Thursday, January 12, 2012

New career? We will see!

You ever just stumble into something that snowballed into a possible new career or at the very least a profitable hobby?

I may have just done this...

I was looking at amps for my electric guitar and realized just how damn expensive these things are.   It seems like for every feature you add you have to pay about $100 more!  In the end the ones I wanted cost around $1000 or higher!

Now being a fairly cheap do-it-yourself kinda guy with a nerdtastic aptitude for building tech crap, I figured I might look into designing my own amp.  A few days later after researching hundreds of DIY designs and reading reviews of DIY circuits I came to the realization that I could actually build my own with even higher quality for a lot less money.  How much less?  About 99% less!!!  lol  

It seems that amps are technically quite simple beasts.  Not a lot to them component wise.  So I ordered a ton of parts online from China last night for my first build.  I will prototype my designs using a simple solderless breadboard and then convert it to a circuit board later once I am happy with the results.

Now for the fun part…  Even though I haven’t made a single amp yet I already have numerous interested buyers putting in orders!  So I took the plunge and ordered enough parts to build 50.  That will be my first run.   I have about 10 orders already and will sell the rest on eBay.   They will be hand crafted custom amps.  Wood cases, numerous features, multiple outs, varying designs, electric/bass selection depending on your type of guitar, line inputs for MP3 players, and more…   Basically they are portable amps with hundreds/thousands of dollars of functionality and handcrafted design. 

I ordered the parts from China so it will be a month before I get all of them delivered.  Then I figure a month to perfect the design (combining various aspects from existing deigns that are online).  After that I head into production in my free time.

It’s good to be a nerd!  Knowing how to build expensive equipment cheaply rocks!  The mark-ups on amps and other musical electronic are unreal!!!

I figure I could make around $1800 a week as a hobby.  With money like that I could quit and simply do that as a living and make even more money!

Needless to say I will post my progress as I go….  

Huh… and all I wanted was to save money on a good amp.  Who knew there was such a demand for custom amps!