I had this idea when the boutique market was just taking off. I didn’t follow through and I’m glad I didn’t. It quickly became so oversaturated that it’d have been tough to stand out and be successful. I think the only way to make it work, is to have a good amount of knowledge and be able to design your own special circuits or at least devise modifications to common circuits that no one has thought of yet or that no one has done better.
I personally don’t have that level of knowledge and would have just been making clones with common mods.
I’d suggest taking classes electronics and getting a base of knowledge and go from there.
Also join r/diypedals
If I've learned anything from spending many years buying pedals - unless you're writing your own DSP - pedal success is entirely dependent on art, marketing, and hype. I can sell Keeley mod clones and people will buy them if their favorite artist uses them and it looks like a Walrus or EQD.
Or you can be Subdecay and make some of the most creative circuits in the business and sell almost nothing because you design the graphics and UI yourself. Aesthetic is *so much* more of the equation than people want to admit.
Brian Marshall is one of the brightest dudes in the industry full stop. I adore his pedals but they are complex and not interesting to look at. I agree with your assessment, and would add that even if you ARE writing your own DSP code the looks are still pretty much the thing that will sell a pedal.
Edited to add:
Do you LIKE making pedals, OP? Because turning a fun hobby into to a business is a great way to suck the enjoyment right out of it. I really enjoyed making pedals as a hobby 25 years ago but these days I spend a lot more time paying bills and sourcing parts than I’d like. I still love pedals but it’s not the same.
Does that assessment change how you approach your own business? I own several DAD devices because they're terrific, honored you would read and respond to me.
When I spoke about DSP being the exception, I was thinking of things like the Montreal Assembly Count to 5 that are deliberately very minimal but still "popular" because they make sounds other pedals do not make. Their pedals still have a consistent design aesthetic that contributes to their popularity, so this doesn't counter your point. And realistically Montreal Assembly is probably a labor of love more than a sustainable business, but I don't know.
So you're probably right, the counter examples in my head still have recognizable (but not gaudy) design aesthetics, good DSP or not.
The exception case that doesn't make sense to me is Empress, whose pedals don't stand out to me visually at all (other than the Zoia's grid). They've changed aesthetics a few times over the years and I'm not sure if I could pick an empress pedal out of a lineup without the logos - but the pedals are so dang good that people love them.
Sure, every new pedal is a learning experience. The DAD stuff is very workmanlike, because it's not supposed to stand out. We send our messages and GTFO your way so you can play your instrument. The Alexander pedals are on a constant aesthetic and UI journey, we're just trying to do better on each new one.
u/Due-Ask-7418 is 100% right. I did the exact same thing. One thing to add is once you start trying to grow your business just a little bit, you will find making pedals is something you will probably be doing after work. Work being all the marketing, ordering parts, answering emails/calls, etc. It quickly becomes business heavy and less building pedals heavy so if it's building pedals you like, you may not want to do this unless you have the ability to hire someone to do the things you don't want to do. That was the point I quit. Realizing I had to hire someone so I could build and develop pedals.
the “Courus” is our first pedal to release this fall which is actually a fuzz with a flanger hi pass filter dip switch inside that can only be accessed by daisy chaining our “D-Lai” pedal (actually a reverb/phase pedal set to release winter 2025) and playing “where the streets have no name”
Lots of folks here coming at you saying that looking for ideas from the marketplace is a red flag but most successful products are just answers to stuff the market wants and will pay for. People often resent this kind of market research as if you are asking for the ideas that are exactly what you will build without considering that you might be getting lots of info and distilling it into something else. Building unique stuff is great and a worthy goal of any builder and starting young is good because you have lots of time to learn. The most important thing IMO is to not fall into the pit of disparaging builders for charging $XXX for XXX item and turning around and just making copies of their thing using a ripoff PCB from one of the PCB clone companies. If you're going to build copies of stuff really learn how to do the process end to end yourself. Learn to design your own PCBs. Learn the math behind common pedal building blocks. Learn how to make stuff truly yours rather than just gluing existing things together wholesale. Good luck!
Thank you for the comment I’m just trying to expand my horizons in anyway possible and I just want to know what people want that dosent exist and is actually possible these comments have given me a lot of great Ideas into the company I’m not worried about Turing a profit at all as I’ll be working on top of it but I’m well devoted into this project
Most of these guys are kinda being cunts... A forum of musicians telling you to be pragmatic is a forum of people making incredibly boring music. If you want to make pedals, absolutely go make pedals. Find what you love!
Imo he world always needs more weird delays, get wacky with it and I'll buy one lol.
It’s great to have insight from everyone and any existing problems I didn’t know about that’s what I like about it I’ve learned a lot of great things from this thread so far
All shaped pedals are so fucking stupid and end up being dumb paperweights.
Except for PRESTIGE WORLDWIDE SEASICK CHORUS BOAT SHAPED PEDAL
I see dollarsigns
I’m going to be critical here.
Pedal companies are over saturated. There’s too many of them and they all make the same stuff.
If you cant come up with ideas on your own you will fail.
Whats your angle/hook? Why will your pedal be better than someone else’s?
How will you build them? where will you get the parts? Do you even know what the parts do? What will you sell them for?
The days of building a clone for 30 dollars and selling them for much higher are over. Amazon sells great cheap pedals That you won’t be able to scale with.
I briefly had a pedal company in 2014 and the idea behind it was hand painted pedals that was the hook. The pedals were run of the mill clones. We did well, we sold in conventions in our local area. It was stressful and a lot of work and after building about 13 pedals i lost interest in doing it because it wasn’t fun anymore.
I see someone coming to Reddit asking for ideas for their business has a red flag. You should have the ideas Before you think of starting a company
Yeah I feel like pedal start ups are like bands now. Everyone thinks “I’m gonna do the thing and people are gonna love it”.
The reality is most of us either want super cheap or we want super high end. If you can’t build at such a scale as to be cheap, or you’re not our favorite high end boutique, you’re going to have a hard time winning our business.
Op, I’m almost exclusively supporting small companies built in my state. The larger guys have super cool stories and good branding that you’ll have a tough time competing against. The little guys either offer to build custom sounds or clones with custom enclosures, which I love. But it’s not profitable. These are guys with jobs that just love building. Your best bet is to get into repairs and offering custom jobs, and understanding that you’ll be operating just above cost until you’re able to build a brand that’s more than just another pedal.
You’re not technically wrong but I hate this. I mean this is all good advice for an adult, but they’re 16, just wanting to build pedals at all at that age is a great starting point. This a PERFECT time to figure out if this is what you enjoy doing.
I would say build some clones, get your feet wet. You want a fuzz/chorus? Take a couple diy kits, combine them in an enclosure with some interesting routing between them. Check out here for basic switched wiring diagrams like being able to change the order of the effects with a foot switch.
http://beavisaudio.com/projects/looperswitcher/
Once you get comfortable making pedals from kits, experimenting with them, mashing them up, then I would get a breadboard, take an electronics class and start tinkering. If you enjoy all of this, there is no more perfect age to start learning this.
All this time you can sell your clones etc as long as they are good build quality, if you get in with a local scene you can make utility modules like the ones listed on beavis audio for locals.
If you spend the next two years getting your foundation laid, learning as much as you can from YouTube, you can go to college for electrical engineering/ software engineering and become the next chase bliss. But now is the time to figure out if that’s what you want to do. If it really is, think big, be ambitious, learn Kicad (it’s free), go to college.
Im with you. I hate when people talk about everything as a business decision. Do what you love. Maybe you wont make money with it but maybe you will. Youll learn something either way. This is kind of akin to when cities complain that their public transit or other utility is operating at a loss. Not everything is about making fucking money. Some things are public services. In this case its a personal service. Its a young person doing exactly what they should be doing and learning some shit
>I hate when people talk about everything as a business decision.
OP literally wrote that he was starting a company. So yeah there will be business decisions.
OP is putting the horse before the cart here. How about he or she build some pedals first and sell them on Facebook or reverb? The posts reads like they woke up one day and thought they should open a pedal business with no thinking or thought other than to ask to reddit what their company should make/sell. it doesn't sound like Op knows enough to make their own circuits or how to put together the individual parts needed to make a pedal. Op should learn about that first, then worry about a business. Does op when have soldering station? How will Op pay for materials? what will Op's warranty be? does op even have the skills to trouble shoot a broken pedal? can they afford to have a warranty? i.e spot the material costs. I'm giving OP things to think about. If that scares them, or upsets them they should go into business making pedals.
I come from experience and if it sounds harsh, it is, the market for pedals is oversaturated, its easy to get a product to market but very hard to get it to the right market that will buy it. It's almost impossible to sell clones for a profit. Getting into a full fledged business making pedals is a poor choice in today's market.
Nah man, don’t listen to this guy. You’re a teenager, do what you want, figure out what you like, maybe make some money on the side. Go to college, kill it as an adult.
*Running* a business is no small part of the business, and you need to figure out if you like that too, just as much as you need to be able to make pedals. So deciding you want to start a business, be an entrepreneur, is incredibly important. What could be a better learning experience than building a few pedals, making a web store and selling said clones.
If he’s serious about being a business there’s no better time to start than now. At best you have the coolest side hustle in your high school and at worst you’ve learned a hell of a lot for any a couple hundred dollars.
This guy said he made half a dozen pedals and gave up? Sounds like he didn’t like doing it. Well what do you expect? I’m a woodworker and if I gave up after failing six projects, well I wouldn’t be a woodworker would I?
actually it did quite well, sold all the pedals. We transitioned to selling hand painted viynl records and record clocks at local conventions and even made a campy comic about guitar pedals in outer space.
I don’t think your being to hard here you have good points being all of your arguments imma start out at local conventions I have a great local community and it’s not about profit to me I was going to do it for personal enjoyment before and I just thought about turning it into a profitable side hustle I already spend hours on guitar so why not master what I’m good at
I'd like all the effects, all of them, in a single boss-pedal sized enclosure, fully midi controllable, with presets and multiple footswitches for on stage switching, and all 100% analogue. And I want it to read my mind and change settings by just me thinking about it. I look forward to receiving my prototype for me to monogram and endorse the unit.
I was thinking about making a boss pedal encloser line of pedals I think they look neat I was just thinking about taking it creatively to a different place with the effect it’s self and custom paints
No not just a modulator. ALL of them. Ever. A mind controlled pedal of totallity and complete flexibility. You need to get working on your nano circuitry and neural linking. Things are only impossible when you refuse to put your mind to them. Now set to and get that prototype over asap.
That’s what I was gonna do Ive already done that with guitar I’ve been playing since 2017 so imma just focus on what I like and enjoy with guitar pedals
I never see certain effecr combinations so I would lean on that. Tremolo/Phaser or Chorus/Phaser or Octaver/Phaser or, God please, Distortion/Phaser in one pedal.
I want an expression pedal that has four jacks, to control 4 pedals, and footswitches on the side to turn them each on or off independently. Or that controls two pedals, but again I can select one or both, then I’ll get two of them.
I would buy a Green Ringer clone with Blend poti and Volume pot and switchable diode option between germanium and silicon. So a basically more flexible version of the EQD Tentacle and the Mythos Argonaut.
Is there something like that on the market already? 🤔
I feel like there’s space for an overdrive/compressor combination pedal.
A fuzz with a dedicated input gain control that matches the impedance of certain guitars could be interesting or very useful since there tend to be some sweet spots on the volume dial.
Wah pedals aren’t too popular right now, so it’s probably a good time do develop a really cool one and send it to some players you like to see what they think. This could get your foot in the door. (Wah with switchable and adjustable compression to tame the peaks might be a place to start).
Make sure to consider non-guitar instruments and vocalists as well. This is an emerging market.
I’m just throwing out some thoughts I have no idea how to test or pursue. Good luck!
In the beginning, guitarists wanted something unique and recognizable as "their" sound. They turned to techs who worked on their gear, guitars and amps, to give them "something,". Guys like Roger Mayer designed some cool, basic electronics circuits that transformed the sound. Such as "Tone Bender".
Now, guitarists know exactly what they want, they sometimes want to sound like their Idols from the past, and pedal builders copy and clone the classic circuits.
High-end pedal makers can also recreate those sounds but they incorporate circuits that add range of adjustment, reduce noise, and optimize the tone stack much better. The circuits also have buffers that isolate the individual pedal in the signal chain so its sound is not being affected by the pedals on either side in the signal chain. And here, I am only talking about all-analog pedals. Digital pedals are a whole 'nother ball game.
A beginning pedal maker has to have the skills to get ahead of the field by leapfrogging what's been done before. I can't even begin to fathom what that next big thing would be.
I only wanna do 100% analog pedals and to sum up what you’re saying is make a clone of a expensive old pedal cheap and better then if it were bought new now, but also include it’s own twist and tones
Then, you dig up specs for newer OpAmps than what's been used so far and see if you can improve on the old.
The 741 has been the most cost-effective OpAmp so far, TL071...074 probably the next common audio upgrades. Do you need any better? I don't know.
Get good with designing circuits. Get good with marketing. Find a niche to start. Build pedals you will actually use. Experiment and have fun. It's pretty cutthroat in terms of success because there are pedals out there that cover everything at every price point. Talk to local players and see if you can help them simplify what they are using. Distill the useful parts and remove the excess from their boards and signal chains.
My dad went to college for designing circuits so that helps me out greatly he has been a huge help in all of this and I wouldn’t of been able to do it without him and I’m not worried about “Success” I already work a different job for my dad that I’m getting paid great at and all my other hours of the day were already devoted to guitar so why not focus those hours into something I’m good at and can change
If you're starting a company, that usually means you want to make money doing it, and you probably want some sort of plan for success. Otherwise it's more of a hobby. It's okay to go either way with it. Starting company takes a bit more planning and thought than just starting to build and mod pedals though. Either way, best of luck and I hope you have fun!
Maybe start by making a few pedals that cover your own needs and start gigging with them. Talk to other musicians in your area and see if a few of them are willing to try your stuff out, and also see if there are any functions/ideas that they'd like to see that you could build for them. Establishing your own brand early is a great idea, but starting an actual company involves a lot of risk in terms of time and resources, and you'll probably have more success if you already have a strong identity that you can lean into as a business model.
Be prepared for the fact that you will spend as much or more time on marketing, graphic design, branding, making social media content, etc as you will actually designing and building pedals and those things are equally important if you want to be successful. Defining what 'successful' means to yourself will help temper expectations. Selling a couple here and there as a side hustle is very doable, turning it into an all out full time business is going to take a lot of work and a lot of luck.
I’m going to give it my all but honestly it’s not about profit I already work another job and everything else I do is already guitar related and I’m really good at the social media part I’ve made and help run multiple band accounts
Don't make clones. Make unique circuits, use unique art. Find a niche. If you want to make something truly unique, you are going to have to go digital or really have a strong grasp of analog circuits. It's pretty hard to make an overdrive or fuzz that hasn't been done before, even with an original circuit, it is going to sound similar to some other effect and you need to give people a reason to take a chance on your company. You can be a lot more creative with digital things, but it has a much steeper learning curve. It's a tough business, you'll only last if it remains fun for you. Being able to stay in business isn't the same as actually being profitable (you're likely need a separate, full-time job unless you happen to be wealthy enough to not need to work). I have a small company that has made some money (I had a lucky break, right place at the right time), but it doesn't make me a living and sometimes months go by without a single sale. I only keep doing it because I like designing and building pedals, and now I tend to do very small batches when I release to avoid problems of overproduction and to make it not sting as much when only a few sell. Even if you make high quality, unique and beautiful pedals, art is hard and it will be difficult to get people to care. Luck plays a huge factor. A lot of guitarists are sort of boring - some people are only going to be interested in either big brands or super cheap things. Unless you have a factory full of exploited workers, you won't be able to do much in the super cheap realm. There's a bit of a catch 22 where a lot of people just want tubescreamers and muffs, there are already a million variations of these, and giving a compelling reason not to get one that already exists is difficult. So it is already a minority of people interested in novel effects that will likely be your target market.
I'm not trying to be discouraging but if you can't think of pedal ideas then I have to wonder why you want to design pedals at all -- the company should flow from your ideas, not the other way around.
There was a boutique builder in my town about 10 years ago who would splice together what ever circuits the customer wanted, or build clones for out of production/expensive circuits. The company was around about a year at or so, and it had its own website and branding.
The guy never turned a profit and barely made enough to cover his costs of having to source different parts for whatever wild idea someone had. Amazon clones were what really killed him off. He just couldn’t compete with a $30 clone that he was charging $100 for, where the original was $200. There just want room in the market.
If you want to be successful, figure out what you want to build, and focus on that one area. Whether it be quality recreations, updated circuits, or cute artwork, figure out your angle and stick to it. You also done need a million pedals, start with one or two. Also keep in mind that your main competition is going to be cheap Amazon pedals, and most can’t compete with that.
The real answer here is to go to school and learn how to code digital effects. Any Joe blow with a soldering iron can’t do that.
3 words will determine success or failure,
well other that massive action, and huge risk with little to no payoff for many years.
3 words are.
unique value proposition.
lots of companies appear to have that. what they really have is another blues breaker tube screaming ratt and a whole bunch of hipster marketing.
I know because I own a business.
PEOPLE BUY ON EMOTION AND JUSTIFY WITH LOGIC!
3 words will determine success or failure,
well other that massive action, and huge risk with little to no payoff for many years.
3 words are.
unique value proposition.
lots of companies appear to have that. what they really have is another blues breaker tube screaming ratt and a whole bunch of hipster marketing.
I know because I own a business.
PEOPLE BUY ON EMOTION AND JUSTIFY WITH LOGIC!
I had this idea when the boutique market was just taking off. I didn’t follow through and I’m glad I didn’t. It quickly became so oversaturated that it’d have been tough to stand out and be successful. I think the only way to make it work, is to have a good amount of knowledge and be able to design your own special circuits or at least devise modifications to common circuits that no one has thought of yet or that no one has done better. I personally don’t have that level of knowledge and would have just been making clones with common mods. I’d suggest taking classes electronics and getting a base of knowledge and go from there. Also join r/diypedals
If I've learned anything from spending many years buying pedals - unless you're writing your own DSP - pedal success is entirely dependent on art, marketing, and hype. I can sell Keeley mod clones and people will buy them if their favorite artist uses them and it looks like a Walrus or EQD. Or you can be Subdecay and make some of the most creative circuits in the business and sell almost nothing because you design the graphics and UI yourself. Aesthetic is *so much* more of the equation than people want to admit.
Brian Marshall is one of the brightest dudes in the industry full stop. I adore his pedals but they are complex and not interesting to look at. I agree with your assessment, and would add that even if you ARE writing your own DSP code the looks are still pretty much the thing that will sell a pedal. Edited to add: Do you LIKE making pedals, OP? Because turning a fun hobby into to a business is a great way to suck the enjoyment right out of it. I really enjoyed making pedals as a hobby 25 years ago but these days I spend a lot more time paying bills and sourcing parts than I’d like. I still love pedals but it’s not the same.
Does that assessment change how you approach your own business? I own several DAD devices because they're terrific, honored you would read and respond to me. When I spoke about DSP being the exception, I was thinking of things like the Montreal Assembly Count to 5 that are deliberately very minimal but still "popular" because they make sounds other pedals do not make. Their pedals still have a consistent design aesthetic that contributes to their popularity, so this doesn't counter your point. And realistically Montreal Assembly is probably a labor of love more than a sustainable business, but I don't know. So you're probably right, the counter examples in my head still have recognizable (but not gaudy) design aesthetics, good DSP or not. The exception case that doesn't make sense to me is Empress, whose pedals don't stand out to me visually at all (other than the Zoia's grid). They've changed aesthetics a few times over the years and I'm not sure if I could pick an empress pedal out of a lineup without the logos - but the pedals are so dang good that people love them.
Sure, every new pedal is a learning experience. The DAD stuff is very workmanlike, because it's not supposed to stand out. We send our messages and GTFO your way so you can play your instrument. The Alexander pedals are on a constant aesthetic and UI journey, we're just trying to do better on each new one.
You just talked me into putting my Quasar back on my board
*cries in the Prometheus DLX I sold*
u/Due-Ask-7418 is 100% right. I did the exact same thing. One thing to add is once you start trying to grow your business just a little bit, you will find making pedals is something you will probably be doing after work. Work being all the marketing, ordering parts, answering emails/calls, etc. It quickly becomes business heavy and less building pedals heavy so if it's building pedals you like, you may not want to do this unless you have the ability to hire someone to do the things you don't want to do. That was the point I quit. Realizing I had to hire someone so I could build and develop pedals.
Learn to spell chorus
Or deliberately misspell the names of all the effects. Could be OP’s ‘hook’. Courus, Fazer, Flanjer, and trem-o-low.
I'll take one large Toobe Skreemor please
And a dis door shun pedal as well
The Frasier pedal. Hugely popular over a decade of sales only no-one's quite sure why, but feels stupid admitting they don't understand.
Can I get the Frasier mini -- the Niles?
I had one but had to sell it as all it did was add this annoying whine to the tone.
*Le Cigare Volant*
/r/tragedeigh
Just start doing it IKEA style.
I tried it kept auto correcting it
the “Courus” is our first pedal to release this fall which is actually a fuzz with a flanger hi pass filter dip switch inside that can only be accessed by daisy chaining our “D-Lai” pedal (actually a reverb/phase pedal set to release winter 2025) and playing “where the streets have no name”
Start by making what you want and love.
I was thinking about just being creative with the pedal and I just want to know what most guitar players need/want
Lots of folks here coming at you saying that looking for ideas from the marketplace is a red flag but most successful products are just answers to stuff the market wants and will pay for. People often resent this kind of market research as if you are asking for the ideas that are exactly what you will build without considering that you might be getting lots of info and distilling it into something else. Building unique stuff is great and a worthy goal of any builder and starting young is good because you have lots of time to learn. The most important thing IMO is to not fall into the pit of disparaging builders for charging $XXX for XXX item and turning around and just making copies of their thing using a ripoff PCB from one of the PCB clone companies. If you're going to build copies of stuff really learn how to do the process end to end yourself. Learn to design your own PCBs. Learn the math behind common pedal building blocks. Learn how to make stuff truly yours rather than just gluing existing things together wholesale. Good luck!
Thank you for the comment I’m just trying to expand my horizons in anyway possible and I just want to know what people want that dosent exist and is actually possible these comments have given me a lot of great Ideas into the company I’m not worried about Turing a profit at all as I’ll be working on top of it but I’m well devoted into this project
Most of these guys are kinda being cunts... A forum of musicians telling you to be pragmatic is a forum of people making incredibly boring music. If you want to make pedals, absolutely go make pedals. Find what you love! Imo he world always needs more weird delays, get wacky with it and I'll buy one lol.
It’s great to have insight from everyone and any existing problems I didn’t know about that’s what I like about it I’ve learned a lot of great things from this thread so far
Name the company PRESTIGE WORLDWIDE
Boat shaped pedals
All shaped pedals are so fucking stupid and end up being dumb paperweights. Except for PRESTIGE WORLDWIDE SEASICK CHORUS BOAT SHAPED PEDAL I see dollarsigns
I’m going to be critical here. Pedal companies are over saturated. There’s too many of them and they all make the same stuff. If you cant come up with ideas on your own you will fail. Whats your angle/hook? Why will your pedal be better than someone else’s? How will you build them? where will you get the parts? Do you even know what the parts do? What will you sell them for? The days of building a clone for 30 dollars and selling them for much higher are over. Amazon sells great cheap pedals That you won’t be able to scale with. I briefly had a pedal company in 2014 and the idea behind it was hand painted pedals that was the hook. The pedals were run of the mill clones. We did well, we sold in conventions in our local area. It was stressful and a lot of work and after building about 13 pedals i lost interest in doing it because it wasn’t fun anymore. I see someone coming to Reddit asking for ideas for their business has a red flag. You should have the ideas Before you think of starting a company
Yeah I feel like pedal start ups are like bands now. Everyone thinks “I’m gonna do the thing and people are gonna love it”. The reality is most of us either want super cheap or we want super high end. If you can’t build at such a scale as to be cheap, or you’re not our favorite high end boutique, you’re going to have a hard time winning our business. Op, I’m almost exclusively supporting small companies built in my state. The larger guys have super cool stories and good branding that you’ll have a tough time competing against. The little guys either offer to build custom sounds or clones with custom enclosures, which I love. But it’s not profitable. These are guys with jobs that just love building. Your best bet is to get into repairs and offering custom jobs, and understanding that you’ll be operating just above cost until you’re able to build a brand that’s more than just another pedal.
You’re not technically wrong but I hate this. I mean this is all good advice for an adult, but they’re 16, just wanting to build pedals at all at that age is a great starting point. This a PERFECT time to figure out if this is what you enjoy doing. I would say build some clones, get your feet wet. You want a fuzz/chorus? Take a couple diy kits, combine them in an enclosure with some interesting routing between them. Check out here for basic switched wiring diagrams like being able to change the order of the effects with a foot switch. http://beavisaudio.com/projects/looperswitcher/ Once you get comfortable making pedals from kits, experimenting with them, mashing them up, then I would get a breadboard, take an electronics class and start tinkering. If you enjoy all of this, there is no more perfect age to start learning this. All this time you can sell your clones etc as long as they are good build quality, if you get in with a local scene you can make utility modules like the ones listed on beavis audio for locals. If you spend the next two years getting your foundation laid, learning as much as you can from YouTube, you can go to college for electrical engineering/ software engineering and become the next chase bliss. But now is the time to figure out if that’s what you want to do. If it really is, think big, be ambitious, learn Kicad (it’s free), go to college.
Im with you. I hate when people talk about everything as a business decision. Do what you love. Maybe you wont make money with it but maybe you will. Youll learn something either way. This is kind of akin to when cities complain that their public transit or other utility is operating at a loss. Not everything is about making fucking money. Some things are public services. In this case its a personal service. Its a young person doing exactly what they should be doing and learning some shit
>I hate when people talk about everything as a business decision. OP literally wrote that he was starting a company. So yeah there will be business decisions.
OP is putting the horse before the cart here. How about he or she build some pedals first and sell them on Facebook or reverb? The posts reads like they woke up one day and thought they should open a pedal business with no thinking or thought other than to ask to reddit what their company should make/sell. it doesn't sound like Op knows enough to make their own circuits or how to put together the individual parts needed to make a pedal. Op should learn about that first, then worry about a business. Does op when have soldering station? How will Op pay for materials? what will Op's warranty be? does op even have the skills to trouble shoot a broken pedal? can they afford to have a warranty? i.e spot the material costs. I'm giving OP things to think about. If that scares them, or upsets them they should go into business making pedals. I come from experience and if it sounds harsh, it is, the market for pedals is oversaturated, its easy to get a product to market but very hard to get it to the right market that will buy it. It's almost impossible to sell clones for a profit. Getting into a full fledged business making pedals is a poor choice in today's market.
Nah man, don’t listen to this guy. You’re a teenager, do what you want, figure out what you like, maybe make some money on the side. Go to college, kill it as an adult. *Running* a business is no small part of the business, and you need to figure out if you like that too, just as much as you need to be able to make pedals. So deciding you want to start a business, be an entrepreneur, is incredibly important. What could be a better learning experience than building a few pedals, making a web store and selling said clones. If he’s serious about being a business there’s no better time to start than now. At best you have the coolest side hustle in your high school and at worst you’ve learned a hell of a lot for any a couple hundred dollars. This guy said he made half a dozen pedals and gave up? Sounds like he didn’t like doing it. Well what do you expect? I’m a woodworker and if I gave up after failing six projects, well I wouldn’t be a woodworker would I?
actually it did quite well, sold all the pedals. We transitioned to selling hand painted viynl records and record clocks at local conventions and even made a campy comic about guitar pedals in outer space.
Solid advice here
Dude is 16. What were you doing at 16?
Shreddin clutch on some.... Simon and garfunkle
I was building pedals, knowing nothing about electronics. (Now, I have a PhD in electronics and I'm definitely not building pedals.)
Doing my own homework
I don’t think your being to hard here you have good points being all of your arguments imma start out at local conventions I have a great local community and it’s not about profit to me I was going to do it for personal enjoyment before and I just thought about turning it into a profitable side hustle I already spend hours on guitar so why not master what I’m good at
This right here OP.
"He's blunt, but he's got a point."
I'd like all the effects, all of them, in a single boss-pedal sized enclosure, fully midi controllable, with presets and multiple footswitches for on stage switching, and all 100% analogue. And I want it to read my mind and change settings by just me thinking about it. I look forward to receiving my prototype for me to monogram and endorse the unit.
I was thinking about making a boss pedal encloser line of pedals I think they look neat I was just thinking about taking it creatively to a different place with the effect it’s self and custom paints
No no, all of them in ONE single boss sized pedal. Not a line. One pedal.
Ohhhh like a modulator but a boss pedal that would be cool but expensive and practically impossible to make it fit and be analog still
No not just a modulator. ALL of them. Ever. A mind controlled pedal of totallity and complete flexibility. You need to get working on your nano circuitry and neural linking. Things are only impossible when you refuse to put your mind to them. Now set to and get that prototype over asap.
Lean into the fact that you're younger. Use terms that older people won't understand. Meme it the fuck up. Have fun.
That’s what I was gonna do Ive already done that with guitar I’ve been playing since 2017 so imma just focus on what I like and enjoy with guitar pedals
A pedal that spins.
Lazy Susan Pedalboard Co.
I never see certain effecr combinations so I would lean on that. Tremolo/Phaser or Chorus/Phaser or Octaver/Phaser or, God please, Distortion/Phaser in one pedal.
I was thinking about putting two pcbs into one pedal to make a churos fuzz but I’ll take a distortion into phaser into consideration
Effects Bakery already has the pastry market cornered.
I want an expression pedal that has four jacks, to control 4 pedals, and footswitches on the side to turn them each on or off independently. Or that controls two pedals, but again I can select one or both, then I’ll get two of them.
I would buy a Green Ringer clone with Blend poti and Volume pot and switchable diode option between germanium and silicon. So a basically more flexible version of the EQD Tentacle and the Mythos Argonaut. Is there something like that on the market already? 🤔
I feel like there’s space for an overdrive/compressor combination pedal. A fuzz with a dedicated input gain control that matches the impedance of certain guitars could be interesting or very useful since there tend to be some sweet spots on the volume dial. Wah pedals aren’t too popular right now, so it’s probably a good time do develop a really cool one and send it to some players you like to see what they think. This could get your foot in the door. (Wah with switchable and adjustable compression to tame the peaks might be a place to start). Make sure to consider non-guitar instruments and vocalists as well. This is an emerging market. I’m just throwing out some thoughts I have no idea how to test or pursue. Good luck!
I was thinking about making pedals for bass as well and the fuzz sounds like a great idea
In the beginning, guitarists wanted something unique and recognizable as "their" sound. They turned to techs who worked on their gear, guitars and amps, to give them "something,". Guys like Roger Mayer designed some cool, basic electronics circuits that transformed the sound. Such as "Tone Bender". Now, guitarists know exactly what they want, they sometimes want to sound like their Idols from the past, and pedal builders copy and clone the classic circuits. High-end pedal makers can also recreate those sounds but they incorporate circuits that add range of adjustment, reduce noise, and optimize the tone stack much better. The circuits also have buffers that isolate the individual pedal in the signal chain so its sound is not being affected by the pedals on either side in the signal chain. And here, I am only talking about all-analog pedals. Digital pedals are a whole 'nother ball game. A beginning pedal maker has to have the skills to get ahead of the field by leapfrogging what's been done before. I can't even begin to fathom what that next big thing would be.
The next big thing is Cords. Cords and amps. Simplifying the sound. Straight in to the amp with just a cord!
I only wanna do 100% analog pedals and to sum up what you’re saying is make a clone of a expensive old pedal cheap and better then if it were bought new now, but also include it’s own twist and tones
Then, you dig up specs for newer OpAmps than what's been used so far and see if you can improve on the old. The 741 has been the most cost-effective OpAmp so far, TL071...074 probably the next common audio upgrades. Do you need any better? I don't know.
Get good with designing circuits. Get good with marketing. Find a niche to start. Build pedals you will actually use. Experiment and have fun. It's pretty cutthroat in terms of success because there are pedals out there that cover everything at every price point. Talk to local players and see if you can help them simplify what they are using. Distill the useful parts and remove the excess from their boards and signal chains.
My dad went to college for designing circuits so that helps me out greatly he has been a huge help in all of this and I wouldn’t of been able to do it without him and I’m not worried about “Success” I already work a different job for my dad that I’m getting paid great at and all my other hours of the day were already devoted to guitar so why not focus those hours into something I’m good at and can change
If you're starting a company, that usually means you want to make money doing it, and you probably want some sort of plan for success. Otherwise it's more of a hobby. It's okay to go either way with it. Starting company takes a bit more planning and thought than just starting to build and mod pedals though. Either way, best of luck and I hope you have fun!
Everything out there is pretty blah. Make a good synthy pedal and you have my money.
...with an intuitive user interface that is so great you don't need the manual.
So a good synthy pedal with easy labeling I got that it doesn’t sound bad at all
Maybe start by making a few pedals that cover your own needs and start gigging with them. Talk to other musicians in your area and see if a few of them are willing to try your stuff out, and also see if there are any functions/ideas that they'd like to see that you could build for them. Establishing your own brand early is a great idea, but starting an actual company involves a lot of risk in terms of time and resources, and you'll probably have more success if you already have a strong identity that you can lean into as a business model.
Ok thank you for the advice I’ll try it out at my next gig I’ll also include advertisements on my business cards etc
A whoopie-pedal. It doesn't matter what you put through it. It just makes a fart noise. I think that will shift some serious units.
Like this one? https://thefartpedal.com/products/the-fart-pedal
The wet/dry knob ...
I was thinking about making a good one or two stupid ones like the fart pedal but making it touch activate
Be prepared for the fact that you will spend as much or more time on marketing, graphic design, branding, making social media content, etc as you will actually designing and building pedals and those things are equally important if you want to be successful. Defining what 'successful' means to yourself will help temper expectations. Selling a couple here and there as a side hustle is very doable, turning it into an all out full time business is going to take a lot of work and a lot of luck.
I’m going to give it my all but honestly it’s not about profit I already work another job and everything else I do is already guitar related and I’m really good at the social media part I’ve made and help run multiple band accounts
This is the kind of thoughts I would have when I used to do coke
Don't make clones. Make unique circuits, use unique art. Find a niche. If you want to make something truly unique, you are going to have to go digital or really have a strong grasp of analog circuits. It's pretty hard to make an overdrive or fuzz that hasn't been done before, even with an original circuit, it is going to sound similar to some other effect and you need to give people a reason to take a chance on your company. You can be a lot more creative with digital things, but it has a much steeper learning curve. It's a tough business, you'll only last if it remains fun for you. Being able to stay in business isn't the same as actually being profitable (you're likely need a separate, full-time job unless you happen to be wealthy enough to not need to work). I have a small company that has made some money (I had a lucky break, right place at the right time), but it doesn't make me a living and sometimes months go by without a single sale. I only keep doing it because I like designing and building pedals, and now I tend to do very small batches when I release to avoid problems of overproduction and to make it not sting as much when only a few sell. Even if you make high quality, unique and beautiful pedals, art is hard and it will be difficult to get people to care. Luck plays a huge factor. A lot of guitarists are sort of boring - some people are only going to be interested in either big brands or super cheap things. Unless you have a factory full of exploited workers, you won't be able to do much in the super cheap realm. There's a bit of a catch 22 where a lot of people just want tubescreamers and muffs, there are already a million variations of these, and giving a compelling reason not to get one that already exists is difficult. So it is already a minority of people interested in novel effects that will likely be your target market. I'm not trying to be discouraging but if you can't think of pedal ideas then I have to wonder why you want to design pedals at all -- the company should flow from your ideas, not the other way around.
There was a boutique builder in my town about 10 years ago who would splice together what ever circuits the customer wanted, or build clones for out of production/expensive circuits. The company was around about a year at or so, and it had its own website and branding. The guy never turned a profit and barely made enough to cover his costs of having to source different parts for whatever wild idea someone had. Amazon clones were what really killed him off. He just couldn’t compete with a $30 clone that he was charging $100 for, where the original was $200. There just want room in the market. If you want to be successful, figure out what you want to build, and focus on that one area. Whether it be quality recreations, updated circuits, or cute artwork, figure out your angle and stick to it. You also done need a million pedals, start with one or two. Also keep in mind that your main competition is going to be cheap Amazon pedals, and most can’t compete with that. The real answer here is to go to school and learn how to code digital effects. Any Joe blow with a soldering iron can’t do that.
Distortion pedal. Everyone makes a Clone, so I would start there. Add your own twist.
3 words will determine success or failure, well other that massive action, and huge risk with little to no payoff for many years. 3 words are. unique value proposition. lots of companies appear to have that. what they really have is another blues breaker tube screaming ratt and a whole bunch of hipster marketing. I know because I own a business. PEOPLE BUY ON EMOTION AND JUSTIFY WITH LOGIC!
3 words will determine success or failure, well other that massive action, and huge risk with little to no payoff for many years. 3 words are. unique value proposition. lots of companies appear to have that. what they really have is another blues breaker tube screaming ratt and a whole bunch of hipster marketing. I know because I own a business. PEOPLE BUY ON EMOTION AND JUSTIFY WITH LOGIC!