steve A.]

In one case @ 1988 I sold a friend a beautiful tiger-stripe Les Paul for @ 900. He told me he later sold it for 6000. In fact he was avoiding me for a couple years because he was worried I'd have an attitude about it.

If $900 was a fair price for both of you in 1988 and the price jumped up to $6000 after a few years then that was a exactly like a stock transaction.

So how do they do things in the art world? Suppose you buy some paintings from an unknown artist and you become good friends. If you sell a $50 painting for $10,000 you might want to give some of the profit to the artist as a tip. That should be strictly voluntary on the part of the buyer (unless written into the sales contract) and the artist should not get pissed off if he doesn't receive a cut of the profit. Of course by the time you sell one of his paintings for $10k he should be getting a good price on his new paintings as well, which did not seem to be the case with Ken Fischer.

I checked prices on Trainwreck and they started at $650 in 1983 but went up to $1000 the next year. The prices went up with inflation with $1800 being the final price. I wonder why he didn't raise the prices of the final amps he built...

http://www.mattemusic.com/nancy.pdf

Steve

[bob p]

If $900 was a fair price for both of you in 1988 and the price jumped up to $6000 after a few years then that was a exactly like a stock transaction.

So how do they do things in the art world? Suppose you buy some paintings from an unknown artist and you become good friends. If you sell a $50 painting for $10,000 you might want to give some of the profit to the artist as a tip. That should be strictly voluntary on the part of the buyer (unless written into the sales contract) and the artist should not get pissed off if he doesn't receive a cut of the profit. Of course by the time you sell one of his paintings for $10k he should be getting a good price on his new paintings as well, which did not seem to be the case with Ken Fischer.

Steve, there are financial instruments that provide for the exact type of financial arrangement that you're talking about, but they're normally granted to a buyer and not to a seller. In the investing world, the analogous instruments would include, as part of a transaction, the issuance of a "subscription warrant" or a "right", which entitles the owner to buy an appreciated security at a below-market price on some future date. In this case, it's being suggested that the subscription warrant or right would be retained by the seller, rather than the buyer. (!) I'm not familair with any financial instrument that provides that sort of deal, as it allows the seller to strip profits from the buyer, thereby making the buyer assume the financial risk while the seller would recoup the financial gain. The common man's description for that sort of transaction might be a "do-over." I've never seen that done, and as a buyer I'd steer clear of that sort of arrangement as it requires the buyer to assume all of the risk without receiving all of the reward.

[jbltwin1]

Just to get into this cap conversation(and of course, I HAVE to butt in) what's the status of Illinois caps? I Know, I know, some people hate them but I've used a lot of them over the years and NEVER had one fail. Of course, I don't work on hundreds of amps but I do a fair amount of both high voltage and low voltage stuff (effects). I'm curious because I tried to groogle them and they are still around but my stock is getting low and I need to order some of the common stuff. I can't find anybody that's a distributor for them. THEIR site is up but no links to a seller except their own office. Mike.

[bob p]

Try Newark/Farnell or Allied Electronics. I remember seeing IC in both of their catalogs and on both of their web sites.

[Enzo]

AES sells a range of them, for example:

Capacitor - Axial Lead Electrolytic, 22 µF @ 500 VDC | Antique Electronic Supply

And other guitar amp parts places sell them too. I'd look at most places that sell tubes.

[Steve Conner]

I see a lot of people sneering at Ken Fischer for his "gentleman's agreement" that he would get a cut of the profit from a future amp sale. Indeed to a businessman it seems crazy.

But imagine if he had a multi-year waiting list, so long that he was unknown when he started. Suddenly he gets famous, but he has already taken up-front payments for dozens of amps that he hasn't built yet. He can't raise the price to take advantage of his new status, because he has already sold them.

What would you do in this situation? Trading in boutique amp futures can be merciless.

[bob p]

It pays to shop around:

22 uF 500V is $3.50 at AES: Capacitor - Axial Lead Electrolytic, 22 µF @ 500 VDC | Antique Electronic Supply

22 uF 450V is $2.21 at Allied: Illinois Capacitor, Inc. - 226TTA450M - Passive Components - Capacitors - Allied Electronics

[bob p]

I see a lot of people sneering at Ken Fischer for his "gentleman's agreement" that he would get a cut of the profit from a future amp sale. Indeed to a businessman it seems crazy.

But imagine if he had a multi-year waiting list, so long that he was unknown when he started. Suddenly he gets famous, but he has already taken up-front payments for dozens of amps that he hasn't built yet. He can't raise the price to take advantage of his new status, because he has already sold them. What would you do in this situation? Trading in amp futures can be merciless.

I wasn't sneering, but I do think that trying to change the terms of any deal after you've made a commitment with someone is fundamentally wrong.

Part of the risk that a contractor accepts in taking payment in advance of doing work is that he has to deliver work product according to the terms that accompany the advance payment. In exchange for being paid in advance, he assumes the risk that the job may cost more than he had planned. Part of the danger in taking peoples' money up-front is that you're bound to deliver merchandise that may appreciate in value. When you get someone's money up-front, you've already been fully compensated for the work that you've agreed to do. There are no do-overs, unless you want to go back to the elementary school playground.

So what would I do in the situation where I took peoples' money in advance? I'd man-up and make good on ALL of my contractual obligations, and then I would change my business model AFTER I've kept all of my outstanding promises. You can't go modifying the terms of an agreement after the fact. Doing that is just wrong.

[Steve Conner]

Ah, if only the defence industry had such high standards, nothing would ever run over budget.

I once found myself in a situation like this where I borrowed money from a friend to help develop a novel circuit that I invented. We made a "gentleman's agreement" that in exchange for lending me the money and helping me with the promotion and patent law, he would get his money back plus half the profits. He did lend me the money, but he then got a job with an oil exploration company and scooted off to Indonesia, leaving me to handle all the legal stuff myself.

So, he sort of fulfilled the terms of the agreement, but he sort of broke it too. There is no black and white unless you hire a lawyer to draw up a legally binding contract. What would you do in this situation?

[bob p]

If you had a gentlemen's agreement for getting into the deal, then I think a gentlemen's agreement would work for getting out of the deal as well. One alternative is to buy him out.

[Leo_Gnardo]

http://www.mattemusic.com/nancy.pdf[/url]

Small world innit? Matte Henderson was one of my regular customers when he lived in the Woodstock/Bearsville area and he introduced me to the "real deal" Trainwreck. Had a look inside, "can you build this" was the question and "I don't see why not" was my answer. But no order, no biggie, and time goes on. Even back then I had some notion of the magic of the layout & "special sauce" of planned parasitic capacitance. Not so sure I could duplicate it to the Nth degree as Ken did. Now you can buy a Ceria copy or other kit or just whip up your own, but Ken's special sauce won't be there unless you run across it by accident.

Matte was in correspondence with Ken and told me he tried to bump up his prices but the market failed to support that. Meanwhle in sunny California Mr. Dumble was fetching 12 to 20x as much for his amps while treating his customers to a strange contract involving pre-payment plus a promise to never let anyone peek inside etc etc., sort of high handed no? This was putting a crimp in Ken's attitude because he dealt with his customers like ordinary people. Meanwhile, I get asked every week or so for 25 years, why don't I put out my own line of amps. Seeing what happens to a couple of the small "artisan" builders* especially Ken, I've avoided it. So ... be careful which business model you choose. You can try to be the Lone Ranger, or you can try to be Superman, but look what happened to every guy that played Superman. Doom. Well yippie-ay-oh-kay-yay hi-yo Silver, c'mon Tonto, adjust your expanding headband and let's fix us some amps. With good reverb pans in 'em when called for.

*Cease and desist letters from Randall Smith's lawyers are another PIA reason. Although the patents may have long run out and/or "prior art" can be demonstrated, who need the court hassle & expense. Some joke that Randall claims he invented everything from the electron on up.

[Steve A.]

But imagine if he had a multi-year waiting list, so long that he was unknown when he started. Suddenly he gets famous, but he has already taken up-front payments for dozens of amps that he hasn't built yet. He can't raise the price to take advantage of his new status, because he has already sold them.

I don't know if he took deposits or demanded full payment to get on his waiting list* but in any case having such a long waiting list would pretty much keep him from raising prices more than inflation. Imagine a customer was willing to buy the amp in, let's say, 1992 for, say, $1600. So Ken finally gets around to building the amp in 2000- is he going to tell the customer that the price is now $4,000?

If he was in it strictly for the money he would have no qualms about raising the price to $4k or even more. The fact that he didn't raise his prices higher than $1,800 might tell us a lot about his character. If he was in it strictly for the money he could have gone through his waiting list and scratched off anyone who wasn't willing to pay the new price of, say, $5,000.

BTW I was looking for a listing of all of the amps he made (something that I had seen before) but couldn't find with the New and Improved Google! (Anybody else notice how the list of hits for your search phrase is much crappier than it had been 2 or 3 years ago?) I know that his output did decline along with his health- I just wanted to glance over the numbers.

Steve

* If he did accept deposits or payments in full to be on his waiting list there would have been a lot of people tough shit out of luck because I'm sure that money was long gone.