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I used to make my own effects pedals and sell them under the “electric toad engineering” moniker. It’s a lot of fun, but the market is way too crowded and you’

I used to make my own effects pedals and sell them under the “electric toad engineering” moniker. It’s a lot of fun, but the market is way too crowded and you’re not going to make much money at it! Still, my pedals are very good. The last design I came up with I only made one of, and I use it for myself.. but, it is the best overdrive I’ve ever heard, or at least, after years of fiddling with it there’s nothing left I can do to make it any better. I just don’t want to spend my time doing screen printing, advertising, shipping, drilling, soldering, and so on just make 50 bucks on each unit. There is a lot of hokum that people believe when it comes to overdrive, but it comes down to a really good signal to noise ratio, and a thousand tiny details, and very close attention to pre/post gain eq. I think the same is true of the “tube sound” mojo- the tube amps that are most sought after are great because they were a labor of love, and people sweated over the tiny details. Solid state amps are designed to be cheap, so they have worse speakers, and so on. You can get just a good a sound out of transistors, you just have to spend some money and time to do it.

djmips 5y ago
Step 1. Good SNR Step 2. 1000 tiny details Step 3. Profit! Thanks for the advice!
- varispeed 5y ago
  Get a good analogue pedal, reverse engineer a schematic (these are not copyrightable), create your own PCB, order a BOM, enclosures, some nice knobs, give the pedal some crazy name and paint some whacky stuff on the enclosure. Open an online store, then give it away to some pedal influencers. Wait for those sweet sweet sales. People are always in need of a new pedal even if it is the same that 100 they already have. Just give it a good back story, e.g. the transistors you used were with you on a trip into a jungle or were worn as earrings by your 100 year old grandma for one month.
  - lc9er 5y ago
    > give the pedal some crazy name and paint some whacky stuff on the enclosure. This seems to be the primary differentiator between most analog pedals these days.
jakelazaroff 5y ago
Did you try selling at significantly higher prices? I bet there’s a huge market for boutique guitar pedals. I’ve seen people advocate Vickrey auctions as a price discovery mechanism: https://kevinlynagh.com/notes/pricing-niche-products/ https://kevinlynagh.com/notes/pricing-niche-products/
- ghostpepper 5y ago
  There's a somewhat-unique-sounding boost pedal called the Super Hard On that retails for upwards of $300 and contains a single FET transistor and a half dozen passive components totalling less than $10 in bulk quantity.
damontal 5y ago
The difference between tube and solid state amps is less about sound and more about response to the attack of the pick.
- xbar 5y ago
  I do not agree. But I do love me some Rivera-era Fender solid state amps. http://www.stratopastor.org.uk/strato/amps/twoseriesfenders/datingFenderRiveraeraamps.html http://www.stratopastor.org.uk/strato/amps/twoseriesfenders/... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaW83WNDqRY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaW83WNDqRY
- the_local_host 5y ago
  That difference is itself dependent on how the pick is grasped. Anything can happen.
Jeema101 5y ago
I also have designed pedals in the past - I agree with you it is loads of fun but probably hard to make money on. As I see it, there's two issues working against you in this regard. First, guitar players in general seem to be somewhat driven by crowd mentality and not entirely open to embrace anything that isn't already tried-and-true. That makes it hard to get anyone to try something that isn't a clone or tweak of an existing design. Second, like you said, the market is very saturated, and even if you do have a unique design, the aforementioned mentality largely works against you I think. All that being said, there's a whole world of exploration and discovery out there when it comes to analog circuit design and that alone I think makes it an incredibly rewarding hobby.
xbar 5y ago
But already your pitch is so good it makes me want to know your secrets or buy your pedal or suggest a marketing plan. Perhaps document it for your own posterity.
- fallingfrog 5y ago
  Hahaha ok, if you really do want one email me at fallingfrog at gmail dot com and I’ll see what I can do.. it would feel nice to have someone besides just me to enjoy all that work. I’ll send you a schematic with the pedal.
detaro 5y ago
Feels like the modular synthesizer market is more the place for random new stuff with many small players nowadays.
pjbk 5y ago
I know that some guitarists hate them, but I enjoyed playing my stereo Marshall ValveState (a newer one with an ECC83 instead of the classic 12AX7). I think it was the right balance between both worlds. You could barely tell it was mostly transistors inside. Well, it was a Marshall after all. That being said I have played the new MG ones and you can feel there is something missing. I once had to repair my circa-1990 Crate GX160, so I bought its schematics. Most of the passive components went into multiple stage filters on every freaking section. Talk about overkill. I doubt you could even hear the effect of some of those filters, but they definitely played safe and took care of designs back then. Except for a few vendors, now it's all about packing as much they can on the digital side and penny pinching on the hardware.

djmips 5y ago

Step 1. Good SNR Step 2. 1000 tiny details Step 3. Profit! Thanks for the advice!

varispeed 5y ago
Get a good analogue pedal, reverse engineer a schematic (these are not copyrightable), create your own PCB, order a BOM, enclosures, some nice knobs, give the pedal some crazy name and paint some whacky stuff on the enclosure. Open an online store, then give it away to some pedal influencers. Wait for those sweet sweet sales. People are always in need of a new pedal even if it is the same that 100 they already have. Just give it a good back story, e.g. the transistors you used were with you on a trip into a jungle or were worn as earrings by your 100 year old grandma for one month.
- lc9er 5y ago
  > give the pedal some crazy name and paint some whacky stuff on the enclosure. This seems to be the primary differentiator between most analog pedals these days.

jakelazaroff 5y ago

Did you try selling at significantly higher prices? I bet there’s a huge market for boutique guitar pedals. I’ve seen people advocate Vickrey auctions as a price discovery mechanism: https://kevinlynagh.com/notes/pricing-niche-products/ https://kevinlynagh.com/notes/pricing-niche-products/

ghostpepper 5y ago
There's a somewhat-unique-sounding boost pedal called the Super Hard On that retails for upwards of $300 and contains a single FET transistor and a half dozen passive components totalling less than $10 in bulk quantity.

damontal 5y ago

The difference between tube and solid state amps is less about sound and more about response to the attack of the pick.

xbar 5y ago
I do not agree. But I do love me some Rivera-era Fender solid state amps. http://www.stratopastor.org.uk/strato/amps/twoseriesfenders/datingFenderRiveraeraamps.html http://www.stratopastor.org.uk/strato/amps/twoseriesfenders/... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaW83WNDqRY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaW83WNDqRY
the_local_host 5y ago
That difference is itself dependent on how the pick is grasped. Anything can happen.

Jeema101 5y ago

I also have designed pedals in the past - I agree with you it is loads of fun but probably hard to make money on. As I see it, there's two issues working against you in this regard. First, guitar players in general seem to be somewhat driven by crowd mentality and not entirely open to embrace anything that isn't already tried-and-true. That makes it hard to get anyone to try something that isn't a clone or tweak of an existing design. Second, like you said, the market is very saturated, and even if you do have a unique design, the aforementioned mentality largely works against you I think. All that being said, there's a whole world of exploration and discovery out there when it comes to analog circuit design and that alone I think makes it an incredibly rewarding hobby.

xbar 5y ago

But already your pitch is so good it makes me want to know your secrets or buy your pedal or suggest a marketing plan. Perhaps document it for your own posterity.

fallingfrog 5y ago
Hahaha ok, if you really do want one email me at fallingfrog at gmail dot com and I’ll see what I can do.. it would feel nice to have someone besides just me to enjoy all that work. I’ll send you a schematic with the pedal.

detaro 5y ago

Feels like the modular synthesizer market is more the place for random new stuff with many small players nowadays.

pjbk 5y ago

I know that some guitarists hate them, but I enjoyed playing my stereo Marshall ValveState (a newer one with an ECC83 instead of the classic 12AX7). I think it was the right balance between both worlds. You could barely tell it was mostly transistors inside. Well, it was a Marshall after all. That being said I have played the new MG ones and you can feel there is something missing. I once had to repair my circa-1990 Crate GX160, so I bought its schematics. Most of the passive components went into multiple stage filters on every freaking section. Talk about overkill. I doubt you could even hear the effect of some of those filters, but they definitely played safe and took care of designs back then. Except for a few vendors, now it's all about packing as much they can on the digital side and penny pinching on the hardware.