did you ever get the idea...

[TryingToDo613]

Why is the focus on getting rich off it?  I find that in America today anyone who is willing to do all those things in the list above and more, and do it well and committed and genuinely cares and strives to be good, succeeds. Who needs to get rich?  Very few peope actually do, and generally they weren't the ones who set out to get rich. As to ideas, the internet is a very humbling place. You really find out how smart everyone else is. But that doesn't mean that your moderately good idea is being done *well* by *anyone* or *ever will be*.  By the Grace of G-d, I make a very good living working for myself doing a not original idea better than anyone else does it on the internet, and I have since 1997. I'm not rich and if I ever am I doubt my lifestyle will change, except that I'll have 500 korean and chinese guitar copies instead of the 120 or so I have now.  Just do it. Work hard, care, watch your cash flow, be willing to do the dirty work that 98% of Americans now refuse to do, and you'll do just fine. -ph

[Dave_B]

Why is the focus on getting rich off it?  I find that in America today anyone who is willing to do all those things in the list above and more, and do it well and committed and genuinely cares and strives to be good, succeeds. Who needs to get rich?

A lot of people here think they do.  I can't recall the details, but a high number of surveyed college students just knew they were going to be rich and retire early. 

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

I thought it would be nice to have it 'stick' momentarily when it got to either end of the swing, like a real mechanical metronome.  I'm not sure how to do that in an analog world (cheaply or otherwise) but it should be easy with a PIC. 

Actually, this IS easy to do in analog!! all you do, is have the LFO driving the display chip, have a flat top and a flat bottom while the LFO is steady at top and bottom, the "extreme" leds remain lit.

[PenPen]

Guess I'll put my $0.02 in (adjust for exchange rates of the USD).


My aim in learning this 'trade' is twofold:

As a musician, I've heard a guitar sound in my head that I can't put into words, and I haven't heard *EXACTLY*. My goal is to be able to eventually build a guitar, amp, and pedals to hit the sound I really want. The road is long, and I'll probably be chasing it until I die, but it will be a fun journey in my eyes.

Second, I've actually considered one day to be able to open up a small shop locally, building and selling my creations to the local musicians here. I really could care less about being globally or nationally known, hell I don't want to be rich really. This area has a fairly good indie music and art scene. Lots of talented blues, jazz, folk, garage/indie rock, and straight rock musicians around here, along with a slew of artists. Its really a recent development, the 90's 'alternative' movement really motivated a lot of kids around here (myself included) to just try to do it. The city has finally come around, and I'm seeing more and more clubs and quirky shops, public art displays, poets, etc pop up. For once I don't WANT to move away from this town! I had two job offers, one in Chicago and one in San Fransisco, beautiful areas really, but I decided I want to stay here, and be a small part of the blossoming art niche here.

Not looking to get rich at all. I think it would be great to produce good stuff for the locals, be part of 'shaping' the sound here, even if it means not getting rich. 'Cause I've found, the more you have, the more broke you are, because you spend more on more crap. I work in computers, so I make a decent wage despite my age (for perspective, I make more than any of my friends, and more than my father in law, more than my mother, almost as much as my father, who's been working most of his life to get to this point). And I'm broke. Money doesn't mean a thing really. Any fool who thinks it does is a sad individual. I have my family, my wife and two kids, and I have my youth and ambition.

My art teacher once told me, when I couldn't decide if I was done with a painting, "A painting is never 'done'. The artist will always be able to find flaws and changes. Finishing a good painting is just simply knowing when to stop."

I find the same principle applies to nearly everything in life.

And sorry for my rambling, I tend to do that sometimes.

Mark,

Speaking of your idea before, did you get that figured out? Did you get a schem worked out? An LFO meter would really come in handy for developing an "idea" I had too. I think it would be neat to have a manual semi-flanger, that sweeps downward when you press the momentary button, staying at the bottom of the sweep, and 'snaps back' to normal off when you release it. Useful for some noisemaking. I plan to start on it eventually, once I have a few other things under my belt (waiting for parts at this point).

[johngreene]

I have to disagree with such a broad statement. You can get rich off of just a good idea. It just has to be a 'good' idea. Many companies will pay quite handsomely for something that has mass market appeal. Now, if you want to talk about the odds of coming up with an idea like that.......... and then realizing it and being able to bring it to the appropriate people who would recognize it....... 

The odds are pretty slim, but it's still possible.

Just my $0.02 worth.

--john

Hi John,
Nice to see you here again.  You're right of course.  But by the same reasoning, *someone* has to win the lottery eventually, right?  Of course, chance being what it is, some folks can spend 10% of their paycheck on lottery tickets for the rest of their lives and never win anything, while someone else can win big on their first ever ticket.  The question is whether you want to base your daily life on that. 

Agreed, but to quote the California Lottery Slogan: You can't win if you don't play!

Anyway, my whole reason for posting is that I don't think anyone posting prior was talking about basing their daily life on persuing getting rich from Fuzzbox design. It was more of a question of, "I have something here I think is pretty darn cool, what should I do with it?"

[personal experience] I found that if it is something that will really do well, get it out there. Give a few away to musician's that like it and will use it. If it is something that is really worthy, people will start contacting you. If not, you're out a couple of boxes. If it's just 'ok' you'll make enough to cover you expenses. If it really is something wonderful, hold on to your socks! It's going to be a wild ride. [/personal experience]

After the 'wild ride' is when you start thinking about making this a career type decision. But you would need to continue to come up with 'wild ride' quality things. And therein lies the rub.

This is true in any product oriented business. There are countless people out there basing their life on coming up with the next greatest 'thing'. Most of them never make it, I've personally worked for 3 of them. Brilliant engineers that came up with a very attractive design/idea, made millions of dollars but lost it all when they were unable to sustain once the initial 'wild ride' was over.

So, I think you *can* get rich making fuzzboxes. The odds are probably as good as the Lottery but "you can't win if you don't play".

--john

[Mark Hammer]

As long as people are realistic.  I think some of the enthusiastic folks we have here have lots of good intentions, lots of moxie, but very little sense of history or perspective about the industry, and perhaps too narrow or limited a view.  Perhaps you may have seen the pictures Ton/Puretube posted of his workspace.  Most striking are the shelves of binders.  As he pointed out, these contain previous patent office documents, plus schematics fo what else is "out there".  His rationale is that it's not only important to turn to the history of the discipline for ideas, but also important to know when you're wasting your effort with something you *think* is new...but isn't, especially when investment money could be risked or lawsuits entertained.

Now, if one is armed with all that knowledge, AND you have something that's a damn fine idea, world-shattering or not, go for it. But you better have a decent business plan.

A blues club opened up not 4 blocks from our home last summer.  They had some decent acts there.  Not big names, but solid names, and a lot of variety.  The place looked terrific from the outside, had a decent menu, and apparently a good selection of single malt whiskey, and they made a point of emphasizing that it was a club "made BY musicians, FOR musicians".  I kept meaning to go on one of the open stage nights.  Despite seeming full and busy, a year later, they tanked and I was disappointed to see a bailiff's notice n the door.  When I talked with the lady in the bakery a few doors down,  her reply was that, yes, they were busy, but if you can only seat maybe 60 people, you can't make a go of it if you're paying your acts $3k a night.  Business plan, business plan, business plan.

[johngreene]

hmmm, I'm getting the feeling you are calling the glass half empty and I'm calling it half full. 

--john

[Peter Snowberg]

hmmm, I'm getting the feeling you are calling the glass half empty and I'm calling it half full. 

--john

It's great to see you around here again John! 

While you guys are looking at glasses, I'm looking at an amorphous blob of water in a weightless environment, held together via surface tension. 

I think this situation is much like both glass cases.

Manufacturing is a pain, no ifs, ands, or buts.

The key is to do enough of it to justify the pain.

One thing small manufacturers don't often take into account is the invisible cost of doing business. Sure that box has $XX.XX in parts, and took YY:YY time to assemble, but what about the time it takes for marketing, distribution, and misc. administration. That time has a very real cost associated.

I don't feel like I need to get rich, but I would sure like to eliminate any other work outside music electronics in my life. At that point I'm working and having fun at the same time.

I used to be a small manufacturer of data acquisition and process control hardware. It was really hard work, but it paid the bills, I set my own hours, and I had fun when things were going well. As Mark just pointed out, when done at the proper scale everything works, but below that you're out of luck. We lost one big account (to their own internal development) and that pushed everything below the profitable point. I left the company because the numbers no longer projected a good long term. It took about 4 months for the rest of the people to come to the same conclusion after working their brains out the whole time, only to loose it all and not get paid. When the numbers don't work, it's high time to look for another place. No amount of hope can affect that.

If you fail to plan, you really do plan to fail. Anybody who has dreams of becoming rich via direct sales of handcrafted items has not realistically done the projections. Add some assembly line techniques and do it at a multi-person scale, and you have quite a contrast. It can be done.

[Connoisseur of Distortion]

and there is the reason why we teach our friends and bandmates basic electronics work, find their friends who do airbrush stuff, and start organizing PCB layouts to suit a whole munch of designs 

but actually, i have put my friends to work. saves me time doing stuff i would rather skip... recommend to anyone

[nelson]

You are all so bourgeois!

Seriously though, here are my 2 cents.

Most musicians know nothing about electronics. They know what sounds good, which is highly subjective. They buy based on alot of factors. The least of those being new circuits, if the multitude of clones and their respective harmony central reviews are to be used as "market research".

Getting "lottery rich" from designing and selling pedals is VERY unlikely. I agree with Mark on this one. The market is SATURATED.

However there is still room for local cottage industry. It would be very difficult to make a reasonable living out of selling hand built pedals. But certainly not impossible.

As for me, I might sell the odd one, but I am not even going to entertain the notion of ever getting rich or even making a meager living from building/designing effects pedals. One I dont have the time, I pull basically 12hr days with uni and evening work(not changing that), two I feel it is too much work, with too high a risk with a very small chance of decent returns.

Still, if I could make enough to give up my part time job I would be happy, say giving a few pedals to local music shops.... Very doubtful, I earn full time pay in commission alone.

Watching The Lord of the Flies...........gotta love the allegories in this book/movie.....the terr...er....russ.......er monster......

[petemoore]

  Ok after further mulling, here's what I'm into...
  There's guys like you and me that sit around and think up new or whatever stuff.
  Because I'm not an enterprizing type, I have more time to sit and think...I like that.
  This is a great place to share, I you know I've shared' your Ideas, as well as I know you've shared some of mine...I really like this.
  It makes perfect sense that enterprizing folks would look here for ideas to use in building 'something'...[   ].
  I'm not talking about money, at least in terms of 'sharing'...often times that is futile at best, 'getting' goes better, IMO, with the 'money' word in a statement on most days, hopefully your'e days are different than mine.
  Basically it's all good, and most of the time, it is as it should be.
  I've enjoyed reading the responses, don't let me stop them by taking this opportunity to thank all of you for responding, and for what I've learned to think about by having read them.
  Someone could learn alot by just hanging out around here .
  'A penny for your thoughts'.

[Dave_B]

I thought it would be nice to have it 'stick' momentarily when it got to either end of the swing, like a real mechanical metronome.  I'm not sure how to do that in an analog world (cheaply or otherwise) but it should be easy with a PIC. 

Actually, this IS easy to do in analog!! all you do, is have the LFO driving the display chip, have a flat top and a flat bottom while the LFO is steady at top and bottom, the "extreme" leds remain lit.

I could have thought about this for six months and that probably wouldn't have occurred to me.   

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

I thought it would be nice to have it 'stick' momentarily when it got to either end of the swing, like a real mechanical metronome.  I'm not sure how to do that in an analog world (cheaply or otherwise) but it should be easy with a PIC. 

Actually, this IS easy to do in analog!! all you do, is have the LFO driving the display chip, have a flat top and a flat bottom while the LFO is steady at top and bottom, the "extreme" leds remain lit.

I could have thought about this for six months and that probably wouldn't have occurred to me.   

Lots of things are taking me more than 6 months.. but, embarassingly enough, the next day I woke after posting the 'clipped LFO' idea, I realised you don't need to clip the LFO, just 'overdrive' the indicator driver! because, while the input is above max, one end is on, and when it is below min, the opposite is on... sometimes it takes 6 months, sometimes 6 seconds, sometimes 6 generations!
If the 'how easy it is to get rich' post moves to the lounge I'll post on that too, but I don't want to add politics to this part of the forum