The TRUE COST of a Custom Rig Build

hi i'm mason maringella from vertex fx aka the rig doctor and today we're going to talk about how much it costs to have a professionally built pedalboard [Music] now a lot of you will ask on our channel what it costs for us to build a pedalboard and we really don't offer this service for hire really our channel is about best diy practices however there's lots of rig builders that offer their services for hire that do this professionally for a living so today we're really going to highlight those builders the things that make them great and also the different price point ranges of rig builders so you can determine which one might be the best fit for your particular rig and the complexity of your rig so with that said in order to determine overall pricing we're going to come up with sort of a fictitious rig today and we're going to visualize this rig in two different formats in format one it's just a standard serialized rig one pedal into the next into the next into the next from guitar all the way to the amplifier but with specific pedals wired into a switcher so you can get a differentiated rate from what it would cost to have all the pedals in line going in front of the amp versus having pedals in a switcher going into the amp which is a more expensive more costly more time consuming build for a fictitious pedal pedalboard we have the guitar going into an input output buffer interface box this is something that's standardized on most professional rigs including the ones that we feature a lot on the channel from there it's going to go into a polytune then to a crybaby wawa mxr dynacomp full tone deja vibe proco rat ibanez tube screamer eq pedal then into a volume pedal then into a chorus then into a tremolo then strymon timeline followed by the final pedal the strymon big sky then going into the amplifier that's an example of the serial pedalboard setup that we're going to use for kind of calculating price one into the next into the next all petals in series by contrast for the switcher board we're going to use those same exact pedals but we're going to presume that everything after the wah pedal is going to be wired into the switcher so that would be guitar input output buffer interface box tuner then to the wall then everything else after that is going to be wired in the 10 loops of the switcher this would be something like an rjm pbc10 the other thing that we're going to be presuming in this model is that the customer has already provided the power supply if you're wondering what a high quality recommended power supply for a rig like this might be you can check out this video above we'll also link some power supply recommendations in the description below and that you've provided the switcher in the case of the switcher rig so this isn't something where we're including the price of the switch or any of the pedals we're presuming that the customer has already provided these so let's head into my workshop let's look through some of the different materials i'm going to show you physical examples of the types of materials that we use which is pretty standardized across most of the rig builders you can have a visual of what this looks like and we'll talk through some of the pricing of everything from the zip ties to the tie-down mounts to the dual lock velcro or the power grip which we use in addition to the power cables that are all custom made and the audio cables and the materials that go into that mogami cable square plugs typically if you're talking about most builders these days are using those high quality style connections the first consideration when you price out a custom made pedal board from a custom builder is the cost of the actual pedalboard surface itself most of these are made custom to size or are using really high quality pre-fabricated pedalboards in order to build the system on this can be something simple like the get off my case gmo c pedal boards that we've used in the past to things like our custom made pedal boards to the schmidt array custom pedal boards which are the most expensive of the custom made kind of semi-custom-made bunch these can range from around 200 for a custom-made get off my case gmoc pedalboard up to 500 or more for something like the schmidt array where it's a handmade highly customized pedalboard and on top of that the cost for a case which typically starts around 250 or 300 depending on whether that's a custom road case or something that's prefabricated like an skb or a pelican that can add a significant amount of expense in addition to the actual pedalboard as well now gig bags typically aren't recommended for these types of pedal boards i know some of the standard pedal boards like pedal train do come with soft gig bags but typically for the amount of weight that pedal boards accommodate and the amount of pedals i don't think it's a good investment or a good insurance policy to use something that's really lightweight like a gig bag most of these fail within a year or two and are just not made to support the amount of weight that a pedalboard has the next part of the cost is the tie down mounts the fasteners the zip ties these are all things that are going to be required for every pedal board in order to route the looms of cable nicely both for the audio and for the dc or ac power also potentially a zip tie to close up that dc power cable that's been custom made if you're using the kobe con style like what we generally use and most other rig builders use they're typically closing those up using another zip tie to do so generally i'd say two dollars is a good estimate for any regular pedal board that's just one into the other if you are doing a switcher board i would say you need to move that up to about four dollars per pedal in order to accommodate the increased number of zip ties and tie-down mounts to route all your extra cables nicely also with fasteners you're gonna have to assume the cost of your velcro now we recommend either using dual lock which is sj3550 mated with sj3551 or using what i have here which is our signature power grip velcro which is the best pedalboard adhesive in my opinion these all typically run whether it's 3m or rs around 5 per petal in terms the amount you're going to need typically one foot approximately per petal in order to get the right amount of fastening next is your custom-made audio cables now these are the things that are going to be either going from each pedal into the next or if you have a switcher is going to be going from the switcher send and return to the pedal input and output cable is not typically the most expensive part here most of the conventional mogami cable which is a high-grade cable which i use exclusively on my rigs as do many of the rig builders are typically under one dollar a foot so pretty negligible in the overall cost of the pedalboard but the plugs themselves can be quite expensive especially if you're using high quality stuff like we would with the square plugs or something like switchcraft or gnh as roughly these plugs are around four dollars each and most of the pedalboard companies are paying pretty close to retail price for these there's not a lot of opportunities for wholesale with a lot of these plug companies they often have almost no margin at all budgeting in a little extra cable can never hurt typically the rig builders only charge you for what they actually use but it's good just to have that idea in mind that you might have slightly more cable than you expect just depending on how the routing looms all work out the power cables are actually fairly inexpensive generally most of the rig builders me included will reuse the existing power cables that come with your power supply most of you will be providing your power supply in advance based on what's approved by the builder if you're wondering what my approved power supplies are we have that listed in the description and what i would do is i would take the provided power cables and i would just cut them to the length that they need to be so they fit perfectly into the supply and then i'm just re-terminating one side at the supply end with a new connector typically i'm using cobicon 2.1 millimeter barrels and they're fairly cheap about a dollar 25 each so you can presume for all of your powered pedals you're about a dollar 25 or so in cost per pedal for something the size of this fictitious pedal board whether it's a switcher or not it's going to be somewhere around 25 dollars maybe a dollar two more because you're going to also have to power your switcher but i'd say budget somewhere around 25 is a pretty fair assessment of what it's going to cost again because we're going to be reusing your existing power cables just like most of the other builders do and just reterminating them to length this isn't like instrument cables where having a custom version is going to result in a better tone these types of cables are fine just to reuse and reterminate to get the power delivered to the pedals properly let's now talk about arguably the most expensive part of the rig which is the labor the way that i typically break this down and the way that i see most of my peers breaking this down is they look at the number of functions and the number of pedals so typically i evaluate and most rig builders will evaluate every one pedal as one hour of labor and if it's in the context of a switcher that might be one and a half hours because you not only have to wire the pedal at the source the input and output at the pedal but also the input and output or the send and return of the switcher itself so you're basically doubling the amount of time of all of the pedals that are inside of the switcher in order to make all the audio cable connections also in terms of functions when i say an hour per function a function would be something like adding an extra feature like stereo instead of mono or four cable method instead of everything in front of the amp something like wet dry wet would actually be like a double function because you have two different wet channels so that might be two different functions in addition to whatever the standard pedal board is now in terms of pricing i want to break this down into three generalized categories i want to break this down by the most experienced which i would call a master builder to somebody that's kind of more in the middle somebody that would be more of a journeyman kind of the the middle of the road builder and then somebody who's kind of newer that is kind of just starting their pedalboard building business or is still gaining experience and this person is going to be more of the apprentice level or kind of more of the rookie pedalboard builder so let's start first with the master builder what distinguishes them well firstly i think the most important thing is is experience these people have a decade or more of experience in the field they've been building for professionals in the industry their stuff has had to be utilized in studio on stage it's had to be used in a myriad of different sort of environments so master builders are really differentiated not only in their experience their ability to be able to customize their ability to be able to really build you anything that you want and they have the engineering shops and background to be able to do it these typical builders charge anywhere from 100 to 150 per hour so if we're talking about prices in terms of sort of the fictitious rig that we talked about in the beginning with you know all those pedals either in series or in a switcher we're talking roughly a price point for the serialized pedal board between 1400 and about 2100 in labor equally for the switcher part we're talking roughly between about 20 100 and thirty two hundred dollars in labor to build that next let's talk about the journeyman level builder now this is somebody that may mirror what the master builder can do in many ways but has a little less experience maybe hasn't been doing it as long or maybe has worked under one of these master builders for a certain point in their career they have some ability to be able to customize although maybe not at the level that the master builder can maybe that they can accomplish some of the basic things that you might want but maybe can't get as technical with custom-made mixers and all sorts of things of that nature this person is definitely trained on a technician level they can do neat and beautiful work they have an ability to be able to troubleshoot things but maybe don't have that toolbox of experience that a master builder might have with decades and decades of experience of rigs in the field being able to just detect things that might go wrong in advance of them ever even leaving their workshop these are something that some of the journeymen may have some skills in but maybe not completely skilled in that these are typically not engineers these are typically more technician level people that maybe have some engineering experience but not a deep theoretical understanding of what goes into the electronics with pedals and amplifiers and integrating them into a rig as a result of this difference in experience from a master builder these journeymen builders typically charge somewhere between 80 and 100 dollars per hour depending on their experience and again there can be some overlap into the master builder category these are sort of again generalized categories that we've created for the purposes of this video so if we're thinking in terms of the serialized pedal board built by somebody who's kind of in that journeyman category this is going to be somewhere between 1100 and 1400 in labor in order to build that again that fictitious example rig that we mentioned in the beginning now for the switcher board this is going to be again more expensive more time goes into this for this journeyman builder it's going to be somewhere between sixteen hundred and twenty one hundred dollars in labor in order to have those style rigs built now finally let's look at more of the apprentice level kind of the rookie the newbie in the industry their experience is really in terms of making things neat making things tidy making things orderly but they don't have the experience to be able to track down a really complicated problem they don't have a lot of understanding of electronics so there could be some things in the troubleshooting phase if there are issues with the rig or pre-existing issues with the pedals that are introduced into the rig they may have a limited toolbox in order to satisfy any of those issues and resolve them before bringing it back to the customer these sorts of builders are going to be great for more simple rigs things that don't have a lot of ins and outs things that are very easy serialized rigs in particular they can typically do neat wiring they understand some basics on how to solder and how to assemble but they're not somebody that you can always rely on for those more complicated or even sort of mid-level complication rigs they're going to have a limited amount of experience that they bring to the table they're still getting their feet wet finding their sea legs in the industry and just need more time building and maybe some more experience understanding the kind of the basic theory of electronics and how to really integrate pedals and amplifiers with a pedal board system these builders typically charge somewhere between 40 and 50 dollars an hour so quite a big cut from the journeyman and the master builder level so if we're talking about the fictitious rig it's somewhere between five and seven hundred dollars for somebody at this level to typically build that rig again the serialized rig one into the next for the switcher again more expensive more time it's probably going to be somewhere between the 800 to a thousand dollar range for those type of builders again it's a much more time consuming rig build if you're doing a switcher especially with at least 10 pedals in the switcher as we talked about with our fictitious rig here is our exemplar so that was the pricing again these are not solidified in stone i'm sure you might be able to find some builders that are less expensive than 40 to 50 per hour that maybe have the experience of a journeyman i can't say that for sure i don't know all of the people in the industry again i'm speaking in terms of generalizations but what i can say is the more complex rig you have likely the better the builder that you're going to need to hire now let's talk about where you're going to find these builders they're located all over the world and this isn't a comprehensive list of every rig builder out there but i think it's a pretty solid list based on those that we know do this and have logged some amount of time working on professional rigs in the u.s we have rack systems and tone merchants la sound design cute rigs west coast pedal boards and goodwood audio all located in california in texas oh million audio and vagabond audio in pennsylvania we have custom audio electronics with bob bradshaw in north carolina tone heaven in massachusetts nepo pedalboard designs and in tennessee exactone in canada goodwood audio has a vancouver office also nice racks canada in toronto and tone design in quebec in colombia guitarist custom in bogota and then in europe we have the gig rig in the uk custom pedalboards uk we also have the master builder pete cornish in denmark we have caveman audio that's uh steen skystrup also custom boards finland tone hunter in germany the great paul lenders of guitar systems in the netherlands conley productions in norway also adr which is andrea duricio in italy and red seven in italy also in asia we have unison and hong kong we have free the tone the master builder yuki in japan we have soyla musica productions in the philippines along with gc rock board in the philippines both of those companies use the same rig builder to build all their pedal boards and then lastly in australia we have goodwood audio with another office in sydney and jack hudson in brisbane and of course if you have any other custom rig builders that you know of that we didn't include on this list please put those in the comments and we would be happy to add those to our list of rig builders and we will publish again all those rig builders and their contact info in the description below so if you want to reach out to one of them about a custom rig you'll have all the information that you need in order to get the ball rolling so that was our overview about the cost of the rig builds i hope you enjoyed it if you like what you saw today you like what we talked about please do give us a thumbs up please subscribe make sure you leave us a comment tell us anything we might have left out any rig builders anything you think we should be adding to this for perhaps a future video that would all be welcome feedback we always love to hear from you and if you want to support us further in the things that we're doing on this channel couple of easy free ways to do it is join us over on our podcast we have our podcast on all the common podcatchers from apple to spotify and we talk about the same things we do here on the channel in a little bit more long-form version you can listen to us on your way to work or way back from work it's an easy way to continue to engage helps us a lot also we have a patreon page with several different levels so that you can get different access to the things that we're doing have some options for behind the scenes stuff and even get one-on-one consulting with me we also offer private consulting over on therigdr.com as well as all the products and materials that we recommend from instrument cables to patch cables to zip ties to tie-down mounts it's all available there on therigdr.com or if you really want to support us head over to vertexfx.com we have our store page there we have a list of all of our dealers buying one of our pedals is a great way to support us and allows us to continue to be able to make these sorts of videos where we're trying to get the best information out there for guitar players and bass players just like you thank you so much for watching until next time i'm mason marangella from vertex fx aka the rig doctor i hope you learned a little something about how much it cost to build a pedalboard we'll see you later [Music] you

Channel: Vertex Effects

Views: 16,254

Rating: 4.8079472 out of 5

Keywords: Mason Marangella, Vertex Effects, Rig Doctor, Pedalboard, Pedalboards, rig build, pedalboard build, professional rig builder, professional pedalboard builder, How Much does this cost?, How much does a rig build cost?, pedalboard budget, Best Pedalboard Builders, Pedalboard Builders 2021, Omillion Audio, Bob Bradshaw, Dave Friedman, Xact Tone, How to build a pedalboard, How to build a rig, pedalboard builders near me, hiring a pedalboard builder, Pedalboard Cable Tips

Id: 4K700zQj8Cc

Length: 18min 41sec (1121 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 20 2021