Suggestions for Companies Selling Kits

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Come on now, what you got up your sleeve for the Dungeon eh?

Oh that well-known DIY hi-fi site Vikash! Well no, not that one exactly! :D

And it's not a DD product, but somebody I know is planning to offer something that will house hi-fi and require no more than an electric drill, screwdriver etc to assemble. It will be ideal for GCs, class-T amps, DACs etc.

The plan is to offer enough variations of finish to allow the buyer to have something fairly individual. At the same time, a lot of effort is going into keeping the costs down.

I don't know when they will be available but I have been involved enough in the development to understand just how much time and work is involved. :eek:
 
Nuuk said:


40$! I doubt that, even if you used labour from China! And what about knobs, sockets, mains connector, grommets, fasteners, finish?

fwiw -- China has invested very "smartly" in the best CNC technology --

Heathkit sold millions of oscilloscopes as kits -- although the history of the the company goes back into the 1920's they actually got started when one of the founders bought a freight car load of CRT's and they figured that they had to do something with them.

through the 1950's and into the 1980's Heath sold millions of ham radio tx, rx and transceivers, millions of stereo amplifiers. they were noted for their high quality and easy to follow, goof-proof instructions.

the denoument came when the company was purchased by Zenith -- the latter only had interest in heath's line of personal computers. but at that time the Japanese had stolen the march in the ham "new gear" market, and the cost of mid-fi had been crushed.

while I doubt that anyone will make another great kit company like Heath or Eico, there are scores of small, niche suppliers for the microcomputer market, ham gear, robotics, Lego Mindstorms etc. the documentation can be pretty spartan.

I have a 1/2 dozen 4x20 LCD displays from NetMedia -- the documentation is dreadful -- but they have an incorporated an 8 channel 10 bit ADC, 8 channel relay control, 4x4 keypad controller, RS232 interface and a buzzer which can chirp! The price was around $40 -- you have to figure out a lot of the programming yourself. I almost used it in the MCUTracer article, but figured that it would be beyond the capabilities of most audio diy'rs so stuck with the Basic Stamp.

So the message is, if you want a newbie kit get a newbie kit. If you want a board which requires stuffing, get a board...sooner or later you'll be programming in VB.
 
I'm really not talking about outsourcing - I'm sorry if that was implied or stated.

Finish options could include anything from bare metal and wood on up. Staining wood can be done effectively and very inexpensively, especially in this kind of limited quantity.

What about leaving out the knobs? Lots of reasons for this. Options include stripping dead gear, supplying your own from a radio-rack store or using something really fancy.

A few templates on paper would at least be a starting place for mains wiring.

Perhaps this can't be done for $40. Perhaps it can. Would a $500 speaker kit from a reputable maker sound as good as a $500 pair of speakers from a reputable brand? I honestly don't konw - just posting suggestions :)
 
Would a $500 speaker kit from a reputable maker sound as good as a $500 pair of speakers from a reputable brand?

I would hope so and expect them to be much better! But speakers are different to amps being relatively simpler. The kits offered tend to be more up-market. I doubt a kit supplier could provide a speaker kit at the lwoest end of the market that could compete with mass-produced commercial types.

Now, if we were talking about kit amplifiers that were meant to be compared to top-end commercial amplifiers, say 4-5000 USD, there would be a lot more scope for providing all the 'extras' that have been wished for by some people in this thread. But if you are talking sub 100 USD, forget it! ;)

Finish options could include anything from bare metal and wood on up. Staining wood can be done effectively and very inexpensively, especially in this kind of limited quantity.

What about leaving out the knobs? Lots of reasons for this. Options include stripping dead gear, supplying your own from a radio-rack store or using something really fancy.

And there we have another problem. Ask 100 DIYers what they want in a kit and you'll probably get at least 50 diffierent answers. The logistics of trying to supply that many options would surely put off any potential supplier, particularly if they are a one-man operation! I'm not having a go at anybody here, just trying to illustrate to the newbies how difficult it is to provide an ideal solution. :angel:
 
Nuuk said:
And there we have another problem. Ask 100 DIYers what they want in a kit and you'll probably get at least 50 diffierent answers.

Not neccessarily. Talking from first hand experience, I can assure you that if you provide only few, interesting options, most of the people will choose all them anyway.

The amp that is pictured here: http://www.audiosector.com/chassis_integrated.shtml actually started as chassis group buy. Originally, the chassis was selling for $150, plus all the extras (wodden sides, shaft extenders, RCAS, cones, knobs and so on). The total was close to $225. That was still a very good value, and I'm not aware of anybody offering anything comparable.

I sold approx 70 pcs in about 3 months. Last 10 sets were sold at $200.

The biggest problem here, was not creating the project, or taking care of fabricating issues or parts sourcing. Processing orders, properly packaging everything and sending it was so time consuming, that eventually I abandoned it. I offered flat surface shipping rate of $30 worldwide. That means that whatever was left extra from USA shipping (which was usually $10 less) covered international shipping (which was about $15 more), so anybody had equal opportunity to buy, no matter where being located.

Last few sets were sold at $200 (chassis only), and that created about 100% markup, but I'm still not really tempted to run it again. Building complete amplifiers is more interesting, more rewarding and much less hassle.
 
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