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21. 

    metaball
    

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    ::careful what you wish for. It is also like an unrelenting form of madness after a certain level.::

    another reason i've been sketchy about going deeper than basic maintenance & lite mods. i'm already disconected with "reality" enough. i can see myself fantasizing about potential tweaks to every piece of gear i see.

    i've talked to a couple peeps on other forums where they got into fixing consoles just to be able to repair their own & it turned into a fulltime career. which would be great but they don't get to play anymore because there's always something that needs to be recapped, modded, soldered, ect.

    ::Since each step in that resulting waveshape generates its own harmonic spectra varying the shape changes the relative distance of the steps and shifting each harmonic spread closer or further apart from each other in time and amplitude. It is pretty difficult to explain. Easier to draw pictures of.:::

    that sounds awesome. what do you think you'll be able to retail em for?

    Posted 6 months ago #
22. 

    hollowman
    

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    @metaball The part about overhauling consoles is mostly true. There is something rather addictive in working on my old RX-7. It being modular though allows me to keep using it for music while I work on it. But the tangible results of your efforts are quite a rush. At first it took me about 8 hours to rehab a channel. Now I can do it in two with the tools I have gotten for this purpose. However there are times when I simply don't want to do it that quickly because I am enjoying every minute of it knowing how good the end result will be. And the results are rewarding. The engineers at TOA designed what they perceived to be the ultimate over-engineered piece of console history. But then marketing must have stepped in at some point and said they can only use the cheapest off the shelf crap available for parts after seeing the cost of the discrete op-amps they designed. So the poor thing got hobbled. I am simply taking it and making it live up to what it should have been and really love doing it.

    As for the QQ. I would really like to try getting this thing down under $200. BUT it is hard in the small quantities I am realistically faced with in terms of sales. If I could count on large quantities of orders I could get the price pretty low. To start though I'll be building them to order with only enough component stock on hand for a dozen units at a time. The modular format is much less expensive in material costs but I see the biggest audience will be guitarists and they likey their stompers. So the cost of enclosed metal chassis hardware makes it difficult to bring to market for less.

    Perhaps I'll do the stomps as special order. Or the modular on special would make more sense because there are a variety of formats to contend with. I have some thinking to do yet. I have a solid product and it works very well. The packaging and the marketing will be the final hurdle.

    Posted 6 months ago #
23. 

    Tsarik
    

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    WILL PROBABLY PISS YOU OFF.

    Mike, i need to check out some audio demos.. but i think it would be a good idea... right before you're ready to start making these... see how interested people are and if any are willing to pre-order... maybe the if you got a few additional dollars upfront you could purchase enough things in bulk to drive your costs down a little and up your profit

    personally.. i'd like something with more control than what stompboxes traditionally offer... cv inputs for integrating with other gear and modulation for instance.. or is it designed to be a static effect?

    Posted 6 months ago #
24. 

    metaball
    

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    thegearpage.net has a builders forum. i know smaller homebrew manufacturers like WMD, Strymon, Dwarfcraft & Neunaber hang out there. might find some heads to bounce ideas off of there. maybe some tips on starting out small & ramping up production as you "grow business".
    http://www.thegearpage.net/board/forumdisplay.php?f=37

    buying in bulk also assures you're going to have access to parts that may go out of print at some point. i've seen several manufactuers that did a run of something great & then weren't able to do another because some chip or whatever went obsolete. the small guys are usually at the mercy of what the larger manufacturers order by the ton.

    Posted 6 months ago #
25. 

    metaball
    

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    i think pre orders are kind of risky with a first product. while it's a good way to round up funds from interested customers, it's also a good way to get bad word of mouth off the bat, should there be a problem with production, packaging, shipping deadlines, sourcing parts, ect. some of the guys i mentioned above do email waiting lists so they can get a good idea of demand & then notify buyers & execute the transaction when units are ready for purchase. this also helps maintain pricing integrity by just keeping up with demand & not flooding the market.

    Posted 6 months ago #
26. 

    hollowman
    

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    @Tsarik The design incorporates CV inputs for most parameters. It was originally designed for modular synths. The stomp version will provide for volume pedals.

    @metaball In the Synth-DIY community we always did the waiting list thing with group PCB purchases and everybody would be sent Paypal requests once the PCBs came back from the manufacturer. In fact selling bare boards to that community is a good idea. I can get an large initial run of PCBs and then if there aren't enough complete unit orders to use all the PCBs the excess can be sold to DIYers to recoup the cost. I've done PCB orders numbering over 150 boards and had them all sell to that group. Even if they don't order them all at first many of those people will come back for extras after they build their 1st order. The same cannot be done with panels and chassis though which are more costly than the PCBs.

    I'll check out that link this weekend.

    Posted 6 months ago #
27. 

    YADE
    

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    http://evolaudio.com/

    I guess as useful as a modular system...looking nice, costing much, very limited in use

    but heck..the website and the item looks cool

    Posted 6 months ago #
28. 

    Tsarik
    

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    WILL PROBABLY PISS YOU OFF.

    been interested in the fucifier and sherman filterbankII... i lean towards the filterbank since it has everything a synth has plus some with the exception of oscillators... and lots of in and out CV patch points.... but man.. that fucifier looks sexy and sounds badass if more tame than the sherman

    Posted 6 months ago #
29. 

    YADE
    

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    @Tsarik: yeah but 2300$? Hell this is a fortune for a thing just able of destroying sounds.....I'd go for the Biscuit in any case....also it will become an 8Bit Monosynth with the new firmware...FTW!!

    the Sherman imho is much more flexible in what you can do ....

    Posted 6 months ago #
30. 

    ketoujin
    

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    You can always process a sound in several ways - until it´s gone. So only distortion on a sound is not very interesting. It´s better to give a personality to your sounds. You can use gain in several ways, ringmod, wavewrapper, bit reduceing, loopcrossmod (sounds a bit like strech a sound on a tape with variable speed), various types of filters and whatever. best and most brutal effect processor is your brain - nothing else.

    Posted 4 months ago #
31. 

    soillodge
    

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    "best and most brutal effect processor is your brain - nothing else."
    QTF

    Posted 4 months ago #

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