why bother?

[cyclone]

some guy just paid 2400$ for a Klon Centaur. now, I recognize that it is regarded as the high water mark of stomp pedal overdrives, and its in a kustom sand cast enclosure, but it's still just 2$ of boom box parts conditioning the sound.

I'll likely never get that price for my original design, hand built and tuned point to point on tag strip vacuum tube amplifiers with NOS tubes and custom transformers, that actually produce that sound live and organically at stage volumes.

SO, why bother? the whole market is ridiculous, I'm going to crawl into a cave and make pedals from antique transistors and generate millions.

[Enzo]

Yeah well, the Mona Lisa is just a hunk of canvas and a few ounces of paint.

The whole market isn't what is ridiculous, the visible peak of it is where the funny is. For every one of those $2400 things they sell, I gotta think they sell a lot more than a hundred $24 DanElectro pedals. And THOSE are the market, not some off the wall boutique thingie. If you make a good product, then you will sell them at a fair price to people who understand good products.


Have you tried cryo-treating your amps?

[Alan0354]

It's about marketing, getting endorsement and kiss the right butt. Don't you people know that by now? It's not about how innovative, how good it sounds, it's about big name endorsement.

You really think Mesa or PRS would be a quarter as popular if it is not because of Carlos Santana?

People pay for CTS pots claiming it make the guitar sounds better, reality is the 250K pot is only 220K or so, lower resistance attenuates the high a little bit more and make the strat sounds a little warmer. Then you have carbon comp resistor..........check the price of 100K 1W carbon comp resistors? Orange drop caps............

I am on Strat Talk a lot and I have to come here to get some sanity.

You think this is about how good you design? It is paying $3000 to get a spot in the NAMM show, kissing up to the big names. It's all marketing and sales.

[Zozobra]

In ten years time everyone will be using kempers

[potatofarmer]

Funny you should mention the Klon; EHX just released a "close enough" clone of it called the Soul Food and as far as I can tell online retailers are having a hard time keeping them in stock.

Going the other way, people will pay through the nose for a Big Muff clone in a fancy painted enclosure. Change a couple resistors, call it a DOOMFUZZMEGADOOM, pass go, and collect $200...

On the other hand, if it were only about hype, Krank would still be in business.

The boutique musical electronics market seems really weird to me. High prices, lots of hype, terrible customer service... between all the drama and the high cost of liability insurance, I'm just going to stay in my basement and build stuff for myself for a long long time. I get the feeling this "small/local pickups/guitars/amps/pedals/etc." thing is going to collapse in the next decade, but who knows.

[soundguruman]

Have you tried "hand selected" parts?

[Enzo]

Eh, I think you are right. We grew up on tube amps, and by god tube amps its gotta be. Younger players are OK with solid state. And there were some great SS amps from the 80s onward. Then the modelling thing happened, and while close but no cigar is how we might look at it, to a younger player, "AWESOME, it sounds like a Marshall AND a Fender." More and more toys like Line 6 makes are popular, and when you grow up with something, it tends to be what you expect everything else to be. (Please refer to old farts and tube amps as example) So Whereas a lot of those RP-whatever pedals with 100 effects and a gas pedal were sold from the 80s-90s, whenever, it moves into the amp itself.

The amps go digital, remember patches. Peavey Vypyr for example or just Fender Mustang. But something else that wasn;t happening ten years ago, the little screen everyone stares at and pokes with their thumbs 24/7. We now watch TV and movies on it, we even have a little pig with his car insurance on it, and the apps that are a guitar rig for it are not really all that new. But something like it will become the common rig. Plug your smart phone into a powered speaker and rock on. All amps will have USB ports... or whatever takes the place of a USB port in a couple years.


Silly me, USB cable??? We don't need no steenkin USB cable. Guitars will all be wifi enabled, and your ipad is your amp stack.

[Mick Bailey]

It's about marketing, getting endorsement and kiss the right butt. Don't you people know that by now? It's not about how innovative, how good it sounds, it's about big name endorsement.

"You people"?

Take a read of this and decide if Bill Finnegan is a Butt Kisser. Clearly We People don't know anything.

Builder Profile: Klon's Bill Finnegan | Premier Guitar

[Alan0354]

There is always exception, but I would not called 15 years in an apartment building is any success. It is not about how much you sell per pedal, it's how many pedal you sell!!! Care to guess who's making more money.....Ferrari or Hyndai? Maybe if he spend the money and go to the NAMM and kiss up to some people, he might not need so many years. Make it a little closer to home, who do you think making more, Boss or him?

I don't have the patient to read the whole thing, I read the very last part. I started my electronic career in 1978 from modding my Twin with power scaling. But I moved on very fast away from music electronics. There was/is no money except for a few exceptional ones. I ain't going to spend 15 years in an apartment building pedals one by one even though I'll be guaranty success. I spend 30 years designing all sort of electronics except music electronics. It's only after I retired before I come back lately in designing pedals and amps.

The success of these products are mostly based on perceptions..........all tubes, Ga diodes, Celestion speakers, Orange Drop caps, CTS pots.............End user read what you put in to make a decision. The worst is the baby boomers are preventing the earth from turning. Still hold on to the good old days. You might have a break through design and nobody want to hear about it. Don't believe me, go to Strat Talk forum and read.

The rest of the high tech electronics industry is nothing like that, you create a product, you proof your product can do something others cannot do, there is a good chance you are going to sell. Not in this industry. Seems like the only ones that stick around are the ones that has true passion about sound. But that rules out a lot of talent people where they can get much better pay, much more rewarding in design, not having to deal with all these border line superstition stuff.

Other than very few like Fender, Marshall, Boss, Mesa, Gibson, Ibanez, Who's making mega bucks? Then you have smaller ones like Seymour Duncan, Dimarzio that make good money winding pups. Most of the people are just treading on water. I am not sure even some of the amps with names is making much money. I know a quite successful pup maker D Allen and I know people in Modulus guitar and bass company. They told me how they market........NAMM, big name endorsement is EVERYTHING. Modulus folded already!!!!


Bottom line, do this if you have the passion, don't worry about the money.

[Mick Bailey]

You said it's about big name endorsement.

Klon Centaur users;

Andy Summer (Police)
Brad Whitford (Aerosmith)
Brian Fallon (Gaslight Anthem)
Britt Daniel (Spoon)
Bryce Dessner (The National)
David Grissom
Geoff Farina
Hadden Sayers
James Hatfield (Metallica)
Jeff Beck
Jeff Massey (Steepwater Band)
Jim Campilongo
Jim Roth (Built To Spil)
Joe Bonamassa
Joe Perry (Aerosmith)
John Mayer
John Vanderslice
John Wesley (touring member of Porcupine Tree)
Keith Urban
Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth)
Mark Tremonti
Matt Scofield
Mike Moreno
Neal Casal
Phil Miller (Sonia Dada)
Phil Sayce
Richie Sambora
Robbie McIntosh ( Paul McCartney, John Mayer, The Pretenders)
Stone Gossard (Pearl Jam)
Tomo Fujita
Warren Haynes

No level of success? Why would he need to "kiss up to some people"?

[Alan0354]

He is one case, how about all the rest of the people that design.

This is like You said Carlos Santana don't have to kiss up to people and he earned mega bucks. How many of the exceptional guitarist cannot even earn enough money and resort to have a day job to make a living? How many of people like him?

A dreamer look at one exceptional case and follow the dream, a realist look at the totality of the picture and put things into perspective. Don't look at Angelina Joli, look at all the beautiful waitresses working in restaurants in Hollywood area, everyone just waiting for a big break.

Speaking of Carlos Santana, do you think Mesa will be this big if it's not because of endorsement of Carlos Santana?

[Mick Bailey]

So I'm a dreamer and you're a realist? The OP was regarding the Klon Centaur and you've now twisted your argument around so that its now everything except the Klon Centaur.

Where do you stand on Marshall being so big?

[Alan0354]

So I'm a dreamer and you're a realist? The OP was regarding the Klon Centaur and you've now twisted your argument around so that its now everything except the Klon Centaur.

Where do you stand on Marshall being so big?

They got big long long time ago in the days where only two big companies were Fender and Marshall. People have no choice. So they don't need to kiss butt!!! Now every garage tinkerer has an amp to offer. There a 1000 variation of the basic Soldano designs. You need a lot of butt licking to even get people to stop and listen to your amp!!!

50 Years ago, basically you only have Fender and Gibson as the major players. You can count the rest with two hands..........Gretch, Ricken Backer(spelling) etc. People get used to the Fender and Gibson sound and they keep buying them. Big names had to use them as the choice were limited. Now, they have 1001 different guitar companies making basically variations of Fender Strat and Gibson Les Paul. They sure need a lot of butt licking to get someone to even look at their guitars.

I don't say this out of thin air. My friend D Allen is a up and coming pup maker that starting to have some name endorsements. He is super popular in the biggest Fender forum ( Strat Talk). Also the Modulus guitar company that had been around for years. They all had to do the same thing...........Marketing to get named people's endorsements, pay $3000+ to set up booth in NAMM twice a year. Go tell them that they don't need to kiss some butt.

If you think your amp is good, you better stop and think about marketing and sales. Do you know how many miles D Allen drives to meet with different people at all hours?

If you have something that nobody has, then you don't need to kiss up. But if you design a variation of a Soldano/Fender/Marshall...................In a way, Mesa was about the fore front of high gain amps in the 70s, it helped to have Santana, but that was new at the time, they made their name then. But the days are over unless you have something revolutionary.

Yes, I was a dreamer, believing I could make it big playing guitar in the 70s. Then I grew up. Actually I succeeded in designing a true power scaling amp in 78 by using separate transformer for preamp and filament and use a variac to adjust the voltage of the Power amp. That was in the early days where people still use fuzz box and cranked Marshalls. But I did not have the money to pursue, AND I got into electronics and making a lot better money and had a stable job. I never looked back. Now that I retired from 30 years as a design engineer and manager of engineering, I just got back to amps and pedals to kind of closing the circle.




This is the amp I did in 78, I actually designed a dual channels with one cascaded gain channel and power scaling. I used a A/B pedal to switch channel. I never even saw a Mesa at the time, barely heard of it.

Solo 1 - YouTube
Two solo - YouTube

I was a dreamer once. I know you must be laughing about the sound and my playing. Just remember this is taped in 1978 with a hand held recorder. People now have almost 40 years to improve the amp and guitar playing and make mine a child's play.

[dmartn149]

The amps go digital, remember patches. Peavey Vypyr for example or just Fender Mustang. But something else that wasn;t happening ten years ago, the little screen everyone stares at and pokes with their thumbs 24/7. We now watch TV and movies on it, we even have a little pig with his car insurance on it, and the apps that are a guitar rig for it are not really all that new. But something like it will become the common rig. Plug your smart phone into a powered speaker and rock on. All amps will have USB ports... or whatever takes the place of a USB port in a couple years.


Silly me, USB cable??? We don't need no steenkin USB cable. Guitars will all be wifi enabled, and your ipad is your amp stack.

And the music buying public (will they still BUY music?) will think it sounds awesome.

At concerts the mixing board will send the signal directly to the listeners earbuds

[cyclone]

Have you tried cryo-treating your amps?

LOL, Yes, well at least my shop has been below freezing all winter!! That should count, right?