Advice needed: Pedal building companies

[Dosi Y'Anarchy]

Hi everyone,

I've got a few ideas that could make some really cool,  but simple, pedals. The thing is that i don't know anything about electronics really and just want to approach a builder and say “build me a pedal based on X but with functions/features A, B and C and i want it to look like [holds up a drawing]” with the aim of me then selling on these pedals under my own brand at a profit,  the builder already being paid by me. 

I know that's basically what Mike Matthews did worth ehx and i just don't have the attention span to learn to build myself. 

 

I've shot an email to a few UK builders this morning,  but what do you all think?  what problems do you think ill face?  One that has occurred to me is that I'll be basically paying the builders custom shop rate then having to price accordingly to make a profit myself, which might put the final price beyond the planned price point. 

 

Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated.

[jposega]

Well, you have no idea what you're doing. Your ideas may not already exist because the ideas are actually too complicated for smaller custom shops to build at a reasonable price point, or they're so niche that someone already determined the cost of producing more than one on veroboard for themselves wasn't worth it. Maybe it's because the pedal you want to base it on hasn't been reverse-engineered. 

Just because you like the pedal idea doesn't mean anyone else will want to buy it, and especially if you're getting them produced by a builder that already has high prices on their own end product.

Mass production will need significant capital up front, not to mention interest. Even for just 10 pedals. 

Custom builders that have the time to respond to you may actually be too busy building their own line of pedals to even warrant getting involved with your venture.

You run the risk of seriously frustrating a builder because you have literally no idea how any of what they do works.

You say you don't have time to learn to build... you don't even have the time to order a kit and soldering iron and try to put it together? Now imagine the time it takes to design a circuit, prototype it, test it, reprototype, retest, design a PCB, get those manufactured, populate the circuit boards, design the artwork, get the enclosures decorated and drilled...

Do you know anything about actually doing business? You'll want to make a website, establish a social media presence. You'll need to be able to record high-quality audio and video demos of the gear because just having a website where you say "This pedal is like this pedal but with this added" will not get you any interest. 

[GisserD]

3 hours ago, Dosi Y'Anarchy said:

Hi everyone,

I've got a few ideas that could make some really cool,  but simple, pedals. The thing is that i don't know anything about electronics really and just want to approach a builder and say “build me a pedal based on X but with functions/features A, B and C and i want it to look like [holds up a drawing]” with the aim of me then selling on these pedals under my own brand at a profit,  the builder already being paid by me. 

I know that's basically what Mike Matthews did worth ehx and i just don't have the attention span to learn to build myself. 

 

I've shot an email to a few UK builders this morning,  but what do you all think?  what problems do you think ill face?  One that has occurred to me is that I'll be basically paying the builders custom shop rate then having to price accordingly to make a profit myself, which might put the final price beyond the planned price point. 

 

Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated.

i think the important thing here is "already paid by me" which is a good start.

i recently started my own business and quickly learned that time=£². so if you want someones time be prepared to pay for it!!!

That said, i would imagine there are plenty of electronics engineers with some appetite for this kind of side project... if you get somebody interested, maybe a partnership of some kind might work best for both parties as i doubt he/she would be happy to do all the work upfront whilst you reep the rewards at the end..., unless you pay them some serious hourly rate of corse

 

all this depends entirely on if your ideas are any good in the first place.

 

[T-Bay]

Not music related but I have had a few significant electronics projects made in recent years (I was designing and building electric cars for an endurance series). I found there are three types of electronics engineers, 1, good and reliable, 2, good and unreliable, 3 useless on all fronts. 2 and 3 outnumber 1 by at least 10 to 1 if not 100 to 1. Even with a very defined end point and most of the board designed (it needed specific style of voltage transformer adding) it was a nightmare getting anyone to quote. It was a fair bit more complex than a pedal to be fair but two prototypes on hand etched boards were just short of £1000 to get to useable point. Final boards came in at £280 for design and set up costs and £5 a board thereafter for small batch run. I think the £280 was only that low as the company was very interested in the project and saw it as a toe in for a different sales area.

 

if you can do some of the development costs you will save yourself a packet. If we had needed someone to design the whole PMT board as well then cost could have been £5000-10000,  but you are looking a level of complexity similar to an amp I guess.

[Dosi Y'Anarchy]

Thanks all of you, 

The ideas i have are not ground breaking to be honest, nor are they meant to be. My primary idea is to release a "staples" line, a boost,  a light overdrive and maybe a fuzz all based on existing designs with some modifications (for a start,  i want everything to work equally as well on bass as guitar so maybe larger input caps on some of the circuits, or something,  you get my drift-my thinking is that a good pedal builder should have some understanding of how to modify a circuit for better bass response if somebody, ie me, asks them too). Let's face it, at least 70% of pedals of there are based on something else. I already know what circuits i want to base them off, but i absolutely understand that because i don't really know how circuits are put together i am making some massive assumptions on the ease of modification and the willingness of a builder to do the work, but as i mentioned,  I'm willing to pay the agreed price upfront so the builder won't lose out.

I want to make some simple to use pedals that sound great on bass and guitar. I don't want to get into "mass" production, i would order very small batches of each pedal and if i sell out then i would order another small batch. I wouldn't intend on this being a real job, more like a semi-lucrative hobby.

Getting good quality audio demos won't be a problem. Good quality video is a bit more of a stretch but not impossible.

It still sounds like a fun idea for me but might be worth me finding out if i could get "prototypes" build as a proof of concept, ie get X builder to make me a fuzz based on Y circuit with A,B and C modifications, I've done it before, actually with Sleeping Dog FX and SFX in the past but those were more niche designs that had limited appeal outside of my own tastes and musical needs.

 

 

[OzMike]

Soon to be ex-pedal company (Prophecysound Systems) guy here... much of what I was going to write was covered by previous posters, however there is still several points to make:
1) there are many, many other companies making pedals these days (compared to the early 2000s when I started out). Given a number of pedal purchases are somewhat random (using people's spare money or just to 'try something out', there are many other competitors lining up already for the same dollar / pound / euro. What will you do to stand out?
2) if you have no technical skills yourself then you are on the hook at expensive rates when a support issue comes up (and believe me, it will). How will you deal with a pedal that is shipped across the world, and then fails to work as soon as it is out of the box? etc
3) you will be bombarded by requests for free pedals by unknown person X or unknown band Y who wants to 'demonstrate' them or 'endorse' them in a way that won't have any obvious benefits to you, yet if you don't indulge some of these people / bands then you'll be missing out on some good marketing ... or will you?
4) eventually you will come across customers who are almost impossible to satisfy - if you are considering direct sales to keep more of the $$$ yourself - just how far will you go to keep happy a complete nutter who is threatening to post to all the FX forums, Facebook, twitter, what a complete silly billy you are for not doing (insert unreasonable request here)?

If you are really keen on doing this I would suggest a partnership between yourself and a tech person; you might find someone who you can work with who doesn't want to deal with emails / dealers / etc. And then prepare to put in many hours + $$s before you see any return. There's a reason why I'm getting out of the biz...!

edit:

Quote

for a start,  i want everything to work equally as well on bass as guitar so maybe larger input caps on some of the circuits, or something

Stop right there - that's already getting into a difficult area. Basses put out way more signal, in general, compared to guitar, and have much different frequency requirements for a good sound. How many overdrives or fuzzes work equally well on guitar or bass? There is a very good reason why there are 'bass' and 'guitar' overdrives.

Happy to discuss privately if you don't want to post your ideas here.

Edited December 18, 2017 by OzMike
added extra detail re: re particular comment by OP

[Dosi Y'Anarchy]

As sad as it is to say,  i think this thread kinda killed it for me, a little bit, and for all the right reasons.  

I don't have the technical knowledge to know if my ideas will work practically,  it's a pretty saturated market,  especially when you're not reinventing the wheel and if you are then you may have an even smaller audience base. I kinda like the idea of a fun project and don't mind dropping some dollar on getting it together. 

I still love the idea of having my own brand, my own spec of pedals that i could sell to others if the interest was there.

I'll see who responds to me, if one of the people i messaged today does and thinks they can do what i want them ill get a pedal made.