by tubes4hifi » Fri Nov 02, 2007 8:11 pm
I sell most everything for 10-20% over cost, maybe if you've never had any PCB designed, tested, and manufactured then you don't know about the 8-12 hours of design time and the $100 setup fees, so 2 PCBs cost me $150 but I can get 10 of them for $300. If you can get them cheaper I'll buy them from you instead. And since this is just a part-time hobby for me, I just sell to whoever wants to buy, most of my customers are referrals and repeat customers anyway.
I've been kind of surprised Shannon hasn't come up with a preamp offering yet, as the cheapest kit I've seen lately is the Foreplay for about $429 and IMHO not worth half that.
Have you looked at the schematics of many commercial hi-end preamps lately, you know, the ones that go for $2000-4000 for a simple line stage?? ARC, BAT, C-J, Cary, etc??
They can be duplicated for about $200-300 in parts in you don't care what it looks like, but the end result is the same, I sold many a clone of an $7500 European preamp a few years back for $400.
Don't forget this is a combo line-phono-power supply, find me a better deal and I'll buy a dozen of them myself!!
Roy