do you think hum, hiss, grounding issues are given more importance now?

[Stratto]

Knowing how [whatever] works, in great depth and detail, is not a good predictor of success in business.

To succeed in a one-man startup business, you have to love the business part of it, not the technical part, so much that you actively like juggling ordering and inventory, packaging and shipping, dealing with customers who are irate through no fault of yours, or are just ... um, a couple of beers less than a six pack. You have to want to deal with quarterly taxes, deducting what you can deduct, dealing with the city, state, and feds crawling right up your... um, account books just because. Running a one or two man shop involves 99% of the business cr... er, details, and if you're really lucky, you can play with amps (in this case) between 2AM and 4AM, just before getting another refreshing and re-charging night of sleep and rising bright eyed at 7AM to sign for deliveries. When deliveries actually come on time.

the annoying part (irate customers...) you are already doing it! But for free, because all the customers come here to seek advice. So it's all about taking advantage of it. All the annoying customers are dealt with by all the forumites. Once an amp has great instructions, forum support, all the rest becomes easy, because there are so many threads/pics/videos about building it, that becomes impossible not to understand correctly the steps to follow. Let's say you have an amazing kit, a hotrodded Plexi (what most of us dream of), you have the kit "ampgarage approved", it would become an instant success

[Colossal]

All the annoying customers are dealt with by all the forumites. Once an amp has great instructions, forum support, all the rest becomes easy, because there are so many threads/pics/videos about building it, that becomes impossible not to understand correctly the steps to follow. Let's say you have an amazing kit, a hotrodded Plexi (what most of us dream of), you have the kit "ampgarage approved", it would become an instant success

Let me tell you something...Mojo offers kits. Their layouts suck, bad...their schematics often have issues and sometimes don't match their layouts, causing further confusion. They are also put together at a price point, the cheapest of everything. I am a moderator on another forum and there were four guys that bought their kits, soldered up a howling mess, and then showed up on the forum, one after another, to find out what went wrong. Same kit, same problems. It's grossly unethical and unprofessional, IMO, to offer a subpar product and then foist off product development and QA/QC onto forums with the knowledge that qualified forum people will come to the rescue for free.

When I was offering a product here (relay boards and power supplies), I stood by every board that went out, and offered a LOT of support after the sale, which often cost me more than twice in time what I made in sales. I would often draw up custom layouts so a guy could fit them into his application. And I did this on top of building custom, commissioned amps, and a full time job. But I never had one part failure or return. That model is hard to sustain.

But outside, it's America.

[Stratto]

All the annoying customers are dealt with by all the forumites. Once an amp has great instructions, forum support, all the rest becomes easy, because there are so many threads/pics/videos about building it, that becomes impossible not to understand correctly the steps to follow. Let's say you have an amazing kit, a hotrodded Plexi (what most of us dream of), you have the kit "ampgarage approved", it would become an instant success

Let me tell you something...Mojo offers kits. Their layouts suck, bad...their schematics often have issues and sometimes don't match their layouts, causing further confusion. They are also put together at a price point, the cheapest of everything. I am a moderator on another forum and there were four guys that bought their kits, soldered up a howling mess, and then showed up on the forum, one after another, to find out what went wrong. Same kit, same problems. It's grossly unethical and unprofessional, IMO, to offer a subpar product and then foist off product development and QA/QC onto forums with the knowledge that qualified forum people will come to the rescue for free.

When I was offering a product here (relay boards and power supplies), I stood by every board that went out, and offered a LOT of support after the sale, which often cost me more than twice in time what I made in sales. I would often draw up custom layouts so a guy could fit them into his application. And I did this on top of building custom, commissioned amps, and a full time job. But I never had one part failure or return. That model is hard to sustain.

But outside, it's America.

I don't know about Mojo, the instructions that I mentioned are BYOC and Stewmac.

[thetragichero]

as someone who has sold both amps I've built and amps built by big companies: if you have any sort of conscience selling amps it is a complete and total pain in the ass. did ups damage the vintage amp? (even well-packed and no visible box damage doesn't mean anything) did the customer do something dumb and that's why it's not working? (had a guy plug an 8 ohm only amp into what turned out to be a 2 ohm speaker cabinet and toasted the power tubes. had to walk through checking that everything else was okay and that a retube and rebias was all it needed) does the guy just not like the sound and is claiming it's broken?
end up having to walk through basic (try different guitar/cable/speaker, is it on, etc) to intermediate (how to rebias, cable routing through effects send/return to figure out if it's a preamp or power amp issue, etc) troubleshooting... you've gotta love amps and talking about amps and trying to fix amps and have patience if you're gonna do it
and even then somebody might be lying and just have buyers remorse

for what it's worth though 2-4am is prime amp building time because the house is so quiet. just have to make sure i do the metal working during the day because folks tend to complain about the noise

[Stratto]

as someone who has sold both amps I've built and amps built by big companies: if you have any sort of conscience selling amps it is a complete and total pain in the ass. did ups damage the vintage amp? (even well-packed and no visible box damage doesn't mean anything) did the customer do something dumb and that's why it's not working? (had a guy plug an 8 ohm only amp into what turned out to be a 2 ohm speaker cabinet and toasted the power tubes. had to walk through checking that everything else was okay and that a retube and rebias was all it needed) does the guy just not like the sound and is claiming it's broken?
end up having to walk through basic (try different guitar/cable/speaker, is it on, etc) to intermediate (how to rebias, cable routing through effects send/return to figure out if it's a preamp or power amp issue, etc) troubleshooting... you've gotta love amps and talking about amps and trying to fix amps and have patience if you're gonna do it
and even then somebody might be lying and just have buyers remorse

for what it's worth though 2-4am is prime amp building time because the house is so quiet. just have to make sure i do the metal working during the day because folks tend to complain about the noise

Is better to work with a robot sorting and packaging all the components, this way if something goes wrong, the customers can only blame the robot

[thetragichero]

i think you overestimate the customers
also the scale of the operation. if rather large companies like ce dist/antique electronic supply (not to mention Amazon) use human pickers i doubt such a niche operation would be fully automated
again, nothing wrong about thinking big but there are some folks way smarter than you or i who have chimed in

[Stratto]

I remember reading that the Deluxe 5E3 was dead quiet thanks to the brass plate sandwiched in the control pots and inputs, and a wire soldered from brass plate to the chassis. Obviously I don't know the reasons or "luck" involved, but you experts what do you think about it? Is there any benefit in this brass plate?

[martin manning]

I remember reading that the Deluxe 5E3 was dead quiet thanks to the brass plate sandwiched in the control pots and inputs, and a wire soldered from brass plate to the chassis. Obviously I don't know the reasons or "luck" involved, but you experts what do you think about it? Is there any benefit in this brass plate?

Fender certainly thought there was some benefit or he wouldn't have used it. It probably did help minimize resistance in the ground paths, particularly since he was in the habit of grounded things through the pot bushings when it was convenient. In many cases corrosion developed with age, creating high resistance grounds. There are better ways to go about it.