What do you guys charge for amps?

[JayB]

Twice your cost? I don't want to under or over charge.

[Tiny_Daddy]

I charge whatever I can get away with which usually isn't much because musicians are poor. But I gotta cover taxes, shipping, screw-ups, etc. Other shops around town seem to be charging outrageous fees for simple things, must be because of their overhead. I wouldn't try to make a living doing this.

[JayB]

I don't mark up on parts but they are part of the cost of repairs. I basically charge for my time on repairs. But the amp building thing, Like you said, got taxes and everything else to think about. They sell pretty good but some people just think it's to much because their comparing to the current Chinese made stuff. I usually just tell them to go buy a current reissue champ for 1 grand.

[Tiny_Daddy]

Lots of people ask if I build amps but it's just too  costly and time-consuming. Mods/repairs seems to be the way to go. It's much better to restore something than to start from nothing.

[tubesornothing]

Avoid pricing your product on the costs.  Price your "product" on what the market will bear.  If this doesn't cover your costs and you labor, admin, marketing etc, then perhaps rethink your business (Tiny's suggestion of repair is a good stable income, but is too niggly for me).  If you feel your amps can compete with DrZ, then price it competitively with those amps.  Same with Carr, Divided by 13, 65 amps, etc.

If your amps are better than these boutique amps, see if they can compete with what Two Rock and Fuchs charge.  They are very high priced amps.  I once heard a claim by the guy of Rock Creek - "I charge a lot of money because I only want to build too many each year".  Sounds egotistical and self destructive, but is valid logic.  Sell 10 amps at $5000 each or sell 50 at $1000 each and you get the same amount of cashola.

Economies of scale will help to reduce the costs of your amps, but not a huge amount - until you get really big.  A typical super will cost about $800-1000 in parts (incl cab etc).  Build 10 at once and it might drop to $600-800 each.  Then you start to bump into your production capacity.  Full time, you might be able to build (and market) 40-50 amps per year.  After that, you'll need to hire help.

[FYL]

They sell pretty good but some people just think it's to much because their comparing to the current Chinese made stuff.

A Fender Squier Stratocaster streets for $120 or so, a US-made high quality Strat such as the Eric Johnson goes for app. $1900...

The problem is that players usually don't consider amps as lifetime purchases, or can't afford handcrafted stuff. Ditto for collectors, with a few exceptions such as Dumble and Trainwreck when it comes to modern amps - vintage models are another story.

So basically builders and small manufacturers have to evangelize, show why handcrafted amps bring a greater pride of ownership and actually offer better long term value. Amps fitted with the Talent Boost™ system also allow Junior to play as well as his idol.

 

[JayB]

Avoid pricing your product on the costs.  Price your "product" on what the market will bear.  If this doesn't cover your costs and you labor, admin, marketing etc, then perhaps rethink your business (Tiny's suggestion of repair is a good stable income, but is too niggly for me).  If you feel your amps can compete with DrZ, then price it competitively with those amps.  Same with Carr, Divided by 13, 65 amps, etc.

If your amps are better than these boutique amps, see if they can compete with what Two Rock and Fuchs charge.  They are very high priced amps.  I once heard a claim by the guy of Rock Creek - "I charge a lot of money because I only want to build too many each year".  Sounds egotistical and self destructive, but is valid logic.  Sell 10 amps at $5000 each or sell 50 at $1000 each and you get the same amount of cashola.

Economies of scale will help to reduce the costs of your amps, but not a huge amount - until you get really big.  A typical super will cost about $800-1000 in parts (incl cab etc).  Build 10 at once and it might drop to $600-800 each.  Then you start to bump into your production capacity.  Full time, you might be able to build (and market) 40-50 amps per year.  After that, you'll need to hire help.

I think my amps can compete but I'm biased. Better than Fuchs or Two Rock? I think they're just another taste out of the whole palate. I don't think they're better than any other boutique but rather just different than the others and that is a style or a taste thing.

I'm not big enough to take advantage of the economies of scale other than getting whole sale discount on my side. I don't want to get in over my head to the point where quality or service suffers either.

My brother is working on marketing and may have an Amazon deal but I better have my ducks in a row if that comes through.

[JayB]

So basically builders and small manufacturers have to evangelize, show why handcrafted amps bring a greater pride of ownership and actually offer better long term value. Amps fitted with the Talent Boost™ system also allow Junior to play as well as his idol.

 

  But that Talent Boost™ system is addicting.

[tubesornothing]

I think my amps can compete but I'm biased.

Here is what I have done - find some players who have those boutique amps (Dr Z, 65, swart, Victoria, what have you... ) A/B them together - side by side. See what is good about there product, see is what is good about yours.  Listen to what the players have to say.  Some info will be useful, some will be crap. But it *al** helps. See if your amps are really as good:  tone, ease of use, asthetics, quality, etc.  If they do hold up under scrutiny, then start your pricing based on the competitors products.

Then when you sell your amps you will be ready for the inevitable "well I tried a Carr Rambler (or whatever) and it has... blah de blah", and you can rebut with "yeah thats a great feature, but our new 'talent boost' does that and more - for $50 less!"

Here is a good example:  The Swart AST is basically a tweed deluxe with a bit different reverb and tremolo.  It uses hayboer transformers and carbon comp resistors - nothing special - other than a nice circuit recipe.  We could probably build it for $500-800, incl a finished cabinet.  The swart amp sells for $1800.  So whats the big deal about the swart?  Nice package, small and light, sounds great, the wife will let you leave it in the living room. Good marketing too. Plus good reviews from the tone snobs in the magazines and on the forums.

So lets say you build a similar amp.  Compare it to others in its class and see where you stand.  Better than the AST?  If so, price it accordingly.  $1700 people will start to pick yours over the AST.  $2100 and people might balk unless there is some perceived benefit (which might be intangible).  $4000 plus some crafty marketing and you will start to make good money. The latter is what Two Rock, Dumble, Ken Fisher and Fuchs are doing.

[Leevi]

Since this is not a big business for me I would rather ask how many hours do you
normally spent for a new amp? My experience is that a simple single end amp takes ~20h
(including everything from chassis drilling to cabinet finishing). For bigger 2 channel P/P amps
the time is 30-40h. The total price is then the parts + spent hours x your hourly salary.
/Leevi

[tubesornothing]

30-40hrs is about right.  Question is:  what's your hourly salary?  $10/hr or $40/hr?

However, don't forget that amp building is only part of the time spent.  You will also need to consider: research, design, warranty repairs, marketing, business administration, selling them, etc.

[bluesbear]

It helps if you have what the advertising guys call a "gimmick" or what I call something different. Marketing does matter. Beginners (or their parents) buy cheap stuff. Younger good players just want a good amp with their sound. I do make an amp for them but so does everyone else. They usually don't have any money! My thing is a small (about Blues Jr size) light amp, voiced so it can be heard with a band. No one will believe it can be heard unless they see someone actually use it. I don't tell them it's 17 or 18 watts till they've heard it but 3 years in a band with the other guy playing a Blues Deville, I'm the one that gets told to turn it down. My point is that guitarists my age are usually experienced enough buy with their ears, not their ego plus they (we) listen to our back. It hurts more than it used to! They're the most likely to have money and can justify the purchase with "I can pass it on to my child/grandchild". If I can price about halfway between a new Fender and a handmade 20 watt Marshall, I'm good! And I can!
Dave

[Leevi]

One problem is that the amp builder's brand is not so well known and the price of the amp
is relative high, e.g. a 30W basic head 1000€ (~1300USD, enough info for counting my hourly price?).
That's why it is important to get the people to test the amp. Since the sound is better than
in the cheap Chinese amps, the money is not such an issue anymore. For musicians the sound
is the most important factor when selecting an amp.
/Leevi

[jcm-jmp]

I wouldn't try to make a living doing this.

+1

start getting you name out on custom mods first. once the folks respect you for the mods you can do, then start turning the return customer on to your custom builds. let him take 1 on loan to use it, abuse it, whatever. when it stands up and meets his demands he will tell 2 friends and they will tell 2 friends and so on...... all the while try to market through advertisement in your local area. you may be a geat builder, but you can not and will not compete with the big brands when you first enter the market. through some time luck and grace you MIGHT, just might, in 10 years or so have a good name in your local area. unless of course you have millions of dollars in the bank? then buy your way to the top just as the top leaders in guitar amplification have.

[Leevi]

And remember when your business is starting there is not place for bad quality
or compromises. Correct your technical mistakes immediately and free.
You have to keep your brand clean otherwise you won't have any business any more.
/Leevi

[PRR]

There's parts.

There's just plain hard/tedious labor.

And there is "the gift". Do you have it, or not? Trainwreck, Carr, 13, etc have "gift". They use generally generic circuits and parts, yet their amps sound "better". Gift does not have to be universal: some folks like an amp, some folks don't.... but if you can find a few customers for whatever your gift is, you can be busy.

It does help if you find customers with money.

> does that and more - for $50 less!"

Yeah but... once you start selling on "less", you are onto the slippery slope.

You are never going to get parts or labor as cheap as a chinese factory.

Your TB knob should work "same except better!" If you can hold the cost comparable, then it is a non-issue to the player (and you can bet Carr is not selling a TB knob at a loss, so you won't go too broke).

For personal busy-work I built what amounted to a super-size Valve Jr. I was well over $500 parts, before cab and speaker and faceplate, not counting extra parts for screw-up and comparison.

I had way over 40 hours in it. Part of that was fooling-around, but still a lot of blood on chassis and wrist-work. At the time my day-job netted $25/hour plus sweet benefits. Up here in low-income Maine, a good but simple carpenter gets $25/hour (but doesn't work every day). So labor approaches $1,000. This angle needs to be worked on. Simplified layout and processes, batch production.... but this conflicts with the "hand made personally blessed" aspect.

So $1,500+ to build a hi-power version of a $150 amp. 4dB and 3 more knobs is not worth 10 times the price. I have small "gift": if finished the amp would have had (I hope!) less rough rasp than a stock Jr. Of course part of that is just using a speaker which cost more than a whole Jr, and selected NOS/Russian tubes instead of low-bid chinese boat-load tubes. I do not think it would have had any musical "WOW!". Competent, but not drool-inducing.

I didn't figure I could sucker a customer into paying enough to cover my parts plus blood; if I did, I would just about break even as a commercial prospect. I'd have to have a lot more rich customers or a lot more love of solder to make this worthwhile, for me.

[bluesbear]

I'm with PRR on this. You can't do this as your sole source of income! Remember, it was years before Leo didn't have to rely on his wife's income from the phone company to make payroll. I'm retired so if I can sell an amp for enough to cover costs for 2 amps, I'm thrilled. I don't have to consider my labor cost. I just need to get as many amps out there as I can so people see them.
Dave

[supro66]

Building amps for people and repair

Should you have liability insurance?
You can’t get the Underwriters stamp

If someone dies can you get sued?

[phsyconoodler]

I tried for a year and a half to make a go of building amps and for the most part it worked.However,the down times were too low to make up for the up times so I had to give it up full time.
   Marketing is a HUGE part of success.I'm a local legend but many locals don't have the cash.I sold some to the US and some across Canada but not enough to get the word out.
  It requires money to make money.If you have 50,000 put away and a good plan you can make a go of it.Otherwise it's very difficult.
 
  

[tubesornothing]

Should you have liability insurance?
You can’t get the Underwriters stamp

If someone dies can you get sued?

yep.  The norm is no UL, CSA or ETL.  However, yes you can get the certification - if you want to pay for it.  Look at the backs of all those boutique amps - no stickers whatsoever.  Should that prevent you from selling an amp? Depends how worried you are.

[phsyconoodler]

"Look at the backs of all those boutique amps - no stickers whatsoever. "

We recently had that problem at the store I work at.We hired an independent company that was CSA recognized to come in and check the amps.They were pretty thorough with the first couple of amps and then just quickly inspected the rest for CSA approved power cords and receptacles.
  However,if you produce a lot of amps,getting them certified is not that expensive.The palms get greased a bit with major manufacturers I'm totally sure of that.They simply provide a parts list and a sample model if it's new and that's that.Pay a flat fee and get a roll of stickers.

[G._Hoffman]

I'll come at this with a slightly different perspective.  

I don't build or repair amps for a living, but I build guitars for a living, and there are some important parallels.  

One thing you need to deal with, when dealing with the kinds of people who can afford "boutique" equipment is their expectation of quality.  Frankly, most of the guys spending this kind of money aren't really players - they are aging baby boomers who want to relive their youth.  They may or may not be good enough players to tell if an amp sounds good, but they WILL be looking at the details of the workmanship.  Your cabinets had better be perfect.  And some of these guys will be pulling out the chassis and looking at the wiring.  If it isn't pretty, they won't be interested.  Are they being kind of silly?  Yes, but that doesn't change their behavior.  Even if they KNOW that it is silly, they still behave the same way.  

We've got a customer - an MD, really smart guy - who apparently believes everything he reads on the internet.  He is always bringing us guitars to put odd nut or saddle materials on, or bone or brass or fossilized mammoth testicle bridge pins.  The most recent one was a 1950's Martin.  He sent it off to some guy somewhere to "re-voice" the top.  This included such colossally bad ideas as removing braces and thinning the top in places.  It wrecked a very fine guitar, which we could have told him if he had asked.  When he DID ask us how to fix it, the only option was to send it back to Martin and have them replace the top.  So, first of all, you lose 60 years of age on the guitar's top and finish, more than half the value, and he spent about $1,600 to repair a job that probably cost him $1,000 to begin with.  This guy knows better - he once told us that if one of his patients acted the way he acts around here, he wouldn't treat them - but he keeps doing it.  

The point is simply this - your customers will always be chasing after the next big thing, and if they are spending that kind of money they will look at the most minute details.  Your details need to be right.  And it can take a lot of effort to get those details right - which of course raises your costs.  Its kind of a never ending cycle.  


Gabriel

[jojokeo]

Right on the mark Mr Hoffman. It's a fine line that separates success and failure. If you don't try you can never win or be successful, but you ultimately have to weigh all of the factors and go w/ your heart and gut feeling. When it comes to your blood, sweat, tears, & hard earned money it takes major stones to make that jump and try to compete w/ so many talented and well backed people. If you were to make that commitment the consequences could end up stripping you of your love for playing or the hobby/business. I would think that you would almost have to be pushed into it from a number of different sides to where it would seem that you had no choice and failure was near impossible. It would take more than supreme confidence in yourself but confidence instilled from many others that tells you that you have what it takes. It's a very tough call in a fiercely competetive market in today's landscape. 20 years ago I bet a number of people here would have a legitimate chance of success.

[Structo]

  Something I have noticed before because I also have a hard time putting a dollar amount for my time is, if you price too high people will move on.
If you price it too low, people will think there is something wrong with it because it is just too cheap.
Finding that middle ground where people think it is a good value and a quality piece is where it's at.
And that price point is sometimes hard to arrive at.

  I don't think I could ever make a living at it because I put too many hours into stuff.
If I had to arrive at a labor cost then I would probably make $3.50 / hour.
And since I don't have a business license I have to buy parts at retail so that is an added cost.
When you figure all the time you put into a middle of the road type amp I think most would agree that we spend a lot of time building.
Especially if you start with a blank chassis or have them made.

  For me personally it seems I am hardly ever 100% happy with the tone of my amps. So they are in a constant state of tweaking. Changing caps and resistors. Although it's fun it can lead to anal retentiveness.

   I think you have to reach a compromise about the amp and how "good" the tone is.
You can always tweak it one way or another for a customer. Say a guy that only plays a single coil tele verses a guy that only plays Gibson LP's.
It's the ones that play a bunch of different stuff that seems to be the harder target to reach.
That's me, I don't play just one type of guitar so the soldering iron gets hot quite a bit.

  My #1 amp for the last couple years has been a Brown Note D'lite 44 that I built from a kit.
I didn't know it at the time I ordered it but I found out later that the stock configuration for that amp was designed around 6V6 tubes.
Well I set out with the intention of using only 6L6's so I have probably changed every component in that amp save for the power transformer......

So for now I think Two Rock and Mr. Fuchs are safe from me.

[Ritchie200]

As Gabriel said about looking for the next big "thing", I would caution against what Structo said....(sorry Structo!)  Unless your client is Eddie Van Halen or has an open checkbook, I would recommend marketing an amp as being the best at what it does...as is...period.  Chasing a client's perception of the perfect "tone" by offering voicing-to-taste is a long and expensive road.  

I remember an interview with Roger Mayer.  He was letting Jimi Hendrix try out his fuzz pedals.  Jimi was not happy with one after another.  After trying about 8 different versions, Roger plugged in the first one again.  Jimi said, "Now that's it!  I wish you would have started with that one!"

Good luck!  Maybe someday we can all say, "Yeah, I used to know that guy - when he used to talk to the little people!"
Jim

[GroundhogKen]

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[JayB]

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  A million is nothing these days. Every little bit counts though.