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

[bob p]

Enzo, now you're just being silly. Or maybe you're just being deliberately contentious.

You know that I said that 50 years ago, the technology was new and novel and patent worthy.
You know that I said that after we've all had access to the technology for 50 years, retrospective analysis allows us to view it as as something commonplace and simple.

both are true, because of the passage of time. Duh.

[g1]

the personal attack from g-one

This was not my intention. I was honestly surprised and made an observation.

It seems that your recall isn't accurate. My participation in that thread was not focused on defending Gibson's pricing.

No, that was not your focus and I may have exaggerated when I said "adamantly defended", but you did not seem to have an issue with the price of those caps or the justification for it:

both are charging what they think is a fair price for their product. they're using two entirely different business models. neither one is invalid

I don't think that there's a problem when a vendor responds to market pressure by delivering what the customers are asking for, or when they charge a price that the market will bear.

Also,my participation in that discussion was limited to the pricing, not anything about fraud.

You were one of the parties who alleged unethical behavior in Post 66:

Yes, I believe that kind of pricing to be unethical, and I am entitled to that opinion.

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

That is misrepresentation Bob. I said "shady practice leads to 'badmouthing' ". This is an inevitable consequence, where the heck does "virtuous" come in? And by shady practice I was talking about the pricing. Here's what I actually said: http://music-electronics-forum.com/t32846-2/#post301076

And now you're trolling

Did someone mention "personal attack"?

Rehashing that thread in this thread serves no useful purpose.

Actually, I tried to mention the subject only without linking to the thread but that didn't work out for me.

Like I said before, I was honestly shocked that you seem ok with some exorbitant pricing but not others.
I got the impression you were ok with Gibson's pricing on the bumblebees but I guess I was wrong? I got the impression you didn't like the Ampeg pricing but now I'm confused.
You said it's different spending $160 or $5000. To me, the ratios are important. "The amp re-issue costs 5X more than the real thing", how much more than the actual cap inside those re-issue bumblebees do they cost? 50 times? more?

Well, sorry if I exaggerated your stance on things, I got an impression from you and stated how it appeared to me.

[Enzo]

Neither really. Unless you are just cutting and pasting, design of such a thing is no less nor more difficult today. Drawing a load line is drawing a load line. The questions a designer must ask of himself are the same. Ampegs were designed to be more or less hifi. There is a book you may have seen of the Ampeg story that spells out the original point of view and design goals. It is an interesting story. It was really just a hifi circuit within the limitations of the genre. While I claim no talent at it, I was designing hifi amp circuits myself from the graphs up, back in the 1950s. There was nothing new about it even then. The RDH from the 1930s is as relevant today as it was when new. What has changed is the selection of tubes. There is no difference designing a preamp around 6SL7s or 12AX7s, other than the specific specs on the tubes. RCA charted recommended part values for both types in case one was lazy. I would maintain that what makes a circuit simple today is that it is in fact simple, not that people have been making such things for 50 years. A 12 year old (me) could do it, and there were other kids my age who were better at it.

[Steve Conner]

Enzo might be silly, but IMO Bob is the one being "deliberately contentious" by even starting threads like this in the first place. America is supposedly a free country and a free market. There's nothing wrong with gouging rich customers on a $5000 amp, it is their money to spend (waste?!) as they please.

The little potted modules were used in Standel amps.

[Enzo]

Standel used the potted things, didn't they come in colors? But Ampeg used custom PEC things. They are rectangular, and dipped in the same stuff as disc ceramics. Contained resistors and caps in them. The innards were not secret, they published them.

Like this:
PEC Board Tone Module for Vintage Ampegs, NOS OEM - Product Details

In my opinion only, I don;t think bob is trolling, rather I think he takes a situational position on something then defends it to the death against any challenge large or small.

[bob p]

Those PEC "tonestacks on a stick" were pretty widely deployed back in the day. Didn't realize that a NOS one costs $59. Maybe I'm dumb to chuck them in the garbage.

If someone needs to find one for a restoration, they're commonly found in scrapped tube HiFi preamps and integrated amps.

[bob p]

Yes, it is a free market, and people can choose what they want to buy... amps, capacitors, widgets, whatever.

Careful reading of the capacitor thread clearly demonstrates that I never defended Gibson's prices. What I actually did was to say that there was no fraud, and that a Gibson had the right to charge what they think the market will bear for their product. Not what *I* think is a fair price, but what *they* think is a fair price.

I guess that might constitute a defense of their prices if you don't pay close attention to what was actually said. Defending someone's right to charge what they think is a fair price for their product is not the same thing as endorsing the price point that they chose. It's important to understand that defending someone's rights is not the same thing as agreeing with their decisions.

The heat got turned up pretty high in the cap thread. For some reason human nature allows people to become emotionally charged when that happens, and that tends to shift the focus of the interpretation of every comment so that it falls into an "our side = good" or "their side=bad" categorization. The ability to read objectively gets lost when that happens. Nuances of speech tend to become ignored when people pigeon-hole someone's post as being on "our side" or "their side" of a discussion. I think that comes from superficial reading of peoples' posts. Skimming is a habit that's very easy to fall into when posts get long. I know that I'm guilty of doing it, and like everyone else, I've made my share of mistakes in misinterpreting what people have said at one time or another. So I try not to hold grudges when things like this happen. It's all good.

[bob p]

So am I Ampeg bashing? No, I honestly am not, but I can see how you might think that if you just skim the thread and don't think too deeply about what has been said. I have no problems with Ampeg selling those amps at those price points, and I never accused them of being dishonest or cheating anyone in the way that some people accused Gibson over the bumblebee caps. I never said that Ampeg was dishonest or that they didn't have the right to charge those prices. I did say that I didn't think the $5000 price point embodied value.

Looking at this thread analytically, my comments specifically addressed two points:

A) that Ampeg's prices reflected a strategic tiered-marketing approach that uses the same S-tiered model that is always employed in the fashion industry. That marketing strategy is designed to extract the maximum amount of revenue from the marketplace. It does so by stripping as much revenue as possible out of each customer at a specific price tier, and then sequentially repeating the process at progressively lower price tiers.

B) that the rationalizations for justifying the $5000 price, based upon high sunk-cost R&D expense at Loud, probably were not accurate. Why? Because Loud: 1) minimized the work in product-development by appropriating and leveraging someone else's existing open-source designs, and 2) minimized the work in product-production by farming out the build to a contract manufacturer who already has production facilities in place for a very similar product.

Loud has a pretty smart model: Find a free design, exploit it, have a contract manufacturer produce it, and sell it as a boutique price as a fashion accessory to the people who will pay the most for it; then, once that market is saturated, lower the price to the next tier; repeat.

Do I have a problem with Loud, Ampeg, Metro, or the prices on these amps? Not at all. I do think that they've got a pretty slick marketing team that's trying to extract the maximum possible revenue from a very simple product. And yes, I do think the top tier price of $5000 is shockingly high for a 30W flip-top amp.

In the big scheme of things I think Loud's focus is more on marketing than on product development. If they really cared about product development then they might put some R&D expense into filling the huge gap that currently exists in their tube bass amp product line. Right now they're offering a cute little 30W amp and a giant behemoth 300W amp with nothing in between.

[big_teee]

So Bob, have you built that thing yet?
T

[bob p]

Not yet. I've been digging through boxes looking for parts and I haven't had any luck finding that old Thordarson PT that has the exact specs needed for this application. the problem is that I've got several boxes of iron ferreted away, and lots of parts that are MIA at the moment.

Just in case I can't find that Thord, I went ahead and contacted Heyboer about a custom wind using the original Ampeg PT specs that Enzo provided in an old thread. Quote for an X mount with endbells was $90 plus shipping. For comparison, the price for repro knockoffs in the potted cans from the vintage parts guys are in the range of $250-350 per transformer. At $90 the Heyboer is looking pretty good.

Regarding your previous comment about a Bassman-type layout, that does seem feasible. The OT primary is wrong on a Bassman though.

[big_teee]

Not yet. I've been digging through boxes looking for parts and I haven't had any luck finding that old Thordarson PT that has the exact specs needed for this application. the problem is that I've got several boxes of iron ferreted away, and lots of parts that are MIA at the moment.

Just in case I can't find that Thord, I went ahead and contacted Heyboer about a custom wind using the original Ampeg PT specs that Enzo provided in an old thread. Quote for an X mount with endbells was $90 plus shipping. For comparison, the price for repro knockoffs in the potted cans from the vintage parts guys are in the range of $250-350 per transformer. At $90 the Heyboer is looking pretty good.

Regarding your previous comment about a Bassman-type layout, that does seem feasible. The OT primary is wrong on a Bassman though.

Thanks for the info, You can get all different 6L6 OTs, from 2-16 Ohms.
I don't know all the terminology here, Is an X mount above surface , or stick through the hole.
So is the Custom Heyboer, a 325-0-325 with 5V, 6V and maybe some bias voltage?
I may be building something pretty soon also, but it will be a Gain Guitar amp.
I will probably convert a 18W, or JTM45 Chasis.
Good Luck,
T

[bob p]

X mount = standup
Z mount = laydown

[bob p]

650 VCT is really common fender-type iron. too low for this application. the B15 ran voltages higher. not as high as during ampeg's extreme voltage years, but about 100v higher. Enzo posted the full specs for the original PT in one of the old B15 threads.

[loudthud]

Right now they're offering a cute little 30W amp and a giant behemoth 300W amp with nothing in between.

What about BA110, BA112, BA115 and BA115HP ? And for those that think they need headroom there is the PF350, PF500 and PF800. Not tube you say ? Bass players that play tube bass amps on stage are a minority. There just isn't a very big market for tube bass amps. Most players want clean, loud and light weight. That's where the money is.

Talking the Gerald Weber a couple of years ago, he told me most of his customers were lawyers.

[bob p]

you're right -- i should have said tube. i didn't think it was necessary in this context since there's not that much demand for Historic-reissue solid state amps.