Question About Selling

jdduffield

jdduffield

Active member
This is a question for those of you who sell pedals. I’m wondering if people are typically willing to pay more for pedals that have effects created by the FV-1 chip. Those chips are pricey, and I’m wondering if there is a good chance of recouping the extra cost or if people just expect them to cost the same as drive and fuzz pedals. This assumes the FV-1 is configured to deliver a super cool effect, like a lo fi delay or ambient reverb, etc., … assume it is programmed well and has a nice enclosure design when you answer please.
 
I typically expect reverbs and delays to cost more than overdrives... regardless of what kind of electronics are inside.

With that said, overdrives and distortions seem to hold value better than reverbs or delays.

Off the top of my head I can't think of too many overhyped/scalped reverb pedals. (Not talking about vintage rack gear)
 
Robert said:
I typically expect reverbs and delays to cost more than overdrives... regardless of what kind of electronics are inside.
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That is kind of what I thought. It is also what I notice when I go to buy pedals for myself. I’m not wanting to go down the FV-1 rabbit hole strictly for “the money”. The way my mind works, I think I’ll enjoy it. I’m into computer science and my day job is in web. I also produce music for fun and enjoy mixing and tweaking plugins. I expect DSP programming to be a good fit for me. I just don’t want it to be a financial mistake because I do need to make a little profit along the way and am content working with strictly analog circuits.

I have a couple questions that I know you can answer if you have a minute.

1. Is it common to build an analog overdrive, and a digital FV1 effect, and sum them together in the same circuit or is that a bad idea? Would it even fit into a 125B?

And 2. If I bought one of the FV1 Development PCBs sold here, and maybe the EEROM chip and control bus as well, would that be something that could help me get started where I could program it with SpinCAD or something, then send that data to the pedal and try it in real time?
 
For 1. It’s possible if you do your own pcb design but it’ll be tight, have to be a really small drive circuit. Unless you do stacked pcbs (such as the PPCB Byzantium).

2. The PPCB fb-1 development board is what you’re after. It took me a bit of finagling to get the programs running on my pc for the flashing, but there are good documents and the sale page.

The fv-1 language is very different and unique, the spin semi site has a lot of training info for the language. I thought it was a steep learning curve. Not sure if someone with more programming background would pick it up easier. There’s also the spincad program to help write patches without getting into the language.
 
Just to throw my 2 cents in. In my experience if you plan on selling PPCB pedals you're best bet is to find a boutique circuit that is pricey on the used market, but cheap to make and low on parts. I feel like i can find a better reverb/delay pedal on the used market for what I would hope to sell my fv-1 pedal for. Possibly with the exception of the hydra.

I will also say the selling market is pretty awful right now for musical instruments in general. I see guitars MIM strats and teles sitting on marketplace for a couple days at 300-400$ right now when I would be buying them instantly to resell at 500-600 no problem a couple years ago. Things are weird right now. Things are going for 30% less than they were last summer. At least in my area, and my pedals aren't selling well, requests are even slower than they were.
 
I’ve tried both FV-1 and Daisyseed. As a programmer by trade, I thought daisyseed was way easier to work with. I can use all the same tooling that I use at my dayjob. I’m not really a C++ person, but it makes sense a lot quicker than any FV-1 toolchain for me.
 
jcpst said:
I’ve tried both FV-1 and Daisyseed. As a programmer by trade, I thought daisyseed was way easier to work with. I can use all the same tooling that I use at my dayjob. I’m not really a C++ person, but it makes sense a lot quicker than any FV-1 toolchain for me.
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I’ve never heard of Daisyseed. Looking into it now.
 
Locrian99 said:
Just to throw my 2 cents in. In my experience if you plan on selling PPCB pedals you're best bet is to find a boutique circuit that is pricey on the used market, but cheap to make and low on parts. I feel like i can find a better reverb/delay pedal on the used market for what I would hope to sell my fv-1 pedal for. Possibly with the exception of the hydra.

I will also say the selling market is pretty awful right now for musical instruments in general. I see guitars MIM strats and teles sitting on marketplace for a couple days at 300-400$ right now when I would be buying them instantly to resell at 500-600 no problem a couple years ago. Things are weird right now. Things are going for 30% less than they were last summer. At least in my area, and my pedals aren't selling well, requests are even slower than they were.
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I noticed the market situation too and wondered if the sales just come in waves. This is my first few months selling, and during the week it is not great. Weekends are better. It will be interesting to see if things get better in the holiday season.

I’m not considering the current state of the market too much as I’m thinking of this as a side thing that I can retire into years from now. At the same time, I need to keep up with expenses to sustain it and help with a car payment I recently acquired, so I do have to consider the market’s current state at least a little bit.
 
Selling pedals is more than about the product - it's also about brand identity and customer service. The average buyer on reverb doesn't know a thing about the insides of pedals, they just want something they can understand and someone they can trust to tell them it will sound good.

Until you have a brand identity, your margin for digital effects will always be smaller than analog. The average buyer trusts a used brand name pedal more than a one-off, unless there is a considerable price difference or it's an out of production circuit.

I'm not saying you shouldn't try to make FV-1 work for you, but you should construct a timeline for your goals.
 
falco_femoralis said:
Selling pedals is more than about the product - it's also about brand identity and customer service.
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Huge +1 to this. Even if you have the coolest FV-1 algorithms out there, if you don't have some reason to stick out among all the other boutique FV-1 based pedals then you're going to have a hard time "breaking into the market." And if you find a way to get into the market, if you don't have good customer service, you won't last long.

It's awesome that building amazing sellable pedals is so accessible and easy to get into now, but the other side of that is that the market is pretty saturated. You need people to pay attention to you, but you also need them to trust you. Both are important.

There's a lot more to selling than just making a cool product.
 
falco_femoralis said:
Selling pedals is more than about the product - it's also about brand identity and customer service. The average buyer on reverb doesn't know a thing about the insides of pedals, they just want something they can understand and someone they can trust to tell them it will sound good.

Until you have a brand identity, your margin for digital effects will always be smaller than analog. The average buyer trusts a used brand name pedal more than a one-off, unless there is a considerable price difference or it's an out of production circuit.

I'm not saying you shouldn't try to make FV-1 work for you, but you should construct a timeline for your goals.
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I’m definitely working on that. About one-third of my buyers so far have returned to buy a second product. Quick shipping and correspondence helps, high ratings, quality product, great bargain, nice demos, etc. I’m working on a website.

Anyway, I agree and see this as the most difficult part of selling. Thankfully, I have about 15 years to figure it out as I won’t be retiring anytime soon. Until then I’ll be building the brand in my spare time.

I wish I knew how to find influencers that are not quite famous. Low cost, but less of an audience. I just don’t know how to go about finding people like that. You know, someone to help me sell a batch of 20 pedals by showcasing it on YouTube or Instagram without it costing a fortune.
 
I have some more questions about the FV-1. Does it require the EEPROM in every instance, even if there is only one patch?

Also, does one patch let you use the full memory or is it partitioned to a specific max for each patch?

Also, the 32 seems to be the goto. I see a 512 out there (on Tayda). Does that let you have more memory to work with and is it compatible?
 

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vigilante398 said:
Huge +1 to this. Even if you have the coolest FV-1 algorithms out there, if you don't have some reason to stick out among all the other boutique FV-1 based pedals then you're going to have a hard time "breaking into the market." And if you find a way to get into the market, if you don't have good customer service, you won't last long.

It's awesome that building amazing sellable pedals is so accessible and easy to get into now, but the other side of that is that the market is pretty saturated. You need people to pay attention to you, but you also need them to trust you. Both are important.

There's a lot more to selling than just making a cool product.
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I agree 100%. I also have good reason to believe I should give it a try.

I think what I’ll do is continue working overdrive circuits while beginning to tinker with the FV-1. Then, later this year, I’ll sell a small batch of pedals that have a custom program on it and see how it goes. Then, take an honest look at how that went.
 
jdduffield said:
I have some more questions about the FV-1. Does it require the EEPROM in every instance, even if there is only one patch?

Also, does one patch let you use the full memory or is it partitioned to a specific max for each patch?

Also, the 32 seems to be the goto. I see a 512 out there (on Tayda). Does that let you have more memory to work with and is it compatible?
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Each patch is limits to 128 code lines. It has more to do with how it processes the number of lines in the code within the sample rate. (It has to run the whole code within each sample rate (32.768kHz if you use the normal crystal)

Cant increase code length at all beyond that no matter what.
 
phi1 said:
Each patch is limits to 128 code lines. It has more to do with how it processes the number of lines in the code within the sample rate. (It has to run the whole code within each sample rate (32.768kHz if you use the normal crystal)

Cant increase code length at all beyond that no matter what.
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Well, good news is we save a little money not buying the 512. 🤣
 
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