Pedal Builders

[Geiri]

I do it for a living and I love it. I have so many things to point out, I don't even know where to begin. Is there anything specific you'd want advice on?

[Frank_NH]

We want to hear the stories about the bad apple customers...

Actually, I'd like to know: (1) How do you advertise?  (Word of mouth, internet?), (2) How long does it take to deliver a box to customer (1 week, 1 month?), (3) Are you making enough money to make it worthwhile?  I suppose you can set you prices based on demand and complexity (standard versus custom orders).

[fenderguy79]

Ditto to what Frank asked.
Those bad apple stories kinda scare me, though.  

It seems to me like simplifying steps is a lot of the work (ie pcbs with pots on board, 3p3t pcbs, having a solid enclosure manufacturing drilling and finishing process).
I think my least favourite part has got to be wiring pots to the board and finishing boxes.  I have a tough time spray painting with consistency.

Geiri, love your instagram posts.  The gut and shop shots are great!

[Geiri]

1. Advertise is something that takes time, at least for me. I only have one paid ad running and it's on Effects Bay. I get a few visitors on my website from there every day. Word of mouth is always a good ad but it's one that snowballs slowly (or depending on how much you sell, I guess). Not everyone will tell their friends but you never know when that one guy tells someone important who will shoot your business through the roof. I haven't had that particular experience yet but it's been a steady growth, which I like.
Doing giveaways on Instagram is always very good. I'm doing one right now and I've already gained 200 followers in less than 24 hours. Will they all place an order? Probably not, but numbers always help, that's for sure.

2. I do more production pedals right now and I've got some people waiting for their custom jobs currently so I've closed off custom orders for now until I'm back on track. I'm working on getting a laser engraver to do all the work in house and once that happens, I'll probably be able to have a 2 week wait. I currently advertise 2-3 months, just to cover my ass.

3. I recently started writing down how much stuff I build and how much I ship. I've been a bit careless when it comes to that but I'm changing that. I've had a shaky couple of months with holidays and now I just moved to a new place (new workshop!) so I haven't been building too much but I'm easily building enough to earn a living. I'm paying myself legal salary so that's good.

Key is to find the fastest method of making pedals (without the quality suffering). Build in batches! The bigger, the better. Get some dealers to sell your stuff. You'll earn less but it's a quick and easy way to get sales, ads and new customers.

[Geiri]

Yes for sure, simplify anything that you can. I drill as many enclosures as I can at the same time to save time. I've got a rig made for me where I have space for 6 enclosures (or 3 enclosures and 3 lids) to spray them and I have infrared heat lamps above to dry the paint faster and make it tougher. While that's running, I sandblast the enclosures (which also makes the paint 50x tougher).

PCB mounted pots is an insane time shaver, same with 3PDT PCBs. I keep switches PCB mounted.

Cheers mate!

[Vince]

I sell quite a few pedals and 99.99% of the time it goes smoothly. It's always the bad experience that you remember though. I've been quite lucky and haven't had any REALLY bad ones. I've had a couple of returns saying the pedal had 'issues' but as I suspected, the pedals worked perfectly when I received them back. The worst was a guy in Ireland that messaged me the DAY after I sent it saying it hadn't arrived?!... then two days later, then four days later and he was abrupt and rude when messaging. In the end after the fourth day (including weekend days) he basically accused me of not sending it so I told him that being called a liar is one thing I wont tolerate and told him to go fuck himself and refunded him. He messaged me two days later saying the pedal had arrived and that he was sorry.... twat!....

Anyway, my advice would be just be honest.

Go for it, sell some!  

[rocket88]

I hope that a-hole ended up paying you for the effect when he go it or sent it back. Thankfully I never had an issue like that, just people that think they know more then me and tell me how I should build/what components I need to use. Then I just tell them to go build it themself if they know better then me. Lol

[Frank_NH]

"Thankfully I never had an issue like that, just people that think they know more then me and tell me how I should build/what components I need to use. Then I just tell them to go build it themself if they know better then me. Lol"

That's interesting because why would a customer, who presumably did some homework and decided to purchase your product, tell you what the product should contain or how it should function?  If they wanted custom features, that's one thing, but still they should leave the engineering and fabrication decisions up to the builder.

I think the best approach is to sell your pedals at a flea market, no name, no contact info, just buy it or leave it.  Cash only - no refunds.  

[rocket88]

Seriously. It's exactly like Javi said. I had 3 of then contact me this week telling me they wanted fuzzfaces that had to have tropical fish, the value of each mind you, the transistors must be ac125's cause that was originally the best ones, and some other sorta bs. I told them I can customize it for you, but if they don't trust my judgement in parts choice to somewhere else. I'll build to what you want, but like you said trust me in my parts choice, I know what I'm doing. I got some nasty email back about how unprofessional I am and that how can I say I do custom work if I won't use exactly what they want, and blah blah blah, they don't know why I would want them as a customer. I literally sent an email back saying I don't want customers like you, that I want customers that want quality pedals that sound awesome, and if they aren't one of those people to fuck off and go somewhere else. I wonder what response I'll get back. Lol

[Vince]

LOL.. You can have all the patience in the world but sometimes you just gotta let it go... The guy had the cheek to offer £40 of the £60 that the pedal was originally sold for after it arrived as a 'good will gesture for the inconvenience he had to go through'....What!?... I told him to keep it and cut my nose off to spite my face, I just didn't want to accept his money. I had one guy that just kept insisting that I build him a pedal in really broken English... 'you build pedal i pay yes?.. why you not build my pedal i pay now yes?... oh dear, this is gonna be a long one......

[inefficiency]

Generally, I build pedals for myself and some friends/bandmates.

Recently however, I started building for a local guitar shop and it's been fine so far. Most of their customers are classic rock & roll type guys, so I just end up doing the usual stuff. Tubescreamers, Fuzz Faces, Klones and stuff like that. I try to mod everything somewhat and tweak the odd thing here and there, so it isn't EXACTLY the same as every other clone out there, but obviously these guys are paying the store for a particular sound, so I can't be too crazy....

So far the store hasn't had anything returned as faulty and because I just sell directly to them, I don't need to deal with difficult customers anyway.

My main issue at the moment is getting away from vero for a few things. When they tell me they need 10 pedals within a couple of days, it can be quite hard fitting it in - and getting some PCBs would help a lot.

I've been looking into diptrace and stuff like that and had a go at making a few basic pcb designs, but it's getting the things manufactured that is stumping me. I really don't know where to start or who to contact about getting them sorted. There's lots of companies out there, but I'm not really in a position to be buying like 50000 at a time.....

If any of you guys have some info for me, it would be much appreciated.

[rocket88]

See that's my problem with going pcb for customer builds. There's one electronics store near me, and they will make, drill, and cut a pcb for you if you give them a design. There's a setup fee of $75, and each board is something like $20, but if you get a certain about the price per board drops. There's companies overseas that will do it for much less, but the way I figure is that if I'm going to sell to a store I  would give them one pedal so people can try them, and build it on a on as needed basis. So when someone wants one and orders it,  I'll build it just for them personally. Also, I can make personal tweaks or inscriptions or whatever for the person.