[Big Bad Bob]

On 05/08/11 20:48, flipper so wittily quipped:
I can then compete with the crap products by offering real
performance.

Until such time as you build and sell 'real performance' for the same
or less price as the alleged 'crap' you're just an elitist curmudgeon.


there may be a way to build the 'real performance' stuff AND compete
with the 'crap products', but it might also involve a bit of 'slave
labor' - at least for some of the assemblies and components. But... if
you can get a working board design, then have some board shop make you a
zillion of them and ship them to an assembly shop to insert components
and wave-solder it, then ship you a completed board 'minus tubes', and
also have someone else stamp out chassis and ship THEM to you, you could
THEN hire a handful of people to bolt everything into place (about 10
minutes per amp, let's say), insert the tubes, run a final test, and
crate 'em for shipping.

I think you'd be able to compete with the 'low budget' people if you use
a reasonable design (low cost + good performance) and decent quality
components.


As for developing custom board designs, I did a test run a few months
back with a Canadian company that will do an overnight run of your board
designs (in groups of 2) for (typically) under $100 (minimum order size
2) including the shipping (you just need gerber files and a credit card,
upload via the web). Once the board's right you can have someone else
make lots of them. Of course there are other board shops that do this,
but I found them to be pretty easy to work with so I'll probably work
with them again. The software I have doesn't have any tube socket
layouts pre-done but a little work might yield 7 pin and 9 pin minis and
octals. Might have to surface solder them due to 'round holes only'.
Someone out there likely has the tube sockets 'ready to go'.

Anyway, hand-wiring terminal strips is too old school for a modern amp.
But you could actually have tube sockets exposed through a chassis to
make it look like it's old-school point to point if you wanted to, and
just use the boards to keep assembly costs down.

FYI - did the board design and schematics with open source apps, 'PCB
Designer' and 'gEDA' on a non-windows OS.