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

[Neil Johnson]

From: Ian Fritz <ijfritz at comcast.net>

> I have a friend who makes cellos violins, etc.  She makes and sells several 
> a year.  But you can't even *look* at one for under $20k.  That would be 
> the only way you could make decent money.  Unfortunately, there isn't much 
> demand for analog synths, since people have cheap software 
> alternatives.  Simple supply/demand economics.

Some closer-to-home context, the GRP A8 synth:

http://www.grpsynthesizer.it/a8_en.html

According to the text on

http://www.bluesynths.com/modules.php?name=Reviews&rop=showcontent&id=133

the maker plans to build 20 of them, selling them for 4,800 Euros each.  Now do the math:

20 x 4,800 = 96,000 Euros (about 122,500 USD).

Building 20 of something is not that much of a step up from building one - sure, more time soldering/drilling/wiring/painting, but also many things happen in parallel for free (having 20 PCBs manufactured compared to one - same time, just higher cost).

Of course, there's no guarantee that they'll sell, but this puts some numbers that someone has worked on into the discussion.

As in any business decision, you sit down, work out the numbers, and if you're going to make a loss, you simply say "no thanks".  Or the customer decides its too expensive.  Either way, you don't lose (hopefully :)

Cheers
Neil


--
http://www.njohnson.co.uk

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