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Stoner/Doom Bassists Thread, Part 90: Maxed Out

#2,661
JoeVictim said:
Truth. It helps to have old cabs to pull parts from. I must have spent around $180 just on components for the BFM I built. The Birch was only $20 a sheet. The neo (at that time) was only like $160ish.

I wanted to clone some cabs but it's not financially doable right now. Also, someone should buy my birth year bass. It's also not in the cards at the moment.
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I had the active double pup and the passive single pup Gibby Victories both sounded awesome with awesome build quality but Datassian those shagerz were heavy even for seated playing like balancing a cinder block on your right leg lol.
 
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#2,663
dunwichamps said:
If I even wanted to make money on amp I would need to charge 2x the parts cost + labor to meet margin. In that case I would be charging an easy 3k for the average 100W. Now a lot of people would complain about that because they are cheap and do not understand how much labor goes into making a custom 1 off tube amp. Now the reason I do not charge that much is because I am not so concerned with making money on tube amps but do not be fooled into thinking that $1500 is a lot for a custom amp from a small company. Its barely breaking even. After gas associated with driving the amp around, small costs like solder ect.. that $200 I might charge in labor is basically nothing really.
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Yep, for me charging $1500 for a tube preamp would maybe get me to Washington's minimum wage on actual build time, plus maybe 10-20% markup on parts. R&D and design time? Fuggetaboudit.

I've built a lot of TL606s, they're a great way to get your feet wet and plenty of non-EV drivers can be adapted pretty easily. There are several TB threads on modding the design with better/more modern bracing, bigger ports, etc., as CL alluded to.
 
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#2,666
dunwichamps said:
Yea its like custom amps. For example when I order parts for the average 100W amp it costs me almost $1200-1300 all together for the basic 100W with no aesthetic frills. So lets say I charge 1500 for the amp. I might be getting $200 in labor and then consider its like 40 hours of labor to build an amp from initial thoughts to design to construction. Thats like $5 dollars an hour labor, not even minimum wage. So when someone is building a cab in a single shot the price they are going to pay in just wood alone is easily going to hit 400-500 dollars for a regular ass 4x12 and that does not even consider if you go a fancier route and get hardwood trim and staining ect ect. All of that is adding hours and hours of extra labor into the design. Thats not even counting in the speaker cost which adds an easy $400 dollars for someone who is not ordering 1000 speakers in a shot. Most small companies are not doing that.

If I even wanted to make money on amp I would need to charge 2x the parts cost + labor to meet margin. In that case I would be charging an easy 3k for the average 100W. Now a lot of people would complain about that because they are cheap and do not understand how much labor goes into making a custom 1 off tube amp. Now the reason I do not charge that much is because I am not so concerned with making money on tube amps but do not be fooled into thinking that $1500 is a lot for a custom amp from a small company. Its barely breaking even. After gas associated with driving the amp around, small costs like solder ect.. that $200 I might charge in labor is basically nothing really.
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Essentially, there's no economy of scale so the price has to be high.
 
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#2,667
CL400Peavey said:
Really digging this.


Also, it makes me happy when Charlie shows up in the SD thread.
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Heh. You guys might have dug my 80's Seattle band. 3 guitars, two basses, two drummers, noisy horn section. My rig was one Gauss 18 in a horn, 2 JBL E145 15s, and two JBL10s, stacked in a big-ass monolith. One drummer had an electronic kit with his own folded horn Cerwin-Vega subwoofer too.
 
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#2,668
Lazarus.Bird said:
Also, great band practice last night. I think we cranked out another awesome track. I'm really liking playing as a four piece... My guitarist set up his board with an A/B box and ran his looper, a phaser, and a couple others to the B side. So the A side is running into his Hiwatt/Avatar rig, and the B side is running into a loud as **** Fender Twin combo. It sounds awesome. I'm trying to convince him we can do just fine as a four piece, cause I really liked how things have been going with just the four of us. We've written some pretty rad tunes lately.

Going to have some solid tracks to pick from when we do our first record release with the label we're signing with. Oops, I let the cat out of the bag! We haven't officially signed anything or announced it yet so I don't want to say any more, but I'm really excited. Should be official soon :)
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Sweet!!! But wait??? You're a 4-piece now?
 
#2,669
Passinwind said:
Heh. You guys might have dug my 80's Seattle band. 3 guitars, two basses, two drummers, noisy horn section. My rig was one Gauss 18 in a horn, 2 JBL E145 15s, and two JBL10s, stacked in a big-ass monolith. One drummer had an electronic kit with his own folded horn Cerwin-Vega subwoofer too.
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you played in Swans?
 
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#2,675
Ron Now said:
That would have been awesome if you were in Swans, I know they did a similar lineup at some point. Any recordings out there? I see videos from 2013 of a band with the same name on youtube.
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Those are some of the same guys, but I think they've gone back to being mostly just a Deadhead/jam band again now, and of course they're geezers like I am. The really scary noisy weird phase only lasted a couple of years in the mid-80s, just before the "scene" really opened up in Seattle. We played fairly big venues, it was fun. I may still have some recordings on cassette somewhere, I'll take a look.
 
#2,676
Tractorr said:
Saw Floor last night and they were killer. Great show except they didn't go on until after midnight and they had some gear issues, but I never thought I would see them again so I will deal with minor annoyances.
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I thought I was going to see Floor on Friday. Wife wanted to go to the Pens game so we bought tickets. Figure I get out of there by 10:30 and have plenty of time to catch Floor with a four band bill. After I bought the tickets I realized the show starts at 6:30... what the hell...

So yeah, guess I'll be missing Floor. Oh well, I'll still be seeing Aqua Nebula Oscillator and Truckfighters.
 
#2,677
Lazarus.Bird said:
I thought I was going to see Floor on Friday. Wife wanted to go to the Pens game so we bought tickets. Figure I get out of there by 10:30 and have plenty of time to catch Floor with a four band bill. After I bought the tickets I realized the show starts at 6:30... what the hell...

So yeah, guess I'll be missing Floor. Oh well, I'll still be seeing Aqua Nebula Oscillator and Truckfighters.
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I need to decide if I am going to see Truckfighters on Friday, but their are a bunch of good shows coming up so I might save my money. In the coming months: Red Fang with Big Business, Mastodon with Gojira (I don't care what the new Mast album sounds like their live show is killer), Young Widows, Ghost, I feel like there is another good show soon and it is escaping me. Truth be told I haven't listened to Truckfighters that much so I am not totally dying to see them or anything so it may get the ax.
 
#2,680
Tractorr said:
I need to decide if I am going to see Truckfighters on Friday, but their are a bunch of good shows coming up so I might save my money. In the coming months: Red Fang with Big Business, Mastodon with Gojira (I don't care what the new Mast album sounds like their live show is killer), Young Widows, Ghost, I feel like there is another good show soon and it is escaping me. Truth be told I haven't listened to Truckfighters that much so I am not totally dying to see them or anything so it may get the ax.
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Truckfighters is one of the best live bands I've ever seen.
 
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