Effects pedals cost too much??? What's the new norm?

[Jwar]

I guess I'll re-type some of this shit since people are actually interested. I was in a mood earlier.




So, here's my question after watching the pedal trends over the last several years. Are builders charging too much now for what they release?

What made me think of this is the NAMM thread where some folks are debating the value of a pedal. I have personally bought pedals from less than 100 dollars to over a 1000 dollars. The last 6 months or so I've really, really started to rethink the way I value things and what I consider worth the money.

If you look at my gear collection, you'll see a ton of overlapping ideas as well as many things from cheap to expensive that actually kind of sound the same. The point is, I've spent a ton of funds and I'm not sure it was entirely worth it.

It occurs to me that builders seem to be making their pedals cheaper and selling them for more (mind you not all of them). So, what is the threshold here? It seems like these days you're getting a one trick pony for substantially more than you used to. I started off buying pedals for around 100 bucks and now it's increased dramatically. Has the economy shifted that much or are we just slowly being pushed into accept it as the new norm?

IMO some are pushing the boundaries of what is ok to sell for. If they get away with a high price once, it's ok to do it a third or a forth time. Re-using the same exact feature over and over again doesn't seem to sway most either.

I'm finding the market is so over-saturated that I'm losing complete interest.







So what say you? I'm talking new prices here, not used btw.

Also, this is a bit different than what I originally stated, so I'm trying to remember some of my key points.

[Chankgeez]

Without saying directly, I feel like people are now shooting for the fucking moon on prices and it kind of sickens me.

A flipper says "whuuuuut".

[Jwar]

Without saying directly, I feel like people are now shooting for the fucking moon on prices and it kind of sickens me.

A flipper says "whuuuuut".

You know, I haven’t been selling as much this last six months or more. When I do, it’s not overpriced. I have only done that a few times and people latch onto it likes it’s my identity.

Nice contribution to the thread though.

[DRodriguez]

I'm very open about when I think something is out of my budget.

Part of it is that we're seeing a larger amount of people buying pedals, from all classes. So we're seeing a lot better budget stuff from companies like behringer, tc electronic, etc. And were also seeing a growing market for much more premium products. We tend to pay more attention to these premium things because they have more wow factors.

That combined with how much value things are keeping on the used market. If someone buy a $500 pedal, there's a good chance they get near that amount back or more if they plan things right. Even if the fancy new pedal is more than they should spend, it seems more reasonable if justified as a temporary cost.

This has largely discouraged my buying habits, unfortunately, but it has increased the total money going into small builder's hands.

[gnomethrone]

I've never heard of Tone Czar outside of your posts so I'm convinced its a brand you made up just to show off

But yeah like DRod said, there are just more pedals at every price point. I don't even look at $500 pedals so I havent noticed if there's more or less of them. Im amazed by how many cool $50 pedals there are compared to when I first started buying music crap though.

[crochambeau]

I'm also curious about builders thoughts on this.

From the vantage point of making something from as close to nothing as one can get, I feel like a lot of prices are justifiable.

Mind you, I also feel (from a calculation POV) that my own builds are still quite under-priced, so when I see something in the same feature range (measured by some loosey-goosey metric of quantity over quality) for several hundred dollars more I don't get sticker shock - I nudge the pawn line forward a little in my slow moving end game of making a living wage. Small scale builders are running a tough trench, there's the crushing overhead of cost of living, etc...

It goes on and on, and that's all old hat.

Really, the one aspect keeping a lot of us from really grasping the effects of inflation is the race to the bottom pricing structure coming from big factories. Anyway..

So is a $650 pedal any different? Sure, maybe... maybe not. Does that difference matter? Depends on what the difference is and the end user.

OOP parts, that grow more mythic as the years roll on, themselves become more expensive due to scarcity. These parts, being birthed in a more primitive time, benefit from human involvement to match or filter, driving the embedded value up. We can circumvent that in a large part by using modern stuff (I have, as an example, a box of what used to be 5000 transistors, and I shit you not - every single transistor I have tested in that box is 207 hFE) but that often requires an investment of development time because some modern parts can sound like shit in classic circuits regardless of how consistent they are (you could say they consistently sound like shit). These are all just various hidden costs that go beyond the X amount of a part I can buy for three pennies built into a box I can buy for $10 or 15 bucks.

Sorry, I keep getting interrupted in the real world, so this is probably a very disjointed post. I think the new norm is sub-50 dollar garbage that might actually work more than half the time, $100 homebrew clones coming from the weekend warrior swampland (no offense my neighboring rabble, keep those irons hot), fuckheads like me that are slowly inching toward the $300 mark while methodically churning a death march through war torn lands, and a mix of genuinely accelerated craftspeople and smarmy marketing assholes in the $400 and up crowd. Sky's the limit, really...

And then on the other side of the scale you have big companies, that are inherently conservative about designs because they are geared toward serving the 10-100 thousand unit runs, yet they follow a similar demographic.

Prices will go up, but continue to be defined/anchored by the lowest common denominator. I think craft builders should be paid more, but that is not entirely pragmatic because on average there is not enough capital flowing through our coffers. Plus some of us live in the U.S., just last night there was a community fund raiser so someone in the local metal scene could get a chance at a new kidney so they'll continue to exist, which I only mention as an illustration as to direction pressures on an already restrained resource.

Boil it down to: suppose I have a pile of materials that cost me $100, and Newton Einstein has a pile of materials that cost them $100, and we each make something similar. If mine sells at $195 and theirs at $350 we both may in fact be getting the same forward push out of it, and the quality difference may not be tangible, but the invisible entity of street cred or self worth just amounts to a bumpy rabbit hole of circular logic you can find on any audiophile website for free.

Jesus, that's a mess of a post. I apologize, hahaha.

[Chankgeez]

Without saying directly, I feel like people are now shooting for the fucking moon on prices and it kind of sickens me.

A flipper says "whuuuuut".

You know, I haven’t been selling as much this last six months or more. When I do, it’s not overpriced. I have only done that a few times and people latch onto it likes it’s my identity.

I know you haven't. I'm sorry to typecast you like that. I was only (half) joking.

I agree with your now deleted OP for the most part.

Nice contribution to the thread though.

Thank you!

[DRodriguez]

Aww, I thought this was a good thread to think about.

[D.o.S.]

That's how the free market works Jwar.

[Eivind August]

Simple example: When a certain relatively famous demoer sold his 87, he got a grand for it. When I recently purchased my 87 from some dude, I paid $180. So, what is it worth? Well, it is worth whatever some douche is willing to pay for it, which fluctuates with hype. Oscillating fuzzes aren't cool anymore, so I can get rarities for cheap, whereas old glitch pedals that used to be cheap, are now sold for several hundred bucks. Almost like people follow trends instead of artistic goals, instagram likes instead of making music.

[Chankgeez]

instagram likes instead of making music.

Instagram likes ARE the new music.

[Eivind August]

I only listen to early Instagram likes, thank you very much.

[retinal orbita]

Aww, I thought this was a good thread to think about.

Shame we'll never fully appreciate the context since the OP apparently didn't like the responses he got....

[gnomethrone]

I only listen to early Instagram likes, thank you very much.

gnomethrone liked your ILF post

[$harkToootth]

Oscillating fuzzes aren't cool anymore...

Ummm....I did NOT get that memo