6 ms·

He could make a killing selling these devices - if the sound quality is good and if he can find a way to produce an audiophile-sized batch. I'd pay in the $100

by moe 15y ago

He could make a killing selling these devices - if the sound quality is good and if he can find a way to produce an audiophile-sized batch. I'd pay in the $100 range for one without thinking, real audiophiles would probably pay much more.

revscat 15y ago
Until MegaCorp comes along and slaps him with a patent infringement lawsuit, of course. I'm pretty sure there are a large number of patents around amplifiers of various kinds. Hopefully I'm just being overly cynical.
- savrajsingh 15y ago
  Most, if not all of those patents are expired (20+ years old). Once a patent expires, it's in the public domain and can't be re-issued or re-assigned. So yeah, overly cynical in this case. :)
- pjscott 15y ago
  This is actually a pretty simple op-amp circuit. The tricky amplifier stuff is all in the OPA2107 chip; everything else is either part of the power supply, or a straightfoward arrangement of resistors and capacitors to get the op-amp to do the right thing. The really cool part here is the assembly. That thing is very pretty.
HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
Unless he can find cheap workers, the labor to produce it would make $100 each a steal. No way does it take less than an hour start to finish to build that. I'd start pricing at around $350 and see how that flies.
- icegreentea 15y ago
  If you invested in some jigs to hold the components while soldering, then I could see significant time savings. The time to cure the resin really doesnt count. I woukd estimate that with the correct jigs, you could complete the soldering in half an hour tops. I count roughly fifty solders on thus thing, most of them pretty simple. You also overestimate the per hour cost of semi skilled labor. The skills involved arent that involved or difficult to learn (especially with the right tooling).
  - HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
    Of course you need fixturing: that's a given. Remember to account for the time and materials making up fixtures. I would price the labor at around $15-$30 per hour minimum. You aren't going to farm this out to an assembly shop (not enough volume) and there isn't enough money in it to hire employees and deal with that overhead, so you're down to finding a FOAF or a student who can solder and is reliable. Factor into that that the person must be supervised. Next, this isn't just assembly that has to work; it has to look good, so the assembler needs the skill and attention to detail to provide that. That means either you get lucky or you have a lot of rework, or you watch him closely. Soldering is not enough: need to pay attention to the cut ends of those thick conductors. The component lead terminations must look good and the components themselves should be fairly regularly placed and not look sloppy. Remember, you're selling primarily on looks. Also, if this assembler isn't always available, you have to make enough inventory to handle orders that may come in until he can make more if you don't have the time to do it yourself. Volumes are uncertain, but the parts are cheap, so let's assume he buys enough to make 100 units at a time. The selling price has to reflect the risk that all those parts won't be used. Buy higher inventory levels and your parts cost goes down, but risk of "dead stock" goes up. Having a small electronics mfg business on the side, I live this on a daily basis. Luckily I don't sell to price sensitive hobbyists :-) But in the end, the price I'd try to sell it for has nothing to do with how much it cost to build: it's cool looking. That's where the price comes from.
    - DanBC 15y ago
      > You aren't going to farm this out to an assembly shop (not enough volume) There are plenty of sub-contract electronic manufacturing companies that'd take on jobs of 100 units. > I would price the labor at around $15-$30 per hour minimum. Yes.
    - Natsu 15y ago
      Learning to solder mostly requires practice, so you could probably train someone to do it. You just have to make sure they don't destroy a lot of expensive parts learning. But you're right about all the other stuff. I wouldn't be surprised to see something like this on Kickstarter, though.
- D_Alex 15y ago
  You underestimate the power of well designed production, and how good people can get at a repetitive task they do all day. I count about 20 components, about 40 solders. Allowing 5 seconds per bend (using jigs), 5 seconds per solder, one minute for assembly (again using jigs), one minute for finish... I'd say about 7 minutes labour per unit. Jigs, etc, could run to 100 hours all up, they seem very simple. I'd feel comfortable budgeting 15 mins/unit for runs of 1000+.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
    I've performed as well as supervised manual circuit board assembly. I know what it's like to get in the zone of doing something like this all day. My experience teaches me that it takes on average soldering a few dozen units of anything unusual before the assembler gets the hang of it. Unusual being anything besides stuffing a PC board and manually soldering. This is not likely to ever be a high volume product, and I probably (admittedly only knowing the size of the market from what other posters have said) would not be comfortable doing production runs of more than 50 at a time, so you lose a lot of the benefits of doing long runs. That said, I think your estimates are a bit optimistic. Once the entire time is accounted for: from kitting up the run, setting up the work area, actual assembly and testing, my guess would be closer to 30 minutes per unit. Slightly OT, but if you can point me to any good resources for setup and manual assembly of cable harnesses, it would be much appreciated. It's an area I find myself getting involved in and I don't have much experience, so it's pretty much "learning by error."
OzzyB 15y ago
There is a forum/website out there call "GearSlutz"[1], that has a huge & healthy community based around, well, gear. The amazing thing I've learned from lerking there from time-to-time is that some folks are actually seeding, promoting and selling their "cottage-made" products there. The thing is, these gear "slutz" are hungry for well-made/hand-made, "analogy" products that simply don't cost a fortune -- think Value Compressors & Amps etc. -- I think this guy could do well to go and check it out... An example of another product that was "launched" on this site (serial #001 was sold on that very forum), is a beautiful little "8bit sound box" called Biscuit, hand-made by some guy in France: http://www.otomachines.com/biscuit.html http://www.otomachines.com/biscuit.html [1]http://gearslutz.com http://gearslutz.com
brandall10 15y ago
A killing? As a long-time head-fi member I disagree. There have been plenty of cool or highly artistic as far build and casework amps and they tend to be very limited hand-built affairs (usually less than 100 units produced). At any scale, if you're selling in the hundreds to thousands, head-fiers will require that a $100 amp be at least sonically competitive with other $100 amps, $300 amps with $300 amps, etc. They might pay a 25% upcharge if something about its build or casing is unusually unique, but generally for portable amps they pay more for portability/slimness, not because it simply looks cool. Usually in these lower ranges you're competing with Chinese built stuff that is phenomenally good for the price. You can get pretty high-quality portable amp/DAC combos around the $100-200 price point from companies like iBasso/FiiO. That this is a fully point-to-point design encased in resin is cool, but it's not $300 cool unless he's building it with top-notch components, which I don't see here.
- schiffern 15y ago
  I must diagree. This is no ordinary amplifier, and I don't think you can simply compare it to an amplifier with a "unique case". This is what I would call, if you'll forgive me, transparent design. Obviously I'm not talking about the just the case. The mechanism of action of modern electronics is hidden behind 6-layer printed circuit boards and integrated circuit packages. Opening up an iPhone gives precious little insight into its workings. You wind up googling datasheets instead of following traces. This is a tactile product. A 6-year old could pick up this amp, ask a few pointed questions about what they see inside, and actually have a prayer of figuring out how it works. I know I would sit there for cumulative hours just turning it over and watching the image of the components refracted through the faces. With everything stripped away, the noise becomes the signal – the imperfections in the solder joints, slight tool marks on the leads, the banded resistors that have gone out of style. Yeah, there are people that would pay quite a bit for this, even if they're not audiophiles.
  - wtvanhest 15y ago
    You aren't really addressing his main point about market size other than saying there are people that would pay quite a bit for this, even if they're not audiophiles. I have no idea what this does, or why I would want it, and I'm fairly confident I'm not alone there. How many people want or even know what this thing does? How many of those people will think this product is so much better than what they have that a clear version is worth spending $100s of dollars on? It could be that the market is huge and I just do not understand it, but you didn't really help us understand how big it is either. To me, "a killing" seems like a stretch.
zerostar07 15y ago
I believe it's vacuum tube amplifier that are expensive.

by moe 15y ago

revscat 15y ago

Until MegaCorp comes along and slaps him with a patent infringement lawsuit, of course. I'm pretty sure there are a large number of patents around amplifiers of various kinds. Hopefully I'm just being overly cynical.

savrajsingh 15y ago
Most, if not all of those patents are expired (20+ years old). Once a patent expires, it's in the public domain and can't be re-issued or re-assigned. So yeah, overly cynical in this case. :)
pjscott 15y ago
This is actually a pretty simple op-amp circuit. The tricky amplifier stuff is all in the OPA2107 chip; everything else is either part of the power supply, or a straightfoward arrangement of resistors and capacitors to get the op-amp to do the right thing. The really cool part here is the assembly. That thing is very pretty.

HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago

Unless he can find cheap workers, the labor to produce it would make $100 each a steal. No way does it take less than an hour start to finish to build that. I'd start pricing at around $350 and see how that flies.

icegreentea 15y ago
If you invested in some jigs to hold the components while soldering, then I could see significant time savings. The time to cure the resin really doesnt count. I woukd estimate that with the correct jigs, you could complete the soldering in half an hour tops. I count roughly fifty solders on thus thing, most of them pretty simple. You also overestimate the per hour cost of semi skilled labor. The skills involved arent that involved or difficult to learn (especially with the right tooling).
- HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
  Of course you need fixturing: that's a given. Remember to account for the time and materials making up fixtures. I would price the labor at around $15-$30 per hour minimum. You aren't going to farm this out to an assembly shop (not enough volume) and there isn't enough money in it to hire employees and deal with that overhead, so you're down to finding a FOAF or a student who can solder and is reliable. Factor into that that the person must be supervised. Next, this isn't just assembly that has to work; it has to look good, so the assembler needs the skill and attention to detail to provide that. That means either you get lucky or you have a lot of rework, or you watch him closely. Soldering is not enough: need to pay attention to the cut ends of those thick conductors. The component lead terminations must look good and the components themselves should be fairly regularly placed and not look sloppy. Remember, you're selling primarily on looks. Also, if this assembler isn't always available, you have to make enough inventory to handle orders that may come in until he can make more if you don't have the time to do it yourself. Volumes are uncertain, but the parts are cheap, so let's assume he buys enough to make 100 units at a time. The selling price has to reflect the risk that all those parts won't be used. Buy higher inventory levels and your parts cost goes down, but risk of "dead stock" goes up. Having a small electronics mfg business on the side, I live this on a daily basis. Luckily I don't sell to price sensitive hobbyists :-) But in the end, the price I'd try to sell it for has nothing to do with how much it cost to build: it's cool looking. That's where the price comes from.
  - DanBC 15y ago
    > You aren't going to farm this out to an assembly shop (not enough volume) There are plenty of sub-contract electronic manufacturing companies that'd take on jobs of 100 units. > I would price the labor at around $15-$30 per hour minimum. Yes.
  - Natsu 15y ago
    Learning to solder mostly requires practice, so you could probably train someone to do it. You just have to make sure they don't destroy a lot of expensive parts learning. But you're right about all the other stuff. I wouldn't be surprised to see something like this on Kickstarter, though.
D_Alex 15y ago
You underestimate the power of well designed production, and how good people can get at a repetitive task they do all day. I count about 20 components, about 40 solders. Allowing 5 seconds per bend (using jigs), 5 seconds per solder, one minute for assembly (again using jigs), one minute for finish... I'd say about 7 minutes labour per unit. Jigs, etc, could run to 100 hours all up, they seem very simple. I'd feel comfortable budgeting 15 mins/unit for runs of 1000+.
- HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
  I've performed as well as supervised manual circuit board assembly. I know what it's like to get in the zone of doing something like this all day. My experience teaches me that it takes on average soldering a few dozen units of anything unusual before the assembler gets the hang of it. Unusual being anything besides stuffing a PC board and manually soldering. This is not likely to ever be a high volume product, and I probably (admittedly only knowing the size of the market from what other posters have said) would not be comfortable doing production runs of more than 50 at a time, so you lose a lot of the benefits of doing long runs. That said, I think your estimates are a bit optimistic. Once the entire time is accounted for: from kitting up the run, setting up the work area, actual assembly and testing, my guess would be closer to 30 minutes per unit. Slightly OT, but if you can point me to any good resources for setup and manual assembly of cable harnesses, it would be much appreciated. It's an area I find myself getting involved in and I don't have much experience, so it's pretty much "learning by error."

OzzyB 15y ago

There is a forum/website out there call "GearSlutz"[1], that has a huge & healthy community based around, well, gear. The amazing thing I've learned from lerking there from time-to-time is that some folks are actually seeding, promoting and selling their "cottage-made" products there. The thing is, these gear "slutz" are hungry for well-made/hand-made, "analogy" products that simply don't cost a fortune -- think Value Compressors & Amps etc. -- I think this guy could do well to go and check it out... An example of another product that was "launched" on this site (serial #001 was sold on that very forum), is a beautiful little "8bit sound box" called Biscuit, hand-made by some guy in France: http://www.otomachines.com/biscuit.html http://www.otomachines.com/biscuit.html [1]http://gearslutz.com http://gearslutz.com

brandall10 15y ago

A killing? As a long-time head-fi member I disagree. There have been plenty of cool or highly artistic as far build and casework amps and they tend to be very limited hand-built affairs (usually less than 100 units produced). At any scale, if you're selling in the hundreds to thousands, head-fiers will require that a $100 amp be at least sonically competitive with other $100 amps, $300 amps with $300 amps, etc. They might pay a 25% upcharge if something about its build or casing is unusually unique, but generally for portable amps they pay more for portability/slimness, not because it simply looks cool. Usually in these lower ranges you're competing with Chinese built stuff that is phenomenally good for the price. You can get pretty high-quality portable amp/DAC combos around the $100-200 price point from companies like iBasso/FiiO. That this is a fully point-to-point design encased in resin is cool, but it's not $300 cool unless he's building it with top-notch components, which I don't see here.

schiffern 15y ago
I must diagree. This is no ordinary amplifier, and I don't think you can simply compare it to an amplifier with a "unique case". This is what I would call, if you'll forgive me, transparent design. Obviously I'm not talking about the just the case. The mechanism of action of modern electronics is hidden behind 6-layer printed circuit boards and integrated circuit packages. Opening up an iPhone gives precious little insight into its workings. You wind up googling datasheets instead of following traces. This is a tactile product. A 6-year old could pick up this amp, ask a few pointed questions about what they see inside, and actually have a prayer of figuring out how it works. I know I would sit there for cumulative hours just turning it over and watching the image of the components refracted through the faces. With everything stripped away, the noise becomes the signal – the imperfections in the solder joints, slight tool marks on the leads, the banded resistors that have gone out of style. Yeah, there are people that would pay quite a bit for this, even if they're not audiophiles.
- wtvanhest 15y ago
  You aren't really addressing his main point about market size other than saying there are people that would pay quite a bit for this, even if they're not audiophiles. I have no idea what this does, or why I would want it, and I'm fairly confident I'm not alone there. How many people want or even know what this thing does? How many of those people will think this product is so much better than what they have that a clear version is worth spending $100s of dollars on? It could be that the market is huge and I just do not understand it, but you didn't really help us understand how big it is either. To me, "a killing" seems like a stretch.

zerostar07 15y ago

I believe it's vacuum tube amplifier that are expensive.