Does Electronic Guitar Equipment is biggest rip off ever ?  - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Icarus
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2015, 03:24:51 pm
content: I decided buy a electric guitar and I had no idea about the topic.When I made the research, I found those1)Guitar Amps: Expensive or cheap doesn't matter. They all are equally poor designed. Most of them consist of just a few transistor/lamp and maybe TL081/LM356 but It'll cost $500.2)Pedals: One transistor circuits combined with cheap potentiometers and switches = $200I'm just shocked, How could people pay those that much money ? I mean they should be $10 or something

author: continuo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2015, 03:36:47 pm
content: Quote from: Icarus on September 14, 2015, 03:24:51 pm'cause money for nothing and chicks for free

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2015, 03:44:10 pm
content: You're shopping in the wrong places. Yeah there are audiphool levels of idiocy when it comes to electric guitar amps and associated equipment but for the price you mentioned you can get a brand new Marshall valve amp and a decent Boss multi effects pedal. And that's still while paying the premium for the names, the name brand Celestion speaker and it's "oh so twee British made" mark up in the Marshall etc.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2015, 03:52:06 pm
content: I guess there is quite some knowledge is required to make something clip, distort, oscillate and mis-behave the way they do. Then you sell like 20 in a year. Enclosure is also expensive.

author: zapta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2015, 04:07:22 pm
content: In a recent Amp Hour episode, Fran talked about here pedal business.http://www.theamphour.com/263-an-interview-with-fran-blanche/http://www.frantone.com/I wouldn't pay $500 for an amplifier that doesn't go up to 11.

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2015, 05:19:47 pm
content: Quote from: zapta on September 14, 2015, 04:07:22 pmA lot of older amps go up to 12.

author: dfmischler
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2015, 05:29:50 pm
content: Quote from: Icarus on September 14, 2015, 03:24:51 pmBarnum's Lawimplies that somebody will buy it.As with everything else, a persistent, patient and knowledgeable buyer can eventually find a great deal on nice used equipment.

author: fivefish
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2015, 06:47:18 pm
content: What guitar amp are you looking at?This is what I have in my lab. (I'm not a guitar player, just use this to test some of my products.)QuoteI don't get it... On another thread, you were asking what home business to start.... because you didn't have any clue.So why don't you start a business selling guitar amps and pedals and sell them at just cost of parts? I mean, that's what they should just cost, right? $10 or something. There's your niche market.-or-You step back and look at the big picture and process your observation, hopefully a light bulb goes on in your head on what business to start.

author: John Coloccia
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2015, 07:16:15 pm
content: Quote from: fivefish on September 14, 2015, 06:47:18 pm$10 will buy you a 1 foot switch and a 1 bare enclosure...in production quantities of 100+.OP doesn't know what he's talking about.In the interest of full disclosure, it turns out I DO know what I'm talking about:www.jcolocciaguitars.comI left the full time engineering gig years ago to build guitars, and ended up falling right back into engineering. Old habits are difficult to break. Purchased in reasonable quantities, just the cost of raw materials, machining, powder coat, silk screening, etc that go into a pedal can be anywhere from $30 to $60, or more...if you do it right, anyhow. That's not including the actual time it takes to assemble, and certainly not including all of the R&D and design work that goes into it. If you build 20,000 copies of a known design, with garbage parts, assembled by slave labor, I guess it's less. A friend's son asked me to help him fix a busted guitar effect last weekend. I took a look inside. I didn't recognize any parts other than resistors, caps and diodes. Everything else was bottom of the barrel garbage...cheap knockoffs. Even the DC power jack was a cheap knockoff of an already cheap, low quality part. I'm not surprised it stopped working.Now back to you're regularly scheduled program of alternately complaining that engineers should be paid more/treated better/given realistic schedules and budgets, that product quality should be better, and that it should all cost $5.

author: Icarus
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2015, 08:12:56 pm
content: Quote from: fivefish on September 14, 2015, 06:47:18 pmMarshall series; for example MG10Is this valve amp should impress me or something ? You mean people with lack of actual knowledge believe that valve amps have less THD than well designed semiconductor amps. So, It has to be that way. majority couldn't be wrong. right ? However this majority of people can't able to calculate a large signal gain of a single bjt circuit.Quote from: fivefish on September 14, 2015, 06:47:18 pmI've no clue about market of consumer electronics because I had worked mostly for government contractors.The most important thing is not what it would be look like, it's quality assurance process, fulfilling your requirements, extensive testing. Just mechanical testing may take 2-3 months, needless to say fault tolerated software and hardware.However, I've a very good idea about manufacturing costsAnd Kirk is right

author: krivx
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2015, 08:15:54 pm
content: Quote from: Icarus on September 14, 2015, 08:12:56 pmThis is just adorable

author: fivefish
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 14, 2015, 08:41:49 pm
content: QuoteNo, it means if you're looking for a real guitar amp you should broaden your search... not pick a little toy MG10 guitar amp and then criticize it for using chip amps. And also align your price expectations with reality. BOM cost is not the selling price of a product.Actually, guitar players couldn't care less about thd. It's all about the sound, and which famous artist/band is using what equipment, because they also want to buy the same equipment (regardless of cost). -- because hopefully, that will make them sound the same as them.QuoteThen you saidQuoteSo let's assume after the manufacturer did all that R&D, testing, production, QA, marketing, etc... you still expect to pay only $10 or something?

author: rollatorwieltje
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 14, 2015, 09:11:45 pm
content: You don't want less THD in a guitar amplifier, the whole point of these things is that they have a particular distortion behavior, especially when overdriven. Valves tend to sound better than transistor circuits in this application.There are plenty of cheap amplifiers available, just walk into any random music instrument store. My brother owned a complete Behringer electric guitar set that sold for about €200. It had a cheap transistor amplifier with a bunch of filters to mimic the overdrive behavior of a valve set. Let's just say it won't impress Jimmy Hendrix.Also go and make your own pedal, it's not that hard. Until you find out those 10ct Shenzen Special switches and potentiometers don't last for more than a few months. A simple robust pushbutton is easily €10 on it's own. When we need a robust switch at work we use Bulgin ones, but even at 100 quantity those are over €20 a piece. If you want to sell stuff with a reasonable margin just a box with that switch would sell for €50. There are slightly more components involved though... Just look at the uCurrent, that sells for about €50. I didn't look it up, but I guess the components are about €15, and that's being generous. Typical industry standard is a retail price of about 2.5 times the raw price. Any lower than that and you just can't cover the cost of doing business.

author: Circlotron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2015, 03:18:40 am
content: With a transistor guitar amplifier, as you turn up the volume, besides getting louder, they sound the same... same... same... BAM! lots of ugly distortion everywhere. With a valve amplifier the onset of distortion can be very gradual, giving the guitarist an extra dimension of expression. Think of a piano - when played softly it sounds a certain way. When pounded energetically it has a more urgent sound because the harmonic structure is different, and a musician uses this to good effect. Similar with a valve amp + electric guitar. It is not about accurate reproduction of the signal coming from the guitar, it is about the final sound. The amplifier (and loudspeaker) is part of the instrument and so it contributes the final sound.Valves for nice sound production.Transistors for accurate sound reproduction.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2015, 04:28:15 am
content: Quote from: Icarus on September 14, 2015, 03:24:51 pmQuite obviously. And I'm afraid you are not going to receive an education here either because you can't teach this stuff with words. Go and spend some time with actual musicians and find out what is important to them. Don't offer your opinion or even pretend to have a clue, just listen and learn. If you do try to offer some of your opinion like you did here, expect to get laughed out of the room. I'd have suggested they'd pour a beer over you, but musos make so little money that beer is too valuable to waste.Better still, learn to play a guitar and then go and spend plenty of time in lots of different music stores playing different guitars through different amps and effects. Learn by doing.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2015, 04:29:59 am
content: Why not a tube preamp plus a class D power stage? You get the tube sound and lots of power in a compact package.What really bothers me is that most guitars don't bother with a built in preamp and of the ones that do, only a few are powered over the signal cable. I once saw one that did it right with a built in Ethernet interface including PoE, but it also cost $2000.

author: DrGeoff
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2015, 04:41:30 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on September 15, 2015, 04:29:59 amGuitar and Bass rigs with tube output stages also have transformers in the out put stage which are responsible for a lot of the colour in the sound. A class D power amp would not do this, and when driven into clipping would sound pretty horrible. The tube amp with output transformers uses magnetic saturation to good effect with overdiving output stages.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2015, 04:55:25 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on September 15, 2015, 04:29:59 amBuild it and see how it sounds? A lot of bassists these days use Class D amps, but just as many use valves.I've edited this because I forgot to say that a significant (in fact I'd sat the majority) of the "character" in a valve amp comes not from the pre-amp but from the power stage (biasing, driver, valves, transformer). Amps that have a valve pre-amp and solid state power stage are very poor at delivering that "valve sound". I know, I have one sitting here next to me (Laney TF 200 - 50W valve pre- transistor power). Compared to the Vox AC15 next to it, it sounds lifeless. Great for pumping crap loads of effects through, and a very clean and transparent sound (ie accurate), but as a guitar amp it's just poor.Quote from: NiHaoMike on September 15, 2015, 04:29:59 amOne of the things you find very, very hard to emulate in a semiconductor pre-amp is the complex interaction between the pickup, the cable capacitance and the complex and non-linear impedance presented by a valve input stage. Many valve input stages are biased in a manner that presents a non-linear match with the instrument and cable, and it forms part of a unique sound that nobody has managed to successfully emulate with silicon. Guitars that do have pre-amps are almost universally FET based and the batteries last for extended periods of time. Why complicate the instrument/amplifier interface with power when a battery does a sterling job?Additionally, you don't want DC on an instrument cable. That leads to extreme amounts of handling noise.

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2015, 05:17:55 am
content: Quote from: BradC on September 15, 2015, 04:55:25 amLine 6 stuff did (still do?) a very very good job of amp and cab modelling. I never used them live but for practising and recording Pods were great.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2015, 05:36:19 am
content: Quote from: Mechanical Menace on September 15, 2015, 05:17:55 amYeah, the solid state stuff is ok. I've gigged with a Behringer V-Amp and the aforementioned Laney for years in pubs. Where people are actually paying to listen to us though I use the valve gear. It simply sounds much better. It's hotter, more fragile and much heavier, which is why for the punters who can't tell the difference (pubs) I'll use the cheap and easy stuff.I've played with the Line 6 stuff, and it's nice (same with the V-Amp). It's good when you are playing in a cover band and you need to cover 10 types of amp sounds. All of them are very good, but none of them are great or come within comparison range of the amp they are modeling.There's a reason people use mic'd up valve amps on stage and in the studio, and it's not poser value.

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2015, 06:24:51 am
content: Quote from: BradC on September 15, 2015, 05:36:19 amNot all poser value no. Lots of the niche who prefer the sound of decent solid state amps also do the same. As people have pointed out it's not just the guitar that's the instrument but the combination of cables, effects, amp and cabs as well, and perfect accuracy doesn't get the sound most want from a guitar. But the Marshall stack I have 'for practice' is definitely all about poser value lol

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2015, 06:50:15 am
content: Quote from: Mechanical Menace on September 15, 2015, 06:24:51 amAgree on amps. I loved my Fender solid state for years. It had just the sound I was after. When my tastes changed and I started chasing other sound, I added more amps to the collection.This is going to sound lame, but it's the way I describe it to people. When you plug in a guitar and it sounds good, it sounds good. When you plug it in and it sounds great, it sounds so good it makes you want to cry.A bit like the difference between listening to a live recording of a concert, and then going to the concert. There's an extra level of emotion/excitement/whatever that you can't rationally explain.For me that difference is plugging into my V-Amp/Laney combo, or plugging into the AC15. There's just something extra there that makes the hair on my arms stand up.Everyone is different, but I bet when you plug into that Marshall and wind it up you get a feeling you'll never be able to replicate with a Line-6 pod and a solid state amp, no matter how big it is.Harmonics, distortion, whatever you want to call it. It may be about the poser value, but I bet it's really just because you love the way it sounds.

author: John Coloccia
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2015, 11:25:39 am
content: Quote from: BradC on September 15, 2015, 04:55:25 amEven more than that, a built in preamp would completely demolish the interaction with lots of fuzz pedals. The way a lot of fuzz pedals are designed, the pickups become a necessary part of the circuit. Without that, they sound just absolutely horrible.The built in preamp thing, i.e. "active pickups", became popular in the 80s with heavy metal guys for a number of reasons, but never caught on anywhere else. It's very common for bass, though, but on guitar it an unnecessary complication that just causes problems.I do think it's funny watching some of these guys trying to redesign an instrument they know nothing about from behind a desk. Earlier this year, Gibson decided to slap automatic tuners, a zero nut and a goofy holographic sticker on the Les Paul. Basically, their CEO redesigned the guitar from behind his desk, and decided to cram it down our throats, take it or leave it.Sales are so poor that they already announced all of the 2016 models are going right back to the traditional specs.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2015, 01:32:49 pm
content: Quote from: John Coloccia on September 15, 2015, 11:25:39 amOh come on. It was fun to watch the development knowing full well it'd be a failure in the eyes of almost every guitarist. Neat concept, just fundamentally flawed from a musical perspective.Oddly enough, Leo Fender was not a musician. He was astute enough however to work with musicians and listen very closely to what they had to say. He was a pretty clever engineer however (used in the non-scholastic sense).It's a bit like a formula 1 team. The drivers are not engineers and vice versa, but they listen to each other and work closely together to get the best results. The best music gear is generally developed the same way. By engineers who *know* they are not good musicians, so they need to take the advice of good musicians. This however generally only works when the good musicians acknowledge that perhaps the engineers know more about engineering than they do. There are exceptions to these rules, of course, but they are few and far between.I'm the worst of both worlds. I'm a lousy muso and a lousy "engineer" (I use inverted commas because I'm not) and I think I'm great at both (and more alcohol makes me a better muso).

author: John Coloccia
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2015, 02:19:24 pm
content: We're a traditional bunch. We like all sorts of new technology, especially some of the new modelling technology (AxeFX comes to mind), but we generally do NOT like it when they start screwing with the instrument itself, or the classic interaction that we're able to have with the rest of the equipment. That's understandable, though. It's the same with any other instrument. Change too many things, and it's a completely different instrument. Not what we want.Every manufacturer has had it's ass handed to it at some point because they innovated themselves into a market that doesn't exist. It's happened to me too. This is a very tough market to compete in. I would say it's crowded, but that's not true. It's saturated.

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2015, 04:24:19 pm
content: Quote from: Icarus on September 14, 2015, 03:24:51 pmI'll tell you what. Come over to my house and take a listen to my 1962 Fender Bandmaster. Then ask me what it would cost for you to buy one.(NB: it's all tube, of course.)

author: C
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2015, 06:48:49 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on September 15, 2015, 04:29:59 amKustom used solid-state circuitry back in 1960C