In years past I used to build quite a few amplifier modules and sell them on ebay.
In more recent years the competition from China and very cheap vendors has just killed it.
The only one I am left selling is a JLH96 class A amp. There are plenty of JLH69 but not so many 96's.
I have had to move on to model railway electronics and USB scopes to continue selling.
In more recent years the competition from China and very cheap vendors has just killed it.
The only one I am left selling is a JLH96 class A amp. There are plenty of JLH69 but not so many 96's.
I have had to move on to model railway electronics and USB scopes to continue selling.
DIY building for fun , pleasure and enjoyment is still possible, why not?
Now DIY commercially is harder every day, Oriental manufacturing can´t be beaten in cost, abundance, and now they are raising quality too, tough act to match, let alone beat.
But you can still do it, as long as you can find a niche where you can find an advantage over others, perceived or real.
Sadly the "advantage" often comes only from snake oil babble
Now DIY commercially is harder every day, Oriental manufacturing can´t be beaten in cost, abundance, and now they are raising quality too, tough act to match, let alone beat.
But you can still do it, as long as you can find a niche where you can find an advantage over others, perceived or real.
Sadly the "advantage" often comes only from snake oil babble
Perry Baubin in the car audio section has a similar thread going...
Low sales, parts in short supply, even drivers not easily available.
A grim situation for small businesses.
Unless you offer something unique, and the profits are enough to meet your expenses, it is difficult for a small business to survive...
Low sales, parts in short supply, even drivers not easily available.
A grim situation for small businesses.
Unless you offer something unique, and the profits are enough to meet your expenses, it is difficult for a small business to survive...
You can't make a semiconductor working from home. The pandemic really upset the supply chain of solid state semiconductors and now a war to affect the supply of tubes. It will probably be 2025 when and if things get back to normal.
One of my worst fears about my career choice has come to fruition. Technology is like the tower of Babel story. It builds on itself. Pull out one of the foundation pieces and it all comes down, hopefully, temporarily.
One of my worst fears about my career choice has come to fruition. Technology is like the tower of Babel story. It builds on itself. Pull out one of the foundation pieces and it all comes down, hopefully, temporarily.
I agree that selling into the DIY audio market has been declining slowly for years. It has seen upticks and downturns with both the US and world economy and has slowed seriously with the current parts shortages. Tubelab, the company may not last much longer, but my DIY audio habit won't die until I can no longer lift a soldering iron. There are only one or two "new" vacuum tube technologies that I have not conquered, and my hearing has degraded to where any of my current amps make better sound quality than my ears can resolve, so I'm not too inclined to build many more completed amps for myself, but that won't stop me from making stuff.
About 53 years ago I set out to design and build myself a monster music synthesizer of my own design. 49 years ago, my life took a different path, and I started a 41 year electronics career which paid well, so I simply bought a room full of nice analog synthesizer stuff and forgot about most of the DIY ideas. Sometime in the digital 90's I sold all of the analog stuff at the bottom of the market.
During those 50+ years I have watched technology move from vacuum tubes and germanium to silicon chips with half a million transistors in them. Now it's time to make a really cool music synthesizer with the best stuff that 60 years of electronics tech has to offer. Yes, it will be analog, and digital and contains silicon, germanium and vacuum tubes. It's also DIY audio, audio generation instead of audio reproduction. Will I ever sell any of my creations? I don't know, they aren't far enough along to tell yet. I have 50+ years worth of ideas to try.
It started off as a hobby and I enjoyed building stuff.
But I cant keep building stuff for myself and fill the house.
I needed to move the stuff on so I could build more. I made little if nothing from it so that's really a hobby.
Some Chinese sellers sell at a price equivalent to what it costs me to post something never mind the cost of the amplifier module.
I prefr the diyaudio store for everything. Can’t underestimate the responsibility they feel of the quality of their goods and the open source mindset o fthe community. Take the Universal Power Supply for instance with its thick and heavy copper traces. I read some stories about people having bad luck with a made in china PSU bord that melted their amp.
This is why I stopped trying to make a living from something that I was “passionate” about.
The same thing happens over and again…you get to the point where all the joy is sucked out if it and there is no personal satisfaction.
I used to enjoy working on cars, modifying and racing them on weekends. Then I had to fall back on my mechanical skills to make a living.
You couldn’t pay me enough to wrench on a car now…and I have no enthusiasm for motorsports or cars in general anymore.
Just one of my personal experiences.
Some things need to be kept for yourself.
When I end up with too much stuff I just sell off what is least desirable so I can move on.
The same thing happens over and again…you get to the point where all the joy is sucked out if it and there is no personal satisfaction.
I used to enjoy working on cars, modifying and racing them on weekends. Then I had to fall back on my mechanical skills to make a living.
You couldn’t pay me enough to wrench on a car now…and I have no enthusiasm for motorsports or cars in general anymore.
Just one of my personal experiences.
Some things need to be kept for yourself.
When I end up with too much stuff I just sell off what is least desirable so I can move on.
In the later 1950's and through the 1960's my father had a grocers shop. He was doing well until the supermarket opened up the road. They were selling most things at a price lower than my father could buy from the wholesaler. Despite doing free deliveries, phone in orders etc his business slowly waned over about 10 years. Eventually he sold up, but it was difficult and at a loss.
The reason I do DIY is that I like the choices it gives me, and it's nice that there's a community of helpful, well informed people out there continuing to produce interesting new designs as well as keeping alive older amp designs. Increasingly I see people selling modules assembled by board fabs and that means that the soldering part of DIY is also vanishing and it's all becoming more like assembling a PC, choosing different boards, drives, case and then cabling it all up.
It's a shame but inevitable I think. We could slow the decline by being more prepared to switch to SMD...
I made guitar amps with parts from old radios and TV sets as a kid. I sold some, and gave some away. I made lots of other electronic "things" too. Most used vacuum tubes as tubes, transformers, and all the other parts were often free. My career at Motorola got me free silicon by filling out a sample request form. My friends and I built lots of audio and ham radio gear including clones of nearly everything in the SWTPC catalog, including the computer. DMA engineering was a small company where we sold some of our SS-50 bus computer boards. I designed a low buck satellite TV receiver and sold kits under the DMA engineering name too. All of these "ventures" were never intended to generate livable income, just pay for our hobbies. All of our creations were solid state from the mid 70's through the mid 90's, including guitar and HiFi amps.
I had a 4 wheel habit too. I spent several hours on the phone with Carroll Shelby and sent him a few K$ when he worked for Chrysler and I was making a Charger 2.2 (FWD 4 cyl) that ate 5.0 Mustangs for lunch on the drag strip and held it's own on the autocross track. I had a fast Camaro, a not so fast restored 66 Mustang convertible, and was nearly finished with my 12 second Challenger when I just couldn't do it any longer. I just lost the desire. I now drive a crappy minivan and take it to Ford for service.
My first car was a 1949 Plymouth which I got in 1970. As an 18 year old kid will often do, I blew up the engine, and fixed it. By 1973 every moving part in the entire car had been touched, or replaced. My 1/4 mile times had dropped from 22 seconds (real slow) to high 16's which is very good for the old flathead engine that was originally rated at 97 horsepower in a 3200 pound car. I drove that car off and on until the mid 90's when I traded it for a Scott vacuum tube stereo system. Once repaired it took about 5 minutes of listening for that Scott to kick all the Carver and Phase Linear stuff out of my stereo rack.
This was the seed that grew into Tubelab. Like the others, Tubelab started out as me making stuff for myself. It grew to something bigger, but never made much money. The income paid for digging deeper into the world of sticking solid state parts into tube amps to make something better than a pure tube amp. As with anything like this, there is an accumulation of excess stuff, mostly tubes and parts from ideas that didn't work, or amps that I don't use. I am making preparations now to haul a minivan full of "excess stuff" to the Dayton hamfest in a couple weeks to sell it.
Its not just hobbies/business ventures where this happens. Even the most intellectually stimulating, rewarding, and fulfilling careers eventually ends up just being a J-O-B.
"If you want to start a small fortune in audio you start with a big one!" Truth is very simple with any bussines.There are some old high end-ish brands and some newer ones...Most of the old ones sell mostly the brand while most of the new ones are just full of s**t liars...Unless you start telling lies or just make artworks from your equipment selling it for the visual design, there's NO OTHER WAY to sell a fu****g thing with a profit.It is as simple as that.
To be honest, I'm kinda surprised you're still able to sell USB scopes. There are a number of basic DIY ones built around an Arduino Uno and some free software. The Uno costs around $23 USD now, if you don't already have one lying around.
The Uno's ADC is pretty slow - the highest sampling rate I've seen for any of these DIY Uno-based scopes is 77 kHz, while many barely break 20 kHz - but for people who want a "toy" USB scope, this might scratch that itch.
Going up a notch or two in performance, there are kits on Amazon based on a former DSO project from Elektor magazine. Some even come with the PCB already stuffed, ready to go. I just saw one of these selling for $24 USD. It's just a pre-stuffed PCB with no enclosure or accessories whatsoever. Still, at that price, why not?
There does seem to be a hole in the market above the $25 price point, with nothing to fill the hole until you get to roughly the $100 price point. Maybe your USB scopes sit in that hole?
-Gnobuddy