"Best-seller" circuits?

[egasimus]

As my musical tastes differ from the majority's, so do my pursuits in musical electronics. For example, there would probably not be a single person in Bulgaria who would readily buy modules for a modular synthesizer. I would, however, like to make some money off guitar pedals so I can fund the development of some of my crazy ideas. That said, can you suggest some circuits which would sell well and not require any too obscure and difficult to source components? And, of course, their authors should be okay with people building and selling them... Everyone here likes 80-s-90-s metal, mind you.

I've been thinking Dr. Boogie and BSIAB (can anyone link me to a schematic for V3?), maybe a graphic EQ...

[Paul Marossy]

So you are from Bulgaria? Do you know who Georgian Banov is? I've played with him a couple of times.

Anyway, "best seller" here in the US is the Tube Screamer. Everyone seems to pick that one to clone or make some variant of.

In addition to what you mentioned, you might want to look into "Howie's Metal Simpex", very easy to build and sounds pretty good IMO. "The Pinnacle" at www.generalguitargadgets.com is also a good one.

[egasimus]

Nope, never heard of him before. Google yields videos of a preacher - is that him?

The Tube Screamer doesn't seem to be too popular in Bulgaria, though, and I've never managed to find a suitable IC, either. Another local effects-builder made 10 TS clones some months ago, and had moderate success, but I wouldn't like to do the same thing as him. Bulgarians are huge haters.

As a general discussion: what makes a pedal sellable?

[Hides-His-Eyes]

Good marketing. Players don't like to admit it but they will meld their style with the tools available 

For high gain use, perhaps a modification of the Marshall Guvnor circuit?

The most important thing is that they're well built, look good and get good mentions on the Bulgarian-speaking forums.

[ayayay!]

Holy Moses Paul, Silverwind?  THAT Georgian Banov?  You just took me back to 5th grade man.  Wow. 

[Paul Marossy]

Nope, never heard of him before. Google yields videos of a preacher - is that him?

The Tube Screamer doesn't seem to be too popular in Bulgaria, though, and I've never managed to find a suitable IC, either. Another local effects-builder made 10 TS clones some months ago, and had moderate success, but I wouldn't like to do the same thing as him. Bulgarians are huge haters.

As a general discussion: what makes a pedal sellable?

Yeah, I know, you're in a different part of the world so tastes are different there. Yeah, that's the Georgian I'm talking about. He is a talented guy, won a Grammy Award for a children's thing some years ago now.

Holy Moses Paul, Silverwind?  THAT Georgian Banov?  You just took me back to 5th grade man.  Wow.  

Yep, that's the guy. He claims that he had THE first rock band in Bulgaria. I played with him about 8-9 years ago at a couple of conferences, NOT in the 70s/80s!

[egasimus]

Well, I know of several first Bulgarian rock bands, and he seems to be in neither. Any idea how his band was named? And Google yields nothing about him in Bulgarian - whether I spell his name as Георгиян, Георгиан or just Георги (IDK if you have the encodings to read that). Hmm, an interesting character. I'm afraid, though, that we have people like him by the dozen...

[Paul Marossy]

Well, I know of several first Bulgarian rock bands, and he seems to be in neither. Any idea how his band was named? And Google yields nothing about him in Bulgarian - whether I spell his name as Георгиян, Георгиан or just Георги (IDK if you have the encodings to read that). Hmm, an interesting character. I'm afraid, though, that we have people like him by the dozen...

I don't know what his band was called. I thought it was interesting anyway, because as an American, I assumed that they didn't have rock bands in Iron Curtain countries back then. I'm actually of Hungarian descent, so I kind of related to Georgian on a certain level because he was from an area of the world not too far from where my parents were born.

[lopsided]

as an American, I assumed that they didn't have rock bands in Iron Curtain countries back then.

Hey, there was a lot of rock behind the Iron Curtain too. I can't really speak of Bulgaria, because the condition differed quite a lot from country to country. I am from Prague so I know something about Czech(oslovakian) rock history. There were periods when in was less repressed and blooming (1960ties) and periods when it was more repressed like in the seventies, where allsmost all rock musicians switched to instrumental jazz-rock or went completely underground. Of course the trends were a couple of years delayed from the west (classic rocknroll being popular throughout the  sixties, punk and metal expanded in the mid eighties). And a large amount of the songs (especially in the sixties) were actually cover songs sung in English or with new czech lyrics.

Just for an example (and maybe for a good laugh):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5W_3ELg4i4&feature=related
(those are considered the forefathers of czech rock and roll)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg__fI9C2TU&feature=related
and heres an example of an english singing late sixties band)

Czech out the similar link on youtube if you're interested.

I am sure there was a lot of interesting stuff going on in other countries, including Bulgaria , but I know only about the music history in Czechoslovakia.

Jakub

[Paul Marossy]

as an American, I assumed that they didn't have rock bands in Iron Curtain countries back then.

Hey, there was a lot of rock behind the Iron Curtain too. I can't really speak of Bulgaria, because the condition differed quite a lot from country to country. I am from Prague so I know something about Czech(oslovakian) rock history. There were periods when in was less repressed and blooming (1960ties) and periods when it was more repressed like in the seventies, where allsmost all rock musicians switched to instrumental jazz-rock or went completely underground. Of course the trends were a couple of years delayed from the west (classic rocknroll being popular throughout the  sixties, punk and metal expanded in the mid eighties). And a large amount of the songs (especially in the sixties) were actually cover songs sung in English or with new czech lyrics.

Just for an example (and maybe for a good laugh):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5W_3ELg4i4&feature=related
(those are considered the forefathers of czech rock and roll)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg__fI9C2TU&feature=related
and heres an example of an english singing late sixties band)

Czech out the similar link on youtube if you're interested.

I am sure there was a lot of interesting stuff going on in other countries, including Bulgaria , but I know only about the music history in Czechoslovakia.

Jakub

Interesting! Thanks for the enlightenment.  

I wonder how much guitar player tones vary from country to country? Are the Bulgarians trying to get an 80s/90s metal sound? And what about the Czechs?

[egasimus]

A brief history of rock in Bulgaria.

Bundaratsite (1964) - Considered the earliest rock band in Bulgaria. I've also read mentions of another band, Prilepite (The Bats), which also claimed to be the first, but I can't find any info about them anywhere.
Sreburnite Grivni (Silver Bracelets, 1965) - and THERE he is. George-Ian Banov, drums. IDK how I didn't manage to see it the first time
Shturtsite (The Crickets, since about 1966, still playing today) - Formed by members of Bundaratsite. The frontman's parents were affiliated with the regime so Shturtsite were tolerated to a degree.
Diana Express - another popular band from those times, I think the 70s or so.

Those were all to some degree affiliated with the 'estrada' - the state-sanctioned popular music scene. At gigs, singer Lily Ivanova's backing band played Deep Purple covers for a few minutes before she got on stage.

Novi Cvetia (New Flowers) - and here's a different kind of band, supposedly playing punk since the 70s. Their album came out, like, just several years ago. Can't find one of their older songs uploaded at a site which is visible outside Bulgaria, though.

Then in the 80s things changed a bit. The regime accepted the theory of the 'social vent' - as having an affair vents tension and helps keep a marriage together, so tolerating Western culture would keep the people's unhappiness at bay. Maybe they made their theory just to justify their affairs, who knows. I don't know how come there wasn't a single Socialist regime that wasn't totalitarian, and was actually something like what's described in the Strugatsky brothers' books (those were the humanistic science fiction novels which made me a Communist, they're really worth a read). Maybe Yugoslavia was best, they severed ties with the USSR at some point, didn't pursue Western music, and had a large punk scene in the 70s.

So, anyway, the Komsomol (Communist youth union) accepted and supported rock bands, and in late 80s there was a boom of new-wave and heavy metal.

Ahat (Agate) - maybe the most popular Bulgarian metal band ever. Their music is actually quite good, but I'm not into metal anymore. They still play, but their guitarist (who wrote their lyrics) turned to Christianity and became a priest, so they just play the same old songs.

And here's the part of the scene which is most dear to me
Kale - "Kale" ("Fortress") was a brand of glue that was inhaled as a drug. They weren't junkies, though. They were something new in terms of music and lyrics, they were one of the first bands that sang about alienation and had a dark motive in their lyrics. They had only two gigs - the first one was at a festival where they sang three songs, their microphones were muted as they sang the lines "The world is something, oh my love/upon which I piss", and were taken off stage. The audience kept screaming their name as the other bands played. They were the disturbers.
The three members of Kale formed two bands. Dimiter Voev made Nova Generacia, Vasil Gyurov made Review, and Kiril Manchev played drums in both for a while, then remained in Review before emigrating to Canada after 1990, where he and other past members of Nova Generacia formed a short-lived band called The Clouds.
Review - a really catchy and dynamic post-punk band. They were the invincible ones.
Nova Generacia - (New Generation) One of the most popular bands until 1992, when Voev died of cancer. Actually a small lot of people know them and like them, but few are capable of understanding the deep lyrics that, especially in later years, transcend beyond the human condition. The music is wonderful even if you don't know what they're singing about.

And then there were the 90s, and tens of metal bands emerged. There were some quite interesting ones, but there was a preference to thrash and death metal, and records were rarely of a listenable quality. I actually have the list of the personal collection of a guy who had a radio show about rock music in the early 90s. I've been formating it into an Excel table, like, forever.
In the late 90s and early 00s, there were some avant-garde acts, but they were soon forgotten.
What followed was a regression - a lot of interesting metal bands disbanded after releasing several songs, and, with gear becoming cheaper, everyone thought that they could make a band. And be a star by playing the same covers over and over again in a rock club. And I mean, as there were tens of original bands in the 90s, there are tens of bands which share a common setlist of no more than 50 covers - every band knows 10 to 20 popular songs, some AC/DC, some Metallica, some Megadeth, some GnR and nothing interesting, really.

Really, these posts should be moved to a separate thread Although it would be interesting for a reader to find such a discussion where he least expects  

[Paul Marossy]

Georgian on drums, huh? I've only seen him play a guitar or a violin. He's not a bad vocalist, either.

I think this thread has went in a very interesting direction. Might be useful for someone who wants to sell pedals in other parts of the world as tastes seem to be different in that part of Europe.

[Philippe]

As a general discussion: what makes a pedal sellable?

Talent + record/ticket sales + tonal mysteries + fxs hyperbole = salability.

Examples: Jimi Hendrix, SRV, David Gilmour et al.

Those little boxes may (or may not) make someone sound better but 90% of the time they don't make anyone actually play better...that's where dedicated practice & devotion to craft enters the real picture.

[petemoore]

  Sellable = supply Vs. demand.
  Have a supply of every pedal thought sellable and sell more pedals [see music store].
  If the question were rephrased to: Most sold pedal circuit? there would be a bigger difference from pedal to pedal attempting to fit the bill [see pedals mentioned here]. The supply is wonderful, this means that there really is no 1 more sellable pedal than the others simply because...it's not simple to explain but it is the case that..whatever pedal you wantcha can get.
  Many of the ones that were best sellers are now avaialable...well haven't checked lately, but I could have a store-house full of 15 dollar ea. pedals, good ones mind you, distort, od, phase, eq.s with excellent/extremely competitive set of audio compromises...not so good on the aesthetics IMO.
  Probably the one with the most misunderstanding of itself, or the most creative and outstanding appearance, given all the expected's are seen to or taken for granted.
  Pick a tricky one and figure out some 'shortcut to quality, or just try toppin' the topperest looking ones.
  The circuits vary but not by much, fancy paint varies a lot though.
  One good 'angle is if a particularly useful and overlooked feature that seems like it might be able to make itself understood [with your help] to someone who needs it, but just didn't do anything about it because hse doesn't know it yet.

[Paul Marossy]

As a general discussion: what makes a pedal sellable?

Talent + record/ticket sales + tonal mysteries + fxs hyperbole = salability.

Examples: Jimi Hendrix, SRV, David Gilmour et al.

Those little boxes may (or may not) make someone sound better but 90% of the time they don't make anyone actually play better...that's where dedicated practice & devotion to craft enters the real picture.

Yeah, good points. If you can say that "so and so plays a this and that", that will sell pedals all by itself a lot of the time. Especially if they are high profile guitarists.

So maybe in Bulgaria, the thing to do is target the sound of a few of the most well known guitarists/bands and see if you can come up with something that approximates that sound in a little box. True, it won't make them better players, but in their minds they will think that they sound more like "so and so" and you will sell a few pedals as a result.  

In guitar related product sales, it seems to me that whatever it is needs to appeal to the guitarist paradigm. I see all the time how people will buy the same exact guitar, amps, pedals and even use the same picks as their guitar hero(es) and chase their own tails trying to be someone else rather than finding their own voice. The bottom line is that it sells stuff when they see other people placing a value on a certain product and even more so if a high profile guy is using that thing. The trick is getting to that place with your own product...