[sdiy] making 2 or 3 dollars an hour on synth building?

[harrybissell at wowway.com]

thoughts...

You can probably do better by doing small projects that many people
would want... like the kits available from some boutique manufacturers
(you know who you are :^)

The guitar-stompbox market is tough because if you allow the schematic to
become common knowledge, anyone can build one by hand easily and you don't
get money

You may have lost money (time) from lack of experience. How much time could
you have saved if you didn't have the troubles you had because you are new(er)
to building this kind of project ?

You could quote Time & Material with an estimate of the hours you would spend.

You might set project milestones, at which time you would receive partial
payments...

You could keep your day job :^P

You might make more money if you develop a project that could be duplicated
easily. You would only lose money on the first one.

I did a burgular alarm some years ago... and I made the same $2 an hour. But
it was a thrill to see one hanging in a store twenty years later :^)  
Its an education... how much would you have spent on a college course to learn
the same skills and get NO money at all for it ???

Its better than golf ....????

H^) harry


On Tue, 2 Dec 2008 13:18:36 +0000, Dan Snazelle wrote
> well i installed the audio ark this weekend at a beautiful estate in 
> northern new york. i was terrified the person paying for the box was 
> going to hate it but luckily that was not the case. it sounded great 
> and looked good in his rack sitting above two eventide boxes and an MPRESSOR.
> 
> HOWEVER
> 
>  i am quickly starting to see that making a living, or supplementing 
> my income from audio electronics may be a bit of a ridiculous idea. 
> for the amount of hours i put into the audio ark, i probably ended 
> up making about 61 dollars a week (for 36 weeks)
> 
> this is NOT practical. especially when many of those weeks, i was 
> working so much on the ark that i had no time for my REAL job of 
> being a recording guy in nyc. If i was working 40 or more hours a 
> week on the ark (which was often the case) i was making around 2 or 
> 3 dollars an hour. (or even less)
> 
> (AND I STILL HAVE TO WRITE THE MANUAL)
> 
> maybe due to the size or the amount of work that went into figuring 
> out a good method of tracking, or due to the time of soldering and 
> wiring..i dont know...but if this is the most one can make building 
> a box of that size...well i dont think i would ever do it again! and 
> this isnt meant as an angry statement. far from it. But it was a TON 
> of work. late nights...early mornings...technical hurdles...hand 
> burns....and I think for that amount of work, there has to be a 
> payoff. (which there always is when you are building it for YOURSELF)
> 
> at least the parts were paid for as i was building it. but lets stop 
> and think about if they were NOT...then i would have had to put 
> about 2000 dollars of my OWN money into the box, which would not 
> have been recouped till the very end. which seems very risky (if you 
> arent even sure there are buyers)
> 
> wow.
> 
> so i am interested in knowing
> 
> 1. is it really THAT hard to do better than breaking even when 
>  building synth related stuff for people (even just one offs)
> 2. how does anyone make a real living doing it?
> 3. is it any better with small boxes? (fx,etc)
> 4. what are some good ways of estimating a cost at the start? (i 
> estimated waaaay too low and hurt myself because of it. an agreed 
> upon price is an agreed upon price no matter how wrong i might have 
> been.)
> 
> granted...i will be doing synth diy for myself no matter what. and i 
> am proud of the monster that i built.
> 
> but maybe stompbox style synth creations are a bit more realistic 
> than giant machines?
> 
> i would love to hear of your experiences with this.
> 
> thanks so much
> 
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Harry Bissell & Nora Abdullah 4eva