Just watched the fabulous "Biggest Bass D.I. Shootout Ever" from Janek Gwizdala, I sent him a With Bass In Mind edition Finally v2 and audibly giggled when he said "I don’t think there’s really anything else that comes close to it on the market."
I've had people ask me in the past how it feels to get excluded from conversations about "high-end" gear like Noble and REDDI because of how inexpensive my stuff is, and why I don't focus on high-dollar items to get more clout. The simple reason is that I don't want to. Is my $250 tube D.I. the absolute best sounding thing in the universe? Maybe not. But I firmly believe that it is by far the best sounding thing in anything close to that price range.
When I first started playing guitar (I didn't start on bass), my parents didn't seem to take it seriously and it was considered a phase I would grow out of, so they didn't want to invest in it. I got a hand-me-down acoustic and eventually the cheapest electric and the cheapest amp. If I wanted something nicer, I had to get it myself. I was frustrated that no matter how much I practiced I never seemed to sound good. Would getting a $5000 guitar and a $2000 amp make me a better musician? Of course not. But it would have inspired me to work harder because I would have been able to hear the difference in sound. "Tone is in the fingers" is a great thing to say to people that already have at least mid-grade gear, but for a 12 year-old kid with hand-me-downs and a broken amplifier, it doesn't matter how good your fingers are if the gear isn't doing its job.
So when I design my products, I'm not thinking about how to maximize profits. I'm not using "mojo" components or NOS tubes. I'm using things that I can source reliably and build consistently and quickly. At my day job we call this "design for manufacturability". I value my time both in building and designing, as well as the time and experience it's taken to get me to this level, so I charge what I have to in order to make it worth my time, but I try to keep things priced reasonably because I want EVERYONE to be able to afford it. I believe in my designs and I will always take the same level of care that I believe every "boutique" builder does on every single unit I build, but my goal has always been to be "budget boutique". I don't want to undervalue the work of builders that make high-dollar items, they spend a lot of time on their builds and they make amazing products, but it doesn't have to be high-cost in order to be high-quality.
Anyway. There's my rant for the day. Check out Janek's shootout, it's a fun watch.
