Giant-killing $5 mic preamp - Better than a $1000

[gsilbers]

thought it should be mentioned here

i googled: mic preamps and this link came up in the 1st page



"comparison test against preamps costing $200 and $1500 - which it beat handsomely"


http://www.audiomasterclass.com/arc.cfm?a=giant-killing-$5-mic-preamp-its-secrets-revealed

[personpitch]

Very cool. It would be nice to throw it in a nice enclosure with 4-8 more of them with a gain knob etc. for practical use in a studio environment.

[u b k]

Here's what I know, since I'm actually ass deep in the manufacturing and costing process at this very minute.

IF you do a run in quantity, like 100 or more, you can get these prices:

$5 parts for raw preamp circuit
$1 pot
$1 knob
$40 power supply
$50 chassis, punched on rear
$25 faceplate, punched to spec
$5 silkscreen
$1 power cord
$1 box to ship it

That's $129, round up to $130 in case I forgot anything.

So you can DIY it, but to compare it to the retail price of a high end pre you have to generate a retail price for the $5-actually-$130 preamp. Rule of thumb, multiply your cost-per-unit by 5, to give yourself a reasonable profit and to account for the distributor margin and dealer margin.

So that $130 preamp will street for somewhere in the vicinity of $650 for one channel.

Cost of parts is always minimal in any manufactured good. Manufacturing, delivery, distribution, retail, payroll, taxes, and general business overhead all take the cost of goods to the level you see in the market. Not to mention it takes a herculean effort of will and knowledge to take ideas, which are a dime a dozen, and turn them into realities on even the modest scale of boutique audio designers.

Apples to apples, as they say.


Gregory Scott - ubk
.

[oretez]

(responding to post one above, cross posted, with very similar intent to above post) and the price would still be $2-3k (depending on how one valued their labor, cost of medical insurance, etc. even if one built a one off DIY)

2520 opamps combined on a project board with Jensen transformers can be found, perhaps regularly for under $50, with the transformer being the more expensive individual component

the $.36 soup de juer part is seldom the cost determining factor in audio hardware

back before they became a boutique item and all the churches got raided and cleaned out I used to be able to buy the Altec four channel tube pres for $200 with working power supplies, less if parts were missing

to convert them into functional studio pre's I'd typically create hybrids with the 2520 opamps but even that collectable destroying modicfication was not the thing that raised the cost of taking even a pristine interesting chasis and making a usable studio tool to roughly $1100

and when was the last time anyone paid as much as $200 for a Behringer MIC2200 Ultragain Pro? It's not a product I follow but I'd be surprised if you couldn't find them for less then $100 (meaning you'd have to add something to order to get it shipped for free) new

[big country]

$5 parts for raw preamp circuit
$1 pot
$1 knob
$40 power supply
$50 chassis, punched on rear
$25 faceplate, punched to spec
$5 silkscreen
$1 power cord
$1 box to ship it

it takes the will and know how but those materials can be summed
from a pile of dirt
like a puzzle but only with pieces of dirt

[nick-the-sax]

an oil painting costs (if using high quality paints) around £40 to make on average.

i really doubt that any self respecting artist would sell their work for that much.