Test Run of 200 Guitar distortion pedals

[Rob Strand]

I did some bootweaking the last couple years and learned some interesting lessons.  I could offer these tips I didn't know at the beginning

Great info.

[Vivek]

I did some bootweaking the last couple years and learned some interesting lessons.  I could offer these tips I didn't know at the beginning:

Thank you so much for sharing your experience !

[Ice-9]

I have been building and selling pedals now for about 9 years as a small business.

I do the same as noted in an earlier post by having x amount of PCB's for each pedal part assembled with as many as possible of the SMD components, then hand solder any components that the PCB fab doesn't stock and also hand solder all the through hole components myself.

My enclosures are all prepared in my shed on a modified CNC Router that I customised and then the enclosure is powder coated, again with an inexpensive hobby powder coating kit. I then silk screen the enclosures which is one of the bits I hate doing myself as it is time consuming and messy.

I would love to invest in a UV direct to substate printer in the future to save me from the silk screen printing.

Making the pedals this way is more time consuming but it also means that the outlay isn't as big because although I would have say 200 PCBs ordered and part assembled I would only buy the other parts in smaller numbers as I need them to fulfil orders rather than have 200 sets of everything lying around on the shelves.

It would be good to an all in one service and have pedals fully built by using an outside source and this would work very well if you already know that your full batch of 200 are already sold. (something like a kickstarter project would be good for that).

[joegagan]

my 2nd run at this stuff has been more successful, but not in the ways people usually talk about success.

2010, started back slowly while doing construction during the day. made some modded wahs with my artwork. every time i would complete one, a wealthy doctor in france would buy it before i woke up in the am. after around 10 wahs, he stopped.

gus smalley set me up to design in LT spice ( thank you Gus), i paired this with 1000s of hours of experimenting/designing.

by 2012 i had built up sales enough to quit working construction. i had to be ok with netting under 17k per year.
that's about the time i came out with my smooth pots.

by 2014 i was selling a lot of parts wholesale to other boutique pedal guys who were getting into the wah game. this division has faded away, many of them found out making wahs wasn't an easy game.

my retail marketing budget was, and always has been, zero. i would simply put an item up on ebay , no real cost to making a listing except my time. the market tells me when what i'm offering is desired. added reverb store in 2015.
by 2018, the two online stores were 45/45 in sales volume, with the other 10% being direct thru email and instragram..

didn't want to be in music stores. didn't want distribution. more controllable with just ebay and reverb.

using the venerable crybaby and dunlop-made 92 thru 06 vox as the basis of my biz was a great call. chinese wah shells suck.

the consistency of the dunlop shells has been incredible - a pcb from a 1989 crybaby fits and works perfectly in a 2022 gcb95 shell, despite dunlop's first clean sheet of paper redesign since 1970 in 2021.

my hat is off to dunlop's engineering and product- totally world class and modern. the consistency allows me to make kits and wahs that fit in millions of wah shells.

the kits are not a profit item, i make around 35-40 per hour to mod/ build them, but there is no profit in an under $100 item at the scale i work at.
they serve 2 purposes:
1. bring in customers. fortunately, my repeat business is super high. often,a kit buyer will come back and buy a full wah as their second purchase.
2. give me a way to use up the 100s of stock guts per year that are generated by my use of the dunlop/vox wahs for their shells.

my wah lineup is nearly all full guts replacement in the shell. i have my PCBs designed by victor nery in brazil, we've become very close. i recommend him, he is excellent if you need pro layout. (email me at joegagan at gmail).
PCBway in china gets the PCBs to me in 3 business days.  i stuff and solder them myself, all thru hole. go to my reverb or ebay to see gut shots if you like.
i buy parts in pretty large quantities so i don't have to be looking all the time. i don't obsess about mojo parts, i test common parts for best tone and low noise. old stock USA and japan vintage are good for CC resistors and some caps, but CC resistors are only in 30% of my wahs. regular metal film from mouser does the rest. REAN metal full old style switchcraft knockoff jacks. mini 3pdts from china, very reliable. 22ga. wire, bought on 1000 ft rolls.

after a run of chinese toroid inductors, i bit the bullet around 2016 and started winding my own inductors. simple setup,  just winding on a dewalt cordless drilll i rigged up. i don't count the winds, it's all by eye. easy to be consistent.

i like to have between 120 and 160 listings on ebay. reverb is about half that. i keep shell inventory on hand, along with a lot of subassemblies ready to go so orders can built in the 4 day shipping window. custom orders take a little longer, the customers are ok with this.  i limit the custom orders to only a few per month.

i make everything myself. i tried employees, they lie about being sober, then turn out to be sleazy potheads. my warranty problems are near zero.

i resisted offers to go ' bigtime' and have my stuff made by dunlop, it would have turned me into a marketing guy with a huge bank loan, at the whims of guitar center. no thanks. i keep it small and love controlling my destiny.

i love developing new circuits, at the same time recognizing that 70% of my business is guys looking to replicate their favorite 60s/70s guitar hero's tones. of that 70%,  87% is the hendrix contingent. i have multiple models to fill that niche.

my youtube channel has been a great sales tool. most buyers use the vids to narrow down their choices. i have never paid or asked someone to make a video. my audio quality is ' good enough" using samsung phones with careful phone placement and loud amps. the youtube channel goes back to 2006.

i've raised prices steadily and the result is always more sales and intrigue. the artistic wahs are becoming more and more successful as time goes on. to cover a wider market, i offer a ' plain black' version of most of my models for less $.

my net income from wahs has never broken out of 20k per year, my inventory "might" be worth 100k if sold at higher than auction prices. i have become a landlord and have some other businesses with my sons to cover the gaps. i still do wahs at least 45 hours a week.
i love my life!

summary :
i throw a lot of products online, some of it sells well, others not so much. i don't take on debt, i just built up slowly.  i offer a wide range of products /prices within the wah niche. the kit sales don't hurt the wah sales. wah part sales are pain in the ass and i really only do it out of my commitment to musicians and to use up excess inventory.

the above may or may not be on topic.

i recommend going into the guitar pedal business, but be ready to make around 20k a year and work a lot.

[soggybag]

Great adventure Joe, it's all about working for yourself, there's a lot of satisfaction there.

I'm not trying to be a business. I see something and think, I should make one of those and hear out sounds. It's often cheaper than buying new and there's satisfaction and learning.

I use PCBWAY I really like their service. Super easy to work with  and fast turn around.

My thing is I always build three. It's about as much work as building one, and if something goes wrong I have a spare. I sell a few things on Reverb and the local music store and that pays for parts.

The big problem I'm having is the slow accumulation of gear. I have so many pedals amps and guitars right now it's starting to become a problem. I need an exit strategy!

[stallik]

You don't need an exit strategy, you need a better storage system

[amptramp]

Gear expands to fill the storage available.  I live in a 4-bedrrom house and none of the bedrooms are being used as bedrooms.  One is an office and three are electronics storage/workspace areas.  I live in the den and the urchins live downstairs.