Ampeg B-15 Reissue Costs 5X More than the Real Thing. Yikes!

[bob p]

I've been looking at projects to use up some of the spare parts that I've got lying around here. One thing that I'd really like to have is a low power bass head that oozes tone, so naturally I started looking at schematics for something like the Ampeg B-15. I was thinking that it shouldn't be too hard to knock out a simple circuit like this one, and the parts cost to build a head should be near zero since I have suitable iron lying around. So I started looking around for schematics, and the current market for these things really surprised me.

Evidently those little amps are coming into demand now, because Ampeg has been able to sell a limited production run of "Heritage" edition hand-wired B-15 for $5000 each. Yikes!

Ampeg: Heritage Series - B-15

I just can't fathom why anybody would be able to sell a 2x6L6 amp with a single 15" speaker for that much money. Sure, it's got a chromed chassis, NOS octal preamp tubes, turret board construction and it's made in the USA, but $5000 is an awful lot of cash. Wow.

... continued...

[bob p]

It gets worse.

It looks like Ampeg is squeezing the most that they can out of every price tier. After selling the fancy version at $5000 each, they've introduced an "economy" version at the $3000 price point. The new "Heritage B-15N" skimps on a few features to bring it in at the "bargain" $3000 price point. Instead of a chromed chassis you get black powdercoat, instead of NOS tubes you get new production JJ, and instead of a turret board you get PCB construction.

Ampeg: Heritage Series - B-15N

Sheesh. Ampeg wants $5000 for a 2x6L6 turret board amp with a 1x15 cabinet. Or $3000 for the equivalent circuit with new production tubes and a PCB. This makes absolutely no sense, considering that you can buy a vintage B-15 portaflex setup for $1000.

[52 Bill]

This will probably cause the people that own vintage ones to value their amps at the same kind of levels, kinda like what happened with vintage guitars.

[bob p]

This will probably cause the people that own vintage ones to value their amps at the same kind of levels, kinda like what happened with vintage guitars.

does anyone know if that's what happened with Marshall amps? I seem to recall that Marshall did some hand-wired reissues a while back, and priced them higher than the market value for the real vintage amps. To me, buying an expensive reissue just didn't make sense when the real-deal vintage amp could be had more cheaply. It would be interesting to know if the higher cost to produce new amps ended up driving up the price of old marshalls. I don't know about this, because I don't pay close attention to that sort of thing. I have noticed, though, that the price of SF Fenders has gone up a lot. what ever happened to the $250 SF bassman?

Thinking about this a bit -- if Ampeg can get away with selling hand-wired amps at $5k and PCB amps at $3k, that leaves an awful lot of room for someone else to enter the market with good performing, reasonably priced knockoffs.

[Tom Phillips]

... turret board construction...

Is it really turret board construction? The originals were eyelet board.
Not that I believe it would make a difference in sound but I don't recall ever seeing an Ampeg turret board.

Tom

[bob p]

Ampeg doesn't even make the amps. The hand wired amps are made for Loud by Metropoulis.

[Steve Conner]

I think that's about the price you need to charge if you want to make a living hand-building amps in the first world. Metropoulos might be able to knock them out a bit cheaper, but Ampeg probably add a couple of grand profit margin.

If you bought a vintage B15N, I bet you could easily fork over a grand to get it serviced and retubed, considering the rates that first-world amp techs need to charge to make a living.

[bob p]

It's not First World Manufacturing Cost -- It's Trickle-Down Marketing

> Ampeg probably add a couple of grand profit margin.

At $5000 each there's a *LOT* of profit margin in those amps. There's also plenty of room for a first-world amp builder to build a clone and sell it for a lot less money. Loud is taxing the buyer a couple of grand just for the Ampeg name. Is it worth it? Right now the only guys buying that $5000 amp are guys who like to spend lots of money on expensive gear to stuff in their music room to impress their friends, or to show off on their YouTube videos. It's hard to imagine that any working musicians are spending $5000 on that amp for it's tone and then dragging it from gig to gig. I think it's time to admit that these amps are being marketed as fashion accessories.

I don't think that this amp is priced at $5000 because of the inflationary cost of manufacturing in a first world economy. I think that some companies (like LOUD) are attempting to exploit purposefully the levels of fragmentation that exist in the market. Their methodology is very much like the marketing strategy in haute couture fashion: Initially a fashion style will be so expensive that only the wealthy can afford it. Possessing it becomes an aspirational goal for upper middle class. Over time, the seller gradually diminishes the price, in order to extract the maximal amount of revenue from every price tier. Eventually the price will fall to the point that it becomes affordable to everyone in the general public. Once that happens, the fashion becomes so common that the early adopters want to distinguish themselves from the common purchaser by avoiding the fashion and moving on to something else. In the business world this is known as "trickle down marketing." It's a model that is designed to extract the highest possible revenue from one single product, beginning at the highest possible price point, recouping as much markup as possible at every pricing tier, and then deflating the price to a subsequent price tier where the process is then repeated.

I don't think that $5000 accurately represents the cost of producing this amp in the first world. At this point, this little Ampeg has become a fashion accessory.

[bob p]

> If you bought a vintage B15N, I bet you could easily fork over a grand to get it serviced and retubed, considering the rates that first-world amp techs need to charge to make a living.

$1000 sounds like an awful lot for retubing, a cap job and some resistor replacements. Maybe you're thinking about a complete restoration of a basket case?

The tube compliment is only 3x6SL7, 2x6L6 and a rectifier. It's not like you're re-tubing an SVT that has 11 tubes in it, 6 of which are 6650. SVT are very expensive to service. By today's standards the B-15 is a little practice amp. It's for me hard to imagine that it would cost $1000 to service it. Maybe some of the professional first-world techs could weigh in on this.

[Steve Conner]

I have a lot of experience working with small electronics companies developing niche products. My rule of thumb is, if you want to bring something to the market that's only going to sell a few hundred per year, and you want to manufacture it locally, and stay in business and make a living wage, you need to sell the widget for at least 3 times what it costs you to manufacture. 5x or 10x is a lot more comfortable if you can get away with it.

When subcontractors and distributors are involved, the markups can get truly epic. I imagine Metropoulos sells the handwired B15N for 3x what it costs him to build it, and then Loud mark it up about another 1.5 to 2x on top of that, just to make it worth their while doing the project in the first place.

The best example I ever saw was a little laser and Peltier driver board that I designed. The bill of materials cost was about $80. We made them in batches of 100, ran them through an automated test and calibration rig, and sold them for $300. We sold some to another company who put them in nice machined aluminium cases and sold them on for $1000. Then they were bought over by a big optics company who kept their product line and jacked all the prices up. Our little $80 board was now a $2k laser drive system.

If I wanted a B15N, would I pay $3000 or $5000 for one? Hell no. $300 for a fixer-upper is more my style. But I can respect how the price got where it was. If I were a dentist, an attorney or Lenny Kravitz, I might be tempted.

[bob p]

^ Understood & agree.

In some respects, I think that limiting a production run to 50 or 100 units is an intentional effort to cater to the market that wants to pay extra to obtain "exclusivity." I looked at YouTube videos for some tone samples, and I thought this guy might exemplify their target demographic -- they guy who likes to buy expensive stuff to line up against the wall in his house, and feature on his ego-indulging YouTube videos:

(OT: I found the video hard to watch -- that clacking really annoys me, as does the fuzz and the ending of every phrase with an open E. but I'm glad that these guys who pay $5000 for an amp are willing to make videos for the rest of us. I thought it was interesting that the fellow's original 59P has such a glossy finish and such a clean looking pickguard. I had a real 59P in the mid 70s. It had a painfully wide neck at the nut and after 15 years the sunburst finish was so worn down that there wasn't any gloss left anywhere on it, and the anodization was worn off of the pickguard down to bare metal. )

Back to marketing:

Notice that we're currently 3 NAMM-years after the introduction, and still there are plenty of $5000 B-15 available for purchase at the online stores. The target market for the $5000 practice amp is obviously quite limited. I'm not sure if they limited the production run to 50 units to create exclusivity, or because they had good enough market analysis to know that they'd have trouble selling more than 50 units. It's interesting that they're already servicing the lower tier at $3000 when the $5000 amps haven't sold through yet. They might end up cannibalizing their own sales.


> If I wanted a B15N, would I pay $3000 or $5000 for one? Hell no.

What I'm waiting for is the $1200 combo or the $1000 head. That price point is more in-line with what current production "vintage reissue" low power amps should retail for in today's marketplace. It's hard to imagine that a B-15 replica should sell for any more than the AC30 replica. The AC30 reissues are more complicated circuits and they have a street price of US$1250.

> I imagine Metropoulos sells the handwired B15N for 3x what it costs him to build it, and then Loud mark it up about another 1.5 to 2x on top of that,

That's what I was thinking. The numbers suggest that if somebody wanted to hand-build these amps, they could sell them for half of what LOUD is selling them for. That's a more realistic price, IMO.


> $300 for a fixer-upper is more my style.

I doubt that we'll have good luck finding dead amps at the $300 price point. If anyone finds one, please let me know! In the interim, I'm more interested in punching holes in a Hammond chassis and using an old Thordarson PT and a radiospares type OT that I've got sitting here. With spare parts that I have on hand I think I could put the head together for $100 and a weekend of soldering. that's more like it.

[Enzo]

They ASK $5000. How many have they sold? I used to restore juke boxes. People would all the time tell me that old Wurlitzer with the bubble tubes was worth $10,000. Sure it is...if you find someone willing to spend it. If you put it on the market for five years and no one bites, your $10,000 price tag is just a dream.

You want to make only 100 amps? How many man hours went into the design by engineers? You are not paying them $9 I bet. You have to lay out the cabinets. The chassis, the everything about it. You have to set up a production line for it. All the stuff that would be amortized over some thousands of amps normally, now has to be amortized over just 100 amps. That makes them a lot more costly to sell.

And another jukebox memory. Without a doubt the most expensive part of a restoration was getting the metal parts rechromed. $2000 worth? NO, but hundreds for each box.

Would I spend $5000 on an amp? Not ever. I wouldn;t spend $1500 for that matter. But then I would never pay $50,000 for a car, yet ther are Mercedes dealers all over the country and Corvettte dealers not far from those. People pay those rates. I went to a baseball game with friends a couple years ago in Detroit to see the Tigers play. After I sat in the hot sun for a long while I finally went ahead and paid $8 for a can of beer. I bet if you ask most people if they would spend $8 for a can of Budweiser, they'd say no, but those guys in the ball park were selling tons of them. And it was up to me, I could have walked up to the back aisle and had a drink of cool water for free.

A good portion of our crowd plays music in bars. People go to bars and pay $3 and more for a can of regular beer. The same can if purchased at the grocery store is under $1. No one HAS to go to that bar and pay that price.

LOud isn't taxing anyone or even gouging. They put a product up with a price on it. No one is obligated to buy one. NO one has to have THAT amp to make a living or even to enjoy at home.

[big_teee]

^ Understood & agree.

In some respects, I think that limiting a production run to 50 or 100 units is an intentional effort to cater to the market that wants to pay extra to obtain "exclusivity." I looked at YouTube videos for some tone samples, and I thought this guy might exemplify their target demographic -- they guy who likes to buy expensive stuff to line up against the wall in his house, and feature on his ego-indulging YouTube videos:

(OT: I found the video hard to watch -- that clacking really annoys me, as does the fuzz and the ending of every phrase with an open E. but I'm glad that these guys who pay $5000 for an amp are willing to make videos for the rest of us. I thought it was interesting that the fellow's original 59P has such a glossy finish and such a clean looking pickguard. I had a real 59P in the mid 70s. It had a painfully wide neck at the nut and after 15 years the sunburst finish was so worn down that there wasn't any gloss left anywhere on it, and the anodization was worn off of the pickguard down to bare metal. )

Back to marketing:

Notice that we're currently 3 NAMM-years after the introduction, and still there are plenty of $5000 B-15 available for purchase at the online stores. The target market for the $5000 practice amp is obviously quite limited. I'm not sure if they limited the production run to 50 units to create exclusivity, or because they had good enough market analysis to know that they'd have trouble selling more than 50 units. It's interesting that they're already servicing the lower tier at $3000 when the $5000 amps haven't sold through yet. They might end up cannibalizing their own sales.


> If I wanted a B15N, would I pay $3000 or $5000 for one? Hell no.

What I'm waiting for is the $1200 combo or the $1000 head. That price point is more in-line with what current production "vintage reissue" low power amps should retail for in today's marketplace. It's hard to imagine that a B-15 replica should sell for any more than the AC30 replica. The AC30 reissues are more complicated circuits and they have a street price of US$1250.

> I imagine Metropoulos sells the handwired B15N for 3x what it costs him to build it, and then Loud mark it up about another 1.5 to 2x on top of that,

That's what I was thinking. The numbers suggest that if somebody wanted to hand-build these amps, they could sell them for half of what LOUD is selling them for. That's a more realistic price, IMO.


> $300 for a fixer-upper is more my style.

I doubt that we'll have good luck finding dead amps at the $300 price point. If anyone finds one, please let me know! In the interim, I'm more interested in punching holes in a Hammond chassis and using an old Thordarson PT and a radiospares type OT that I've got sitting here. With spare parts that I have on hand I think I could put the head together for $100 and a weekend of soldering. that's more like it.

If a guy didn't have the parts and chasis that you have?
Couldn't a guy convert a BF Bassman kit.
Build it like the B15 if he wanted to.
I haven't analyzed the Schematics, so just a guess?
T

[bob p]

How many man hours went into the design by engineers? You are not paying them $9 I bet. You have to lay out the cabinets. The chassis, the everything about it. You have to set up a production line for it. All the stuff that would be amortized over some thousands of amps normally, now has to be amortized over just 100 amps. That makes them a lot more costly to sell.

How many man hours do I think went into the design by Ampeg engineers? ZERO.

I don't think LOUD had very much, if any, in-house R&D expense. If you read the Ampeg bylines, they specifically acknowledge having consulted vintage ampeg enthusiasts who had already produced their own vintage restoration/reissue projects, and just copied them. The $5000 amp that mixes the 64 and 66 designs pretty much lifts the schematic from an open source amp project that's on the web. They (Metro?) did add a DC voltage filament supply, and Metro assembled the circuit on a revised Fender-style eyelet board instead of the open source projects's linear Vox-style eyelet board, but that's about it. The cabinets? Loud just used the designs that were already available from Vintage Blue. R&D expense? I doubt that LOUD spent a dime doing their own research. It looks like they just licensed and/or appropriated other peoples' existing R&D and had Metro fab the amps for them.

[bob p]

If a guy didn't have the parts and chasis that you have?
Couldn't a guy convert a BF Bassman kit.
Build it like the B15 if he wanted to.
I haven't analyzed the Schematics, so just a guess?
T

Like every other amp from the era it's nothing complicated.