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!