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

[Enzo]

SOMEONE engineered this copy, and whether in or out of house, it had to be paid for. There is a hell of a lot more than a schematic to manufacturing an amp. SOmeone has to design the chassis, determine the materials, and contract that out or have the in house team make them. There will be set-up charges for anything. Someone had to specify the transformers and contract them to be wound. Potted transformers have to have the pot designed and made. Is it a folded and welded pot? or was it molded or whatever hey call making a beer can. Stamped? Extruded? SOmeone had to design the cab, spec the materials, contract that. You know if you pay a purshasing agent for 100 hours at only $15 an hour to round up all the parts (and that includes chromed corner screws, grille clothy, speaker bolts, as well as teh amp stuff), that alone adds $15 to each amp.

SO even if AMpeg contracted out the entire thing, those jobs still needed to be done. And Even that doesn;t happen with zero work at Loud.

[Randall]

I have a beautiful '60s B-15 that I did myself. But mostly what I want to say is how much Enzo rocks.

[Steve Conner]

I'd like to think that Loud owns the trademark on the look of the B15N. Someone else could make an amp that sounded alike, but if they tried to make it look the same, Loud would probably sue them.

[bob p]

> There is a hell of a lot more than a schematic to manufacturing an amp.

Yes, there is. But coming up with the schematic is typically the largest hurdle to be overcome in circuit design, and in this case it wasn't even part of the equation.

Maybe it would be helpful to review how design/production has historically taken place in the American electronics industry. Anyone who's worked in design/manufacturing engineering in a large electronics firm (I'll use Motorola as an example) would be familiar with the compartmentalization of tasks into two teams, which are focused respectively on design engineering and production engineering. The design team is responsible for inventing, developing, defining and optimizing the actual circuit. When their circuit is optimized and finalized, it is then passed along to the production team, whose role is to determine how to manufacture the circuit in the most profitable manner. Production engineering often involves redesigning some features of the circuit while focusing on cost-cutting measures to make the manufacturing process more economical, and production of the circuit more profitable. Basically, the designers live in ivory towers and design optimal circuits, and the producers modify the circuit while counting beans. There's often quite a bit of dissatisfaction that occurs among the designers during the entire process, because design never likes it when production changes their design.

In the current marketplace things are different -- many American firms focus on being a design house, and outsource all of their production to overseas contract manufacturers.

The point is to say that yes -- there is a hell of a lot more than a schematic to manufacturing an amp. But no, the schematic is not insignificant. Having the schematic in-hand is the first half of the battle. Once you have the finalized circuit, the development work, which is a HUGE part of the R&D expense, is OVER. Then all you have to do is focus on production.


> SOMEONE engineered this copy, and whether in or out of house, it had to be paid for.

In this case it appears that a private individual designed a B-15 circuit that used several switches to allow the user to select features from his favorite model years of B-15 amps. He was NOT paid for this effort. He describes the development his circuit as a "labor of love" and gave it away to other Ampeg fans via his website. He did all of the heavy lifting to create the ultimate classic B-15 reproduction amp. What a coincidence -- the Historic B-15 that loud is selling has a circuit that copies ALL of the features in his circuit. There goes the first/major half of R&D expense. The heavy lifting had already been done. Now all that someone has to worry about is production.

Production. Loud has admitted that they hired Metro to build 50 amps for them. Metro built the amps using for the most part, commonly available parts. Repro Ampeg parts have been around for a long time. The biggest hurdle in producing the amp wasn't the transformers. Even the "hard to find" parts like the potted transformers have been in production by reproduction parts sellers for a long time. The can-potted B-15 transformer set is currently available off-the-shelf from the vintage part reproduction houses with a click of a mouse. Ordering 50 of them is simple. The biggest R&D expense that Loud/Metro had in building the reproduction amps was not electrical. It was cosmetic. They had to design a chassis, screen it with the logo, and build a reproduction cage for the tubes to complete "the look". The R&D on the circuit itself was already done.

Realistically speaking, Loud didn't spend much money on designing the $5000 B-15. They did, however, spend a lot of R&D expense developing the $3000 B-15N. That amp involved modifying the circuit to use noval tubes, and designing a PCB. That involves more work than phoning a guy who builds repro amps for a living and asking him to build 50 copies of an existing circuit using eyelet boards.

To me it doesn't look like Loud had to put all that much effort into R&D for the $5000 amp. It seems like it would be similar to the amount of R&D that Fender would have to expend if they wanted to outsource their repro Tweed amps from someone like Mission, Weber or Victoria, who already produces that sort of product. In that context, the R&D expense is minimized.

[bob p]

I'd like to think that Loud owns the trademark on the look of the B15N.

I like to think that they don't.

Someone else could make an amp that sounded alike, but if they tried to make it look the same, Loud would probably sue them.

I'm not an expert on trademarks. In my simple mind, trademarks relate to textual terms and visual symbolism, while patents relate to functionality of a device.

I know that Gibson and Fender have vigorously enforced trademarks on the visual symbolism of their headstock designs, but I'm not familiar with amps that trademark their "look". Personally, I'm glad that Fender and Marshall aren't suing people who offer reproduction cabinets and amp kits. It would be a shame if we couldn't buy a 5e3 kit because Fender kept them out of the marketplace.

I checked the USPTO today and looked for the Ampeg trademarks and patents. Ampeg did have patents on the B-15 type circuits and the porta-flex design. But those patents expired a long, long time ago. Although the "porta-flex" name remains trademarked as a product identifying descriptor (awarded to Ampeg and last registered by Loud), the actual porta-flex flip top device has an expired patent. It's fair game. In fact, independent shops like Vintage Blue have been selling reproduction flip-top clone cabinets for a long time.

Personally, I'd like to see somebody knocking off an amp that looks and sounds like a B-15 at a fraction of the price. I think that the market would embrace it because the current offerings are purposefully limited in numbers to support the fashion-accessory pricing paradigm.

[Enzo]

The average tweak post around here amounts to "OMG I changed th slope resistor to 75k and the mids cap to 0.03uf and now the amp sings." COnsidering I can sit down at a bar with a napkin and draw a working schematic, the main challenge to drawing up a new B15N, I have to disagree that the schematic is a huge part of development. Calling this schematic heavy lifting is like complementing the chef for making white sauce.

[bob p]

I'm not sure that I follow your reference to the average tweak post. I guess I'm missing your point.

I'm glad that you can draw a schematic on a napkin at a bar from memory. I can do it too. But your ability and my ability to parrot someone else's 50 year old work doesn't shine any light on the discussion about how hard it was for the original creator of the circuit to come up with the original idea. Bar napkins are a moot point.

Every technology looks pretty simple after it's been around for 50+ years. That we can explain 50 year old technology doesn't say anything about how difficult the technology might have been to develop 50 years ago when it was new. Life looks simple in retrospective vision, but then everything looks simple in retrospect.

Drawing the original schematic WAS heavy lifting when someone was the first to do it 50+ years ago. The lifting was sufficiently heavy for the circuit to have been awarded a patent. That pretty much settles the score on whether or not a creating a patent-worthy schematic involves heavy lifting or significant R&D expense. It does. Or at least it did when the technology was new. It doesn't any more.

Back in the day, the R&D expense was significant. Today it's a brain-dead task to copy someone else's work at a time when the intellectual property is no longer protected, when the blueprints required to copy someone else's work are as common on the internet as leaves on trees, and when an entire cottage industry has evolved to reproduce the types of obsolete parts that are needed to exploit the public domain status of someone else's intellectual property.

The argument about bar napkins seems ignore the inconvenient truth that 50+ years after the original design, everyone who couldn't design their way out of a paper bag is free to clone the old circuit with no R&D expense because once the patent expires, the law allows other people to appropriate the original developer's intellectual property. the fact that you can draw a schematic 50 years later says nothing about creativity. It just says that you have committed a 50 year old design to memory. i've done it too.

If creating the schematic was so easy, then why didn't Loud come up with something different than the other guy's circuit, rather than just copying it? the answer is obvious -- the circuit was a good one, and they didn't want to expend the R&D expense to make something better. So far I don't see an effective argument that refutes the claim Loud's R&D expense was insignificant.

Of course it was insignificant. Deep down inside when you look at the amp, what Loud is selling in the $5000 amp is not any different from what any of the other clone builders are doing -- they just took an existing circuit and had someone build 50 for them. How is this any different than any other clone builder who copies an existing circuit and sells it? Take a 5e3 circuit for example. Or any AB763. Or a Trainwreck. Someone like Ceriatone has virtually no R&D cost associated with selling a Trainwreck clone because the development work has already been done by someone else, and they were able to approppriate his design efforts free of charge. For any of these old repro amps the schematic and layout are already done. Someone might need to have a metal shop stamp a chassis that replicates the original cosmetics. Everything else is just solder and wire. Loud didn't spend any more on R&D for the $5000 amp than a guy who sells hand wired 5e3 amps for $1000. The difference is that one guy is selling a decent amp at a decent price and the other guy is selling a no more complicated circuit for 5x the cost. Loud is able to do this because there are guys who are willing to spend $5000 for an amp to place on a pedestal in their trophy room.

Why the reference to white sauce? Making white sauce isn't anything special because your cook has the ability to stand on the shoulders of giants who came before him. But I have to give credit to the guy who created white sauce and made something nice for everyone else to copy.

Back to the original subject, Loud didn't have any significant R&D expense on the $5000 amp. It is nothing more than overpriced white sauce.

[nashvillebill]

Back to the original subject, Loud didn't have any significant R&D expense on the $5000 amp. It is nothing more than overpriced white sauce.

I am not an amp designer. But I design, spec, and purchase major mechanical equipment for a living, and I can definitely attest that very few people realize how expensive it is to procure/manufacture/engineer stuff. "Didn't have any significant R&D expense"??? My engineering firm charges around $100 per hour. It can take several days or more to write up a simple specification, not that the machinery is complicated, but everything has to be explicitly spelled out. Nothing can be left open to interpretation.

Even something like specifying a power switch can take weeks. Even when you're making only 100 units, that switch HAS to be the right size for the hole, and fit properly. This isn't like making an amp at home, where if the switch is too big for the hole, we just grab a drill bit and re-drill the hole. And even if you subcontract out the engineering, say to a design/build firm, the deliverables MUST be clearly defined up front. That takes time, and time isn't free.

I wish I had a dollar for every time a manager wanted a custom piece of machinery and said "hey that should only cost a few hundred bucks". Jeez, just the raw steel costs more that that.

Then let's look at the other overhead. Legal costs, for example. When I place a major order with a vendor, contract agreements must be signed by all parties. That means lawyers get involved.

Finally, let's ask--how much did that amp originally cost? Now let's adjust for inflation--yep gas was only 21 cents per gallon back then-- and I bet it's not too far off the 5K mark.

[Enzo]

Bob, the napkin point was that it takes very little effort to generate a schematic, I do not consider it a MAJOR portion of the amp design. The reason I can draw one from scratch - and you can too I am sure - is not that I have one memorized, it is because they are all so similar. You can select from a very few styles of phase inverter, you can select an output tube and adjust the bias needs and OT impedance, but the circuit is the same. A basic amp like the B15N has a pair of single tube preamp channels. Pick from a short list of tone stack styles. If I ask you to draw the fender Bassman and you have THAT memorized that evades my point. If you took a napkin and I said draw a single ended EL84 amp with two preamp channels could you do it? My money says you could. And i can;t think offhand of any commercial amp with that particular configuration. Hell, I;d even throw in a reverb.

Pick whatever amp factory you care to. Aside from the assemblers, how many of the people working there are filling their day designing schematics? And how many of them are doing other things? I'd wager the majority are not generating schematics.

But think what you like.

Is ther adjusting of values? sure, no question, but the circuits have changed little in the last 60 years.

Patents? They still award patents for perpetual motion machines. How many threads in this forum make light of the fact that the folks at Mesa want to patent everything from the power switch to the rubber feet. There is nothing unique about this circuit, it draws heavily from much earlier standards.

[bob p]

Even something like specifying a power switch can take weeks.

Weeks? In a case like this one? Not if a competent purchasing engineer is on the job.

I have professional experience in design engineering and purchasing. I understand that engineering is expensive. But in the context of this discussion we're talking 50 units, not 100,000 units. In the case where you need 50 units of a standardized widget like a Carling toggle switch, the procurement is as simple as placing an order on a distributor's web site. Direct contact with a supplier and/or flying to a foreign country to examine the production facilities and to negotiate price/quantity isn't even cost effective unless your interested in purchasing a significantly larger number of units in multiples of tens of thousands or more.

For it to be true that weeks would be required to procure something as simple as a power switch, the design job for this particular product would have to be assigned to someone who is clueless about the needs of the project. Such task distribution would amount to a bad management decision.

Sure, not knowing what part to select could be true if you were starting at square one, designing a brand new product from scratch, and you had no experience with suppliers, parts, or similar equipment *and* you were building the first unit de novo as a prototype where no other such device had existed before. In that case you would need to do research and research takes time. But that's not the case here. In this case the builder is simply building a functional copy of an existing design. Using your power switch example: both the amp company (Ampeg) and the build contractor (Metro) already have a supply line in place because the switch is already in use on similar projects. The contract builder (Metro) already has inventory on the shelf. He already knows parts specifications, he already has CAD drawings on-hand for chassis design, and he already has a chassis supplier that's geared-up to punch the appropriate sized 0.500" hole. It's not as if there is an unknown variable relating to the power switch that is going to take several weeks of research to resolve.

You can't be serious that it takes weeks to specify a power switch in an application like this one, where the Carling 110/216-Series, C-Series, etc. switches are already established as the de facto industry standard. Everyone with a clue about designing a chassis and sourcing the part already knows that the 110/216 or C-Series all mount into industry standard 0.500" diameter mounting hole.

It's hard to understand how you could rationalize the need to spend weeks spec'ing something as simple as a toggle switch. The only way that could happen is if the guy who is assigned the project has no familiarity with the job that he's been tasked to perform. Several weeks to source a toggle switch? Come on. What's next? Adding a few more weeks of billable consulting time to the client while you mull over whether or not you want to use a Switchcraft # 11 phone jack for the input? Purchase engineering is not that hard.

Several weeks?!?! To me that sounds like a way to rationalize several weeks of sitting on one's ass at the office, surfing for porn while racking up the billable hours to a client.

I'd be willing to bet that none of the small volume amp builders have spent several weeks on something as mundane as selecting a power switch. Everyone with experience knows that the Carling switches are the answer and that they mount into a 0.500" hole. Ruminating over that for weeks would be a misallocation of valuable time.

[loudthud]

Didn't the old Ampegs use those silly little modules that had all the tone control components encapsolated in some kind of goop? Did they re-invent those? I don't think so. In a company that already makes amps, there is huge insentive to use exsisting parts. Calling out a new part means lots of paper work for the engineers, purchasing agents et al. The model specific parts like the transformers, chassis eyelet board and PCBs require design and drawings. A Bill of Materials has to be created that details every piece that goes into the amp. Every screw and washer. The only thing left to chance is something like heat shrink tubing. The BOM might say "6 inches". An assemby drawing shows where it is to be used.

Then there are the safey compliance issues. There is probably one or two engineeris at LOUD that that is all they do. Work at tweeking the design to make it safe and getting it through the approval process. And once that chasssis gets plated, you can't drill any extra holes in it (unless it's made of stainless). A controlled document is created that details every bend and hole. Any changes have to go through an approval process. All in all there is a lot of work that goes into getting a product out the door after the schematic is drawn. 100 * $5000 is only half a mil. They might have lost money on the deal.

[bob p]

People like to speculate on what they think the answers should be instead of taking time to research the facts. I guess that's human nature. It's very easy to do and doesn't involve a time commitment. There are plenty of facts out there if anyone wants to take the time to find them.

[g1]

BobP: I can't believe you are offended by the price of these amps, yet so adamantly defended pricing of Gibson's $130 pair of knock-off bumblebee caps (which are nothing but generic caps encapsulated in plastic and painted to look like bumblebees).
Mind boggling. I hope I'm wrong, but a lot of the time it seems like you're just here to stir sh*t up.

[bob p]

Well this is going to be a boring post, but I guess it's necessary to refute the personal attack from g-one that is based upon the following unfair allegation:

I can't believe you are offended by the price of these amps, yet so adamantly defended pricing of Gibson's $130 pair of knock-off bumblebee caps

It seems that your recall isn't accurate. My participation in that thread was not focused on defending Gibson's pricing. My contribution to that thread was to refute the allegation that Gibson engaged in criminal fraud in reissuing the bumblebee caps.

Take a minute to review my comments. In Post # 42 I said the following:

http://music-electronics-forum.com/t32846-2/#post300700

I agree, anyone who pays $130 for a pair of caps is a sucker. But that doesn't make Gibson guilty of fraud -- it only makes dumb customers guilty of pissing away their money without bothering to do their homework, ...

My comments on the Gibson caps were consistently focused on refuting the allegation of criminal activity on Gibson's part, when it was alleged that Gibson was engaging in fraud and misrepresentation in selling "reissue" bumblebee caps that were not accurate "reproductions". Some of Gibson's competitors were trying to confuse the issue of whether "reissue" and "reproduction" mean the same thing in order to imply that their competitor was dishonest. The facts are that "reissue" and "reproduction" don't mean the same thing. The substance of my participation in that thread was to analyze a statement by a Gibson employee to determine whether or not it made any factual misrepresentation, and to provide an opinion that was in contrast to the witch hunt that was being conducted by people who had a conflict of interest. You were one of the parties who alleged unethical behavior in Post 66:

http://music-electronics-forum.com/t32846-2/#post300873

In that same post you proffered the idea that "badmouthing" the vendor was a virtuous behavior in a free market economy.

How is it that it's OK for you to do that, but not someone else? You're being inconsistent. And now you're trolling to revive a contentious discussion that's been dead for a long time. Please, let's agree to give it a rest. Rehashing that thread in this thread serves no useful purpose.

I can't believe you are offended by the price of these amps, yet so adamantly defended pricing of Gibson's $130 pair of knock-off bumblebee caps

Suppose for a minute that you're right, and I actually did defend Gibson's pricing, even though I didn't. There is a significant difference between spending $160 and spending $5000. At least there is for me, and likely for most people. The truth is that I don't really have any problems with the $5000 amp that Ampeg is selling. I won't buy it, just like I didn't buy the overpriced Gibson caps. But looking at the situation objectively, I think there's a lot of rationalization gong on to justify the amp's $5000 price tag. I just don't buy into the arguments about Loud's excessive R&D expense because I did homework and found that Loud has already made disclosures that suggested otherwise.

I think the $3000 amp is a better value, for a number of reasons

[Enzo]

The lifting was sufficiently heavy for the circuit to have been awarded a patent

.

I was thinking that it shouldn't be too hard to knock out a simple circuit like this one

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

Which is it?