attn. Fender marketing.....introduce a handwired DRRI!

Not at the price point it'd sell for. Try $2K.

 

Allen Accomplice. Not an exact clone, the differences IMO are improvements. Not that the DR is bad in any way shape or form, but Allen has come up with some great features that I think make it more useful. @1500 bucks.

 

They sack all the housewives after a week and then hire a new batch? Wow.

 

Even at that, my Oldfield is (IMHO) a better amp than Fender could possibly mass produce, and it's $200 cheaper than even that price with a Tone Tubby speaker.

Monster amp, that one. I'd love to see Fender make quality handwired amps again, but I don't think they can compete with the boutique market. Mine's expensive as clones go (but in its defense, it has faux ostrich tolex and a cane grill ).

 

i wouldn't want *any* fmic amp, and not just because it'll be overpriced. there are more than a few custom amp builders that offer hand wired DR amps that will have great tone and no fmic sub -par quality components or build. and the price tag will probably be less than fmic's ... but, yeah, won't have that 'fender' logo plate. ymmv.

 

so... earlier in the thread someone alluded to the cost of handwiring a twin being cheaper than a deluxe reverb...

would that be because of the reverb circuit?... it's my understanding that those things are a pain to do..

 

I don't know if it's so much that they are a pain to do, but there are four more pots, all of the extra components that make up the reverb and tremolo circuits, at least one extra tube, and the four additional jacks on the back of the amp for the reverb tank and footswitch. On top of that, the filter caps are on a separate board that is mounted to the bottom of the chassis and wired back to the inside of the chassis. That all takes extra time to do, especially getting the wire lengths short and the lead dress done properly. In addition to that, at a large corporation every extra component gets marked up internally with every department it passes through. An extra part that costs a company $1 doesn't end up raising the price of the product by $1 by the time it gets out the door.

I'm guessing that one of Fender's big disadvantages when trying to compete in the handwired market is it's overall size. Even if they can get big discounts on parts by buying in bulk they have to be way overloaded with overhead and all of those people need to get paid out of the profits from the people who produce the products. At my last company I think we had less than 200 employees (most of them worked outside the building) and I'll bet that 30 of them were all office help. We had four people that did recruiting and benefits, even though the benefits were taken care of by a major outside company, at least five people had to review and sign our timesheets before they went to payroll, and we had two different people who took care of supplies for the copy machines (three machines upstairs and three machine downstairs). All of their salaries had to get paid out of profits from the work we produced. As we got less work and got rid of probably 50 employees I think only one or two staff people got let go because the company "couldn't function" without them even though we had less work coming in and going out, and less people working. That sucks a lot of money off the profit margins and I've got to believe that large places like Fender are seriously crippled in the same way if they try to hand build things.

Look at the new handwired Voxes. At first the prices don't seem terrible but when you consider that they aren't using super high-end components and are made by people in China who get no benefits and make pennies on a dollar the prices are a bit out of line. Especially when a small guy like Dr Z can turn out high quality original stuff for almost the same price. All those additional employees and the overhead associated with multiple factories, shipping, etc really add up with every extra hour that a large company spends on getting a product out the door.

 

The twin and DR reissues are already out of my price point. I guess making another amp that people can't afford won't hurt anything.

 

I think this is a great idea for making money. Point-to-point handwired amps are the latest bandwagon for rich people who want to buy mojo without having to listen to quality themselves or study the technology behind it.

Whether they sound better or not will not matter, the marketing should work just as well either way.

 

Ascribing bad motives to a purchase someone made using their own hard earned money and assuming they are ignorant and lazy to boot is rarely a helpful exercise.

 

...

 

The point is not Mexican housewifes nor quality. The point is American labor (regardless of race or sex) costs a lot these days.

So if there are hispanic ladies handwiring in the US Fender factory, it's still going to cost a lot of man hours (perhaps "woman hours" is more PC for some folks?), if there were dudes with less of a tan wiring them, it'd be just expensive.

Now if we were talking about Mexican housewifes or white dudes assembling them across the border (where labor costs are MUCH cheaper) then perhaps the man hour cost would be less.

Regardless, the process is much more time consuming and therefore costs more in man hours, not parts, not so much even brand (though marketing, and all kinds of overhead go into the "brand badge" than people realize, but like to bash).

Smaller boutique guys have much less overhead (though a lot more headaches and a lot less personal time).

It seemed obvious to me that the poster did not mean to sound racist or sexist. We can all relax a bit. Political correctness can sometimes run amuck.

I'd suggest questioning WHY you want handwired over PCB. Do a bit of research. If you still must have handwired, there are other non-Fender outlets available all over the net. The other poster was not making random judgments about people who spend 2 to 4 times more on the same amp, save it's been handwired - there are some common sense assumptions that can be made... I'm one of those dudes that prefers handwired as well as real Gibson (over Epis) and I wasn't offended.

A lot of times we're quick to find offense instead of giving the benefit of the doubt (or just plain ignoring messed up comments). No need to fight... ignore or report, then move on with your life

 

If you read my post, you will see I am talking about the motivations for a company to produce a product, and yes I am making a judgement about what I believe is a large percentage of the market for the said product. I did not say that every p2p amp was rubbish or that every buyer was an idiot. I totally stand by what I said.

It may so happen - by accident or design, that a particular p2p handwired amp is actually so good it fully warrants the cost - many are; it also often comes to pass that an individual buy is buying a model because he or she has compared it to other amps, or has studied the engineering behind the way that particular model has been designed and is buying through making an informed decision. This stuff goes on all the time and its great. I never said it didn't.

For those people who did blindly buy an expensive white elephant because of the marketing hype, maybe my post will be helpful if they realise it and either sell the rubbish on to another dupe while the marketing hype still has value, or at least won't make the mistake on future purchases. Either way, such people can find a very constructive use from my post if they so wish.

 

The point I was trying to make, and poorly it seems, was the price point of a hand wired Fender versus a boutique built by an individual who holds a degree in electrical engineering with a decade or two in the field.

Example:

A Fender ’57 twin utilizing low end components and design built by a “person” of lower education and rote only skills now costs $3100.

A Fender clone utilizing higher end components and design techniques built by a “person” who has years of experience in electrical engineering and a degree in the same field can be found in the range of $1600+.

I simply used “Mexican housewife” to emphasize the vast difference in skill levels between the two builders. I didn’t realize there were so many people so severely beaten by the PC stick that they jump on command by anything they deem even remotely sexist or racist. That was not the intent. If there was any disparagement to be taken, it was against Fender, not the workers.

You people are a tough crowd!

 

In my opinion, the higher price from Fender is all about overhead...Fender has more overhead than any boutique builder.

The design aspect should not come into play if it's truly a clone....by definition that means the same design.

Same with assembly skills...being an electrical engineer doesn't necessarily make you better at soldering and wire dress than a factory worker. Good training and repetition making hundreds of amps like Fender does will make you better at assembly.

Overhead is the culprit IMHO.