We've seen some fiery takes here and over on John's channel. We want to reiterate and stress that we do NOT endorse any bullying or mean-spirited comments directed toward John and his channel. He's a great guitarist, he has a cool channel, and you should go like and subscribe!
@@trevorD1156 That's quite a conclusion to jump to. I've been watching John's content for a few years and have never once considered him to be a con artist or an idiot. Did he shoot his mouth off and display his ignorance for the world to see? Yes. Did he publicly apologize and eat crow? Yes. They both handled this situation with compassion, patience and grace. Three qualities that are sorely missing in the world today. And for what it's worth I'm long time friends with some people at one of the other top pedal manufacturers and even they said @jhspedals making this video is one of the best things to happen to the pedal industry in a while. The only losers in this situation are those that are looking for something to complain about.
@@trevorD1156ignorance does not deserve hate. you just want an excuse to be cruel. not to mention your comment 2 weeks ago about Ross pedals is in accordance with JNC’s original opinion. hypocrisy on your part, at its finest.
More than 3,000 fake Gibson guitars that could have been sold for a combined $18.7 million were seized by federal authorities after the typically made-in-America instruments arrived from Asia, officials said Tuesday. The guitars were shipped to the US by sea and intercepted by Customs and Border Protection officers and Homeland Security Investigations special agents in Los Angeles, as well as other agencies, according to CBP.
As a former JHS employee I want to say that the work environment was amazing btw I didn’t see him do the math on the epic amounts of local coffee he provided every department or the paid holidays and parties Thank you guys 🙏🏼
31:02 - He IS Josh, and HE WILL. I screwed up a brand new $500 Punchline pedal - even after reading the manual! - by not paying attention to the fine print on my power supply, and torching my pedal with 15v. Voided the warranty. Didn't realize what I had done until I asked questions on FB and someone pointed out the error of my ways. Josh happened to see the post, and said "Reach out to us, we'll swap out your pedal, it's cool". I only had to pay shipping one way. Josh didn't have to do that; yet he DID, and I am grateful. Cost of doing business, indeed!
@@georgebarry8640 I definitely plan on getting a JHS pedal. I just don't know which one yet. I'm not a good player by any stretch of the imagination, so any pedal I buy is just for bragging rights to say I have a cool pedal.
I don’t own a JHS pedal, but this video made me want to buy a container full. Honesty and transparency like this is hard to come across in any business. Thanks for making this video!
In the words of social media..."Tell me you've never owned a business without telling me you've never owned a business". Social media has become a place where some "influencers" do no research on a subject they know nothing about, and give an opinion as though it was fact. I like how honest Josh is and how he never puts down other pedals. I have only ever seen him praise his fellow builders.
I've never owned a business... But I am shocked at the total lack of awareness this guy has of basic business costs. Sure, it definitely feels like many nice pedals are overpriced... But then I remember what health insurance costs for 50 people and figure that nearly makes up the difference on its own. Not a single mention of any overhead from this guy. Unreal levels of obliviousness.
I do enjoy his channel, and I feel like it demonstrates some ignorance on production costs here and I’m super appreciative of how much josh shared because that’s valuable info to his competitors. Bottom line, jhs costs more because they care about their supply chain. I prefer to buy American because it pays fairly and I’ll never regret that. End of the day the discount from the super low cost brands is paid for by horrifying living conditions of their staff.
@@chibisvenSo true. That is the whole Far East problem. Western consumers are at ease with buying products made by people working ludicrous 6 day weeks with no benefits, living shitty lives in concrete deserts. Conditions people wouldn’t put up with in the West. Who cares about them and their pollution, just so long as we get an unlimited supply of cheap consumer goods? But if you point this out you are accused of being anti-global trade.
I appreciate this video as someone who makes his own pedals at home and puts in a lot of work to make sure they look good and sound good while not failing. It's a lot of work. Can't imagine doing it on such a large scale.
"I can take this jet engine apart in ten minutes, so surely the experts can put it together in about ... Five? But if you want me to put it back together? No way 😂 I can't do that. It would take ALL DAY and it would probably never work again. " 😂 And there you go, you have proven you know absolutely ZERO about manufacturing pedals.
I have never loved this man more. From all of us at Third Eye Blind, Josh, thank you for your service. I turn into a fifteen year-old again every time I open a new pedal box. You are a champion of all the wonderful pedal builders worldwide. You're also my favourite nerd. Keep on brother x
I run a music software company (ML Sound Lab) and wanted to see if we could expand to the pedal market. After going through the numbers several times I was completely incapable of making it a profitable business even on paper. Huge investments in hopes of a 10% profit in the case that you always sell all pedals. There's a huge disconnect between businesses and musicians as customers - a common request we get is to make free plugins because "it's only software". That always goes down well when I tell my coders, graphics designers, everyone's wifes and kids that for this next project no one gets paid. But we'll get tons of exposure which we can then feed to our kids. I think I speak on behalf of JHS too when I say - if we wanted to make a lot of money and were not doing this as a passion project, we would've found a more easily monetizable customer segment. We do this for the love of music. ❤
I also did lots of similar math for pedals and synths and eurorack format modules and came to the conclusion that it's really hard to compete with the likes of the big companies which have completely different facilities and resources to manufacture their products. I see your company is also in Oulu? (Mine is Decyne4 Music, based in Oulu, I make DAW software + DSP algorithms)
@@DanBieranowski Yep. And I know they’re known for metal. But i use their Dumble model as a clean platform with pedals before it, and it sounds beautiful. Their cab IRs are top shelf too.
As an artist who sells his work, I found that Josh‘s responses were 100% right on the mark. When I have a customer wanting a “deal“ for a piece of my artwork, I find that they don’t understand what goes into the pricing of my artwork. There’s so much more than meets the eye. it’s not only the price of supplies and labor, but the overall cost of doing business. (And we’re not even adding in for original artistic vision.) If I sell something for $100, government income tax alone is taking 30% or $30 worth right off the top. And we haven’t even gotten into insurance, rent, booth fees, traveling fees like hotel, gas, etc. etc.. Unless a person has ran their own real (not a weekend warrior) business, they do not understand (most of the time) how much goes into the pricing of a creation. Josh, thank you for educating the average person. And … you still remained a gentleman by the way you handled your reply!
THIS might be one of the most important videos made in this community. The honesty and transparency are perfectly and concisely communicated through the examples, which, though rooted in JHS, are so relatable to all other small companies. THANK you from another small company.
This is one of the best video on YT EVER. Where Josh demostrates to be : a great communicator, a man who has learned how to handle social media and get every bit of good from everything, and finally a kind guy. I always loved JHS as company, and this one makes me think i've always been right
I'm impressed that you have treated this guy in good faith. His ignorance is embarrassing, and I'm not convinced he didn't make this video to try and get more attention on his channel.
He's definitely had some unhinged takes in the JHS group on Facebook. Not unjustified but it was enough for me to lose all interest in purchasing his pedals.
man i didn't need Josh to explain to know this guy doesn't know what he is talking about. that being said thanks Josh for making good pedals, and for making them in America, and paying your workers well too and hearing you brought in the Ross Family as well dang more than happy to pay a bit more to keep my money in the US while giving my money to a company owned by a good person
Most of Cordy's opinion pieces are just garbage takes as ragebait. The bloke plays guitar well, but I had to unsub a year ago because of his ragebait "strategy".
@@ErebosGR Yep. I love his playing but I got tired of his content pretty quick. But it's what gets views and he has bills to pay too. I personally think he'd do better if gave lessons on true fire or had his own website to give lessons, or both.
I worked for an electrical manufacturer for 12 years. It was a UL listed shop that sold to other businesses, and it had 2-4 employees during my time there. With judicious use of American subcontractors for metal parts and circuit boards. Lots in common with JHS as a company, with *almost none* of the added costs of PR- no social media, no film production. I honestly don't know how JHS does it, every line is a labor of love. This is actually the ideal scenario for American small business.
Years ago, when I first started building my pedal board, I sent JHS a DD7 to rehouse for me. Long story short, there were some manufacturing problems that weren’t JHS’ fault, but they couldn’t complete the rehouse for me. JHS went above and beyond, replacing my DD7 and sending me several JHS pedals of my choice. As a broke college student, this blew me away. I will never forgot this act of kindness and generosity. You will always have my business JHS.
If you've ever built a few pedals, you quickly realize there's no reasonable price point (on a small scale), in which you can make your money back. It's basically a break-even hobby. JHS stuff seems pretty reasonable if you ever picked up an iron yourself.
Yep. These 🤡 don’t even realize that R&D is a thing. It’s not just parts. It’s the labor of properly paying employees, then on top of that, R&D, promo, etc etc. Uff. I kinda feel like dude owes Josh an apology.
And if you think these pedal companies are overprice that’s totally valid and you can buy cheaper shit. Behringer makes great pedals for like 25 bucks. If you do not give a shit about looks or marketing, there’s plenty of great cheap alternatives.
Facts. If I valued my time at all, I’d be taking a 2-3x loss on any pedal I’ve ever made. Granted, the pedals I’ve made are usually things that aren’t on the market yet and have to figure out how to build
Exactly!!! I've built a few kits, and I'm not bad soldering but I doubt I could output more than 2-3 in an average day and if I had to ask enough money for what I consider a living wage where I live that would put me at no less than having to ask $500 per pedal even if I kept the costs to $100. There's no way that works when you have boneheads like this whining about pedal margins with no knowledge of reality.
Thank you Josh for making this video. Your transparency takes guts and I know that many of us in the pedal making world appreciate it. We make pedals because we love making cool, musical things. No one gets into this to get rich. People do it because it’s their passion. I started Red Witch 23 years ago. It’s fed my kids and put a roof over my head. It’s paid our staff and our suppliers. But it’s allowed me to get up every day and create. To use my imagination to answer the simple question “What would be super cool to make for guitarists next?”. Sending you my very best from down here in New Zealand.
Transparent, open, honest and always educational. This is one of my favourite TH-cam channels. It’s great to know this company is led by a decent human being. My next pedal will be a JHS pedal. Good people deserve support. I love John’s channel; he’s a great player and an enjoyable TH-camr. I think we’ve all learned from this. Thanks!
Josh, as a small business owner with my wife, I truly appreciate you and your candor. Many do not understand costs, or even business in general. The transparency you gave today makes me respect you guys even more. Cheers!
Great job explaining the true costs of running a business. My favorite line - "Buying a program for your HR Department..." That can be $1-10k/yr alone depending on license and business size. Thanks for great pedals and great content!
I’m a commercial lender with over 13 years experience in banking. You also have to associate the costs of research/development, total overhead/operating expenses, the expenses associated with faulty parts, not to mention the raw material costs that are utilized, costs of social media/marketing/advertising, state and federal taxes, licensing, legal counsel, and more than likely several other costs I’m not smart enough to nail down. JHS provides a top quality product at a reasonable price. He could easily raise the price of his pedals without hesitation. The demand may be diminished but he could be more profitable. He’s doing the consumer a solid by keeping his prices lower focusing on higher volumes than capitalizing on scarcity. Thank you, Josh and team, for what you have done and will continue to do for the guitar community.
As someone who is about to graduate with a BBA, these are the the parts of business I never even considered on a deep level until I started college lol
@@timschulte2315 I can't help but imagine the youtube thing is, all factors considered, break-even at worst. 500k subs can keep most average channels healthy, plus it's extra advertising for the business, plus he promotes the whole pedal building community, which definitely helps out the business even if it's not directly financial.
Thanks, Josh and crew. And speaking of crew...let's not forget all the costs of packaging, shipping, order management, customer services, etc etc etc etc
@@sub-jec-tiv 100% And R&D is more than just circuit design. There's parts sourcing, PCB layout, case layout, testing, documentation, and overhead in keeping your R&D staff trained and, you know, actually paid for their work.
@@SuddenSoundStudiosyeah I cringed when I heard “it’s a clone so it shouldn’t have any R&D.” Hahahahahahhahha literally just the effort of finding current production components to replace out of date components on a 1:1 clone then adapting the circuit the have the same functional result could be a massive time sinkhole….I’m not even an electrical engineer but I’ve built enough hobby circuits to understand this.
Someone has to design, make, paint and manufacture the case itself. It’s not done during a tea break. And those workers need paying too. Maybe time for the Brit to go to business school.
JHS is the most transparent pedal company out there. Please do not stop what you’re doing. American made, cares about his employees, I would pay double for a JHS pedal just knowing that. Kudos to you! Thank you for all you do for us nerdy guitar pedal guys
Man....90% of consumers have no clue how hard and expensive it is to just bring a product to market. Thank you for being honest and laying down the facts! I'm new to your channel and I really dig it and have already learned a ton!!!! Thank you.
I'm 8 minutes in and my favorite parts are: - complaining about the warranty being voided if the case is opened then watching him break it as soon as he opens it -admits he doesn't know what hes talking about - can't take apart a pedal - compares the prices of a company in the US making original products and paying US wages to the price or Chinese clones. Who knows how their workers are treated JHS, I love your products, channel and how open you are about your pricing. I don't have the time and knowledge to make pedals, so I appreciate you offering a good product. Some of the best pedals I own are from you. I will pay a bit more to support you and your workers. Don't let people who don't know your business tell you your buisness.
I’ll never forget meeting Josh at Sweetwater in 2015/16, and then having the opportunity to talk with him at the airport when flying home. Josh is one of the most honest and nicest guys, who genuinely cares about people and musicians. I totally get why you’re frustrated here Josh! Love your pedals!
As a small business owner and guitarist I really appreciate this video. I don’t even really use pedals and I still like this channel. Also love that JHS is a U.S.A. based business
I really appreciate this video. There are next to no companies that are as transparent as JHS. I own a company that manufactures a high quality product that we do our very best to deliver at a reasonable cost. Whenever you do anything at scale, overhead and manufacturing is not cheap. It's easy to look at a product and say I can make this at home for next to nothing, but ignore the cost of everything that went into you being able to just pick it up off the shelf and enjoy it. I don't care how much a JHS pedal costs, because I'm buying the quality, research, convenience, and the JHS name. These are companies that deliver good honest products, and I'm more than happy to support companies like this.
Josh, as a veteran Engineer and musician I been frustrated by guys like this my whole life that think that there is little or no effort in creating something. I now have a name for this phenomenon..... I call it "The Easy Button" As we all watched the guy take apart your pedal...... I would love to see him put it back together and get it to work again....... he has all the parts and the enclosure....... so it should be EASY..... right
I would just tell those people “if it’s so easy, start your own company”. If people think something like the Colour Box is overpriced, I will challenge them to come up with their own design and see how much money they spent on failed prototypes, research and development, and just parts in general while also not being able to get the time back that could have actually been put to making money.
@@tannerbarsness9992yep. When people slag off owners not paying a living wage I say “then go start your own company. Assuming you live in America, you live in one of the easiest countries in the world to do that in.”
In John’s defense, the majority of pedal JHS sells are clones( read: unauthorized non royalty copies of other people work). I know he has been working on his own designs and releasing new designs. In Josh defense, while some can and do build their own pedals, John Cordy should just buy his pedals from JHS and not complain, because he obviously from this video is not going to building anything.
@@thepostapocalyptictrio4762 To be honest, once you make modifications to a circuit it's ok to clone it. As long as you're honest I see no problem as if we weren't allowed to improve on other's designs we would never make anything. Behringer on the other hand regularly make 1 to 1 clones of small independent company's models and undercut their price hugely. They also never disclose that anything they make is a clone afaik. That is incredibly dishonest and far more harmful to the industry than what Josh is doing.
@ Moog US synth owner and former fan. I know all about the den of thieves that is Behringer. Someone should finally sue. I was hoping Moog would, but it didn’t and now it’s gone again🤨😢
I'm even more of a fan of JHS after this video. USA made and built with boards from the US. One of the better businesses out there... dude cares about his product, staff, and country. Sure you could argue this, but why would he spend this much time on a video explaining everything? Hope one day to be good enough of a player to meet you, sir. Keep up the good work and God bless!
While Cordy is probably talking out of his ass as usual, also keep in mind this is the perspective of a pedal builder justifying pedal prices. Remember the Victory Fiasco? Even the good ones are businessmen at the end of the day.
@@martyshwaartz971 This isn't "perspective" or some angle. This is a knowledgable pedal builder divulging facts, stats and receipts to set the record straight after an outrageously misguided TH-camr who is clearly more interested in views than the truth posted a video that is pretty much nonstop falsehoods and inaccuracies about a subject he clearly has zero understanding of. Also, you say the word 'businessman' like it's some naughty word. "Even the good ones are businessmen at the end of the day" lol what? Modern society doesn't exist without businesses and the vast majority of us wouldn't be able to afford shelter, clothes and food for ourselves without finding a job at said businesses or creating jobs at our own businesses. At least these comment sections do a great job at highlighting who has actually run a business and understands the financials & acumen behind it vs those who clearly don't.
a lot of folks just don't really know how much cost goes into starting and running successful business. It's so expensive and often the owner of the business is barely getting paid themselves to support their dream and the team helping them make it happen. B2B isn't just how it works in the pedal business, it's how it works in ALL pro audio/video/lighting (and i'm sure others as well but I work in this industry). It's a competitive landscape with slim margins across the board. Great vid!
I've been in hi tech manufacturing for over 50 years. Josh, you're right on point. Most folks don't have a clue what it takes to do R&D, research a market, maintain and protect a brand, maintain an inventory, manage vendors and scheduling, maintain and operate manufacturing machines (like CAD, chip shooters, silks screens, IR ovens, and using a "mole" to test the ramp up and peak temperatures), prototyping, first articles, redlining, redesign, etc. Not to mention the overhead (labor, health care, electric bills). You've done the right thing. Keep it up.
To be fair to John, he posed the issue as a question, and almost immediately PINNED and liked a highly critical comment to the top of the video's comments, making many of the points you make here, in effect admitting that he realized he was off-base. (Disclaimer-I wrote the comment.) Pinning it invited a number of other commenters to weigh in echoing the criticism. In many years of YT viewing, I've never seen another creator pin and like a critical comment like that. -Tom
Though it is commendable that he pinned your comment. Most people aren't gonna see that. And to be clear (just watched the original), he wasn't "just asking questions". In the video he is clearly making accusations in the form of questions. What's worse, he didn't even do basic research the cost of standard components is real easy to google. The rough cost of custom enclosures and pcbs can be determined by sending a few emails to fab houses. If John really cares, he should do real research on the subject and issue a follow up video. And maybe he will, it's only been a week.
As John releases several videos per week, it’s impossible that he thinks things through. This destroys the credibility of his channel. Most of his vids are hipshots: first impression reviews or an opinion about someone else’s work. On a positive note: he play well.
It blows me away when people add up what they think the components cost, that suddenly that number is the total amount of costs when running a business, and therefore the pedals should cost X + profit margin (X being raw material costs).
@castleanthrax1833 It is because most people haven't ran a business or studied business or economics. They are more things that I don't know than things I do know, so it's always best to be cautious in avoid making conclusions.
@pastorkev777 Brilliantly put. It is very disheartening. The default assumption is always "scam" or "overpriced" without knowing nothing or acknowledging any of other costs related to production. It is baffling, specially in "highly educated" people
I will always look to buy a JHS pedal because of the integrity of Josh AND the quality and creativity of him and this company. Integrity matters and I support it.
As a hobbyist maker whos done amp's/speaker/pedal/custom PCB boards/etc, and admittedly a bit frugal; I would sooner make a pedal before buying one but this is at a HUGE time cost to myself! I can feel your pain watching the video Josh. You did a great job of breaking this down and educating your audience!
I applaud Josh for not absolutely flipping his lid at this, that’s some real restraint. So many people just don’t understand the actual costs that go into creating, manufacturing and taking any product to market, they just sum up the cost of parts and then ignore any other expenses or the need for anyone in that business to make a living wage 🤦
Josh, as a small music software business owner, I truly appreciate this video. Your composure in the face of moral attacks based on misinformation is admirable. While it's somewhat understandable that most people don't understand the cost + effort of doing business, it's maddening when those with bigger platforms spread misconceptions without making any effort to understand the subject matter. So cheers, respect, and thank you for indirectly supporting players in our industry who face similar challenges. Also, interesting to hear your retailer margins - software is the same.
Software is the worse. People will pirate it then demand all your attention to fix issues brought about by the crackers. Or they'll question why you don't have this "simple" feature one of the big dogs have when that feature took 9 years for them to implement and they patented that way so you can't use the same implementation.
JHS also makes a whole budget 3 series line in order to hit several price points and include people in the brand that maybe can't afford (or don't want to pay for) the more expensive pedals. $99 dollars is a steal and cheaper than some BOSS or MXR pedals.
I had a small graphics shop. Had many customers (and employees) make statements like those, without taking any overhead into account. Was always tough to hear. As I drove a $3000 truck, and they pulled in driving their $80,000 pickup. You did a great job of being kind, while being informative. Classic JHS, classic Josh.
This response was pure class top to bottom mate, I applaud your level headed and fair attitude to somewhat uninformed criticism, something many or any people could learn from. For what it’s worth, I (mostly) build my own pedals and definitely started with the impression the industry was a rip off based on “well I can just do that myself for ‘x’ cheaper” economics but by let’s say pedal build #3 I saw the truth! More so when friends asked why I didn’t just start building pedals for a living, I’ve done the maths and it’s not pretty! I’m happy to call it a hobby but if anything peaking behind the curtain has only given me more respect for the people out there doing the real work. Again, I applaud your willingness to be transparent and give fair time and answers to this subject, no matter how uninformed the original query was, it shows great depth of character and sincerity. All the best!
Yeah try building a guitar once. LOL then you are amazed how they can crank them things out over and over again meeting quality critiria. We are very spoiled today.
I am proud of you for holding yourself together Josh and you can clearly see how much hurt this has caused. It should be a lesson to everyone who survives in life with only a modicum of intelligence to stay in their lane and not shoot off at the mouth about things they have no idea about, and likely lack the intellect to fully understand. I think the fact that John did the video without any thought or research, and then had the absolute audacity to do a lengthy apology that began with a sponsorship add sums up the difference between people. Some are here for a gimmick and some like you (involving the Ross family) and having a channel that is never shy to praise competition shows that you are a rare great human. People don’t realise that most companies in any area and vocation are lucky to make 10 percent on any money that comes through the door
As an executive in business, dealing in COGS, Margins, overhead and general "cost of doing business", expenses, etc. Let me just say; Josh, great job teaching, sir. The basics of how you run your business, and how business in general operates, was clear, concise, and easy to understand. With a pretty good natured response to what was a terribly misunderstood view, bordering slanderous portrayal in many ways, with the assumptions and presumptions leveled in the video you were responding to. The cool-headed, sometimes a tad "spicy" way you handled them, with the transparency you exhibited, even though you didn't have to, is commendable. You care about how JHS is viewed in eyes of your customers and rightly so. Furthermore, it comes across as obvious, that you care about your customers, your employees and your passion for what you do, with no greed or ill intent. I enjoyed it thoroughly and salute your honesty. I aspire to work with companies like yours everyday and they are not so many out there in my experience. Bravo.
This reminds me of when people would moan that CDs were overpriced because they heard they cost about £1 per unit to make.. When I was in an independent band in the late 90s our albums sold for about £11.99 in most record stores but we'd make about £2 per CD after the distributors and retailers added their markups, so after the cost of recording an album we'd still be losing money even if we sold a lot of copies
@@theshiningtongues there's sort of the opposite problem now as well where the cost has gone way down, you can produce your own album and shove it onto your own CDS and take 100% of the profit... But no one wants to buy a fucking CD
The "producer" and "distributor" usually make way more than the artist for a service that should cost a few pence per CD. If I can buy a rewritable CD with a printed booklet in a jewel case for less than 1 UKP in a store, even if the producer would get 1 UKP per unit and you get 2 UKP per unit, it should cost 4 UKP and not 12 UKP. You as an artist are being gaslighted about the price and cost of the whole process.
Johns video is an absolute embarrassment. I liken this to my line of work dentistry where if I was to charge x amount for a filling or crown the natural assumption is it’s all profit. Your intellectual property also has a value John has failed to even take into account . He hasn’t been malicious but stupid
It was really interesting to understand how a pedal makes its way from you guys to the consumer and what that costs. On the outside looking in that is very hard to see. Thanks for that, Josh (and John)
Excellent video, Thanks. Most of my companies involved hardware with B2B distribution so I am familiar with the ecosystem. JHS Pedals is a private company, therefore Josh's unique honesty regarding Bill of Materials, Cost of Good and Cost of Doing Business should not be taken for granted. Kudos!
Josh I think you showed great restraint in your comments. I worked as a design/manufacturing engineer in high tech around optics & lasers. The number of supposedly intelligent people that get fixated on the cost of goods and forget there is a cost to design, test, stock parts, inspect parts, assemble parts, inspect the final assembly, package and ship the final product always amaze me. Not only do these fixed costs have to be recovered, all the variables costs of the overhead needs to be recovered. And you only have so many units to sell to recover these costs before the market becomes saturated. I have watched engineers shave $4 off COGs at the expense of adding 1/2 hour to the unit build time and think it's a good trade off. Then they will wonder why the units are taking longer to build and the gross margin is falling. Good on ya for taking on the thankless task of trying to educate people on business 101
Hi Josh, as a pedal maker, I completely understand what you're saying. When people look at a pedal, they often only consider the cost of the components and base their opinions on that. They tend to overlook the time and money spent on R&D, sourcing parts, taxes, employee salaries, insurance costs, office rent, and-most commonly ignored-marketing expenses. In a place where the annual inflation rate exceeds 100%, I’m doing my best to keep things affordable, especially for young musicians, by limiting price increases to just 10% to stay afloat. Yet, even that sometimes draws criticism from people 🙃
That’s very frustrating to me to forget all the expenses. And there are looots of expenses (variable, fixed, etc.). Which he could find if he looked up the financial statements. And financial statements better be accurate or believable or the IRS may, or will, get you eventually.
It shows that those people don't know how a business works. The cost to built stuff is grossly underestimated. Plus Josh employs ethical business practices.
You are right in what you say. For most people, at first glance, only the cost of the components comes to mind. However, when the time and effort spent, as well as the operating costs are taken into account, things take on a completely different dimension.
We could also build our own houses, forge our own knives, and butcher our own animals but we don't... because it's best to leave some things to the pros!
I've told Cordy several times over the years to try building a kit from AionFX, for example, if he wants to understand how pedals work and why pedal makers choose to do things a certain way. He never listens to constructive criticism. I had to unsub a year ago because of his constant stream of ragebait videos like this one.
And it can! But you wont get a good quality case, customer support, quality control... I'm all for people building their own things, but they also need to understand that one thing is one thing and another is another, lol. Josh even made some livestreams where he teaches how to build simples circuits... People that say "you could build this at home!" dont know shit.
The more I find out about JHS, the more I like em. The more I find out about Behringer, the more I’m glad I canceled Disney+ and Netflix, and I can afford to buy a JHS pedal. 😂
Great video Josh. I'm a business Chief Financial Officer and understand where you come from. It's a miracle you can pull off a made in USA model at a reasonable price. Engineering and usability are the key to your magic. You're a good man and I support you.
Cynicism and talking rubbish about things we don’t know much about is unfortunately a human trait that only education can cure. Thanks for the lesson Josh, it was immediately apparent when you started your channel that you are one of the good guys.
Josh, i've thought about how companies like yours haven't changed their prices for years even though inflation continues to increase expenses of building the product. Its pretty awesome of you to keep the prices stable while the prices of everything else have shot through the roof! I appreciate you and your company for all the work you've done! Keep on keeping it real
I own a small manufacturing business here in the USA as well. I love this video! Before I went into business for myself, I had many of these same misconceptions about the type of money business owners were making at companies I was working for. The costs of doing business, as well as the many headaches you have to deal with, are no joke!
I love this rebuttal and exercise in educating Mr Cordy. I follow him (and sift through the talented - but let's admit it - wanky self-indulgent guitar playing), and I follow you - so I see all of what's uploaded by each of you. The fact is though, that this video carries a substance, taste, class, humility, and honesty that we'll never see on his channel. What would be most appreciated would be for said channel owner to acknowledge his ignorance about business and engineering and apologize for slagging on someone who has brought so much to the community. You're a damn fine fellow Josh. Thank you for all you do and keep up with your excellent contributions!
I follow both channels, too, and I love John's playing; I often just watch the playing and then skip through the rest. In fairness to him, he almost immediately PINNED a highly critical comment to the top of the video's comments, basically admitting he realized he was off-base. In many years of YT watching, I have never seen a creator pin a critical comment. (Dislaimer-I wrote the comment.) -Tom
In his follow up video he acknowledged that he got flamed in the comments and he was wrong. He asked a question and accepted the answer so let’s not be too harsh on John, he’s a really nice fella.
@@illgottengains1314that’s great he can own the consequences of his actions. I think it’s probably a unanimous sentiment that he shouldn’t have ever made the video.
@@illgottengains1314is he really nice? most of his recent contents are clickbaity and some are rage baits. I stopped following JNC after noticing those patterns. it seems like he post maliciously to stay relevant and always be recommended on viewer's feed even if he misinform viewers
I love this channel. Following Josh has taught me so much, from music and pedal history, how to use them for different scenarios and just how does someone actually build the thing! Josh an d his team are so open about what they do it's a breath of fresh air. Josh and his team are also incredible players!! I wish I worked there haha!! This is just brilliant stuff from this channel. Josh has shown in his reaction just how much of a gentleman he is.....great stuff! Keep up the good work!!
One of the most educational videos I've ever seen. Not just about pedals but the industry in general. I'm a Boomer who loves pedals, has owned hundreds and has been playing for longer than most of the viewers here have been alive. I know it took a leap of faith to pull the curtain back and still stay so gracious. If all companies were run this way, what a much better world this would be. As always, there is much more involved than meets the eye. An investment of 31 minutes that will last me a lifetime. Thank you, Josh.
Josh is an amazing human being. I love how transparent he is with his videos. I’ve never had a bad JHS pedal. Keep up the amazing work, Josh you and your team!
Josh - count me as another of your customers who appreciates the great work JHS does. I am inspired by your kindness and commitment to having fun! 🤘🏻🤘🏻
Good businesses that make good products and are run by good people should be supported. Josh, get a coffee and a scone while I decide which new JHS pedal I'm buying for synths. 🤔🧠🫀☀️🇺🇸
As a product design engineer I regularly notice that, in general, people don't really know or realize what goes into designing and producing consumer goods. I've even noticed that some people don't even realize that everything that we make must have been designed and engineered by a team of people and that there's always way more to the story than just the material costs. Loved the video, it made that aspect clear to at least some people who were probably oblivious.
Brilliantly restrained, gracious, educational and fun to watch - God bless you Josh. I'm considering a color box - just need to add up how much the components cost to see if it's worth it... err too soon?
I wish I had the colorbox, i can't justify that investment right now, as cost of living is kind of high In The US, that's why I have my second hand crayon that I enjoy while playing Bodysnatchers. I build pedals myself too, and have been following Josh for years now. I dream of being able to sell my true spring reverb pedals to the masses, but even the thought of being able to set up something at a scale that would allow me to produce sufficient money to leave my job frightens me. You may have the skill, but scaling is a completely different game. Hats of to you Josh!!!
I do some work with a local pedal builder, demoing his products, promoting them, and helping with the prototyping process as an extra set of ears. Through this whole process, I’ve learned that making pedals and developing their designs is a lengthy and unforgiving pursuit. Much like me with my job as a musician it’s a pursuit of love, not a living with which millions will be made.. I had the honour and privilege of working on a signature pedal with this builder this year and it turned out absolutely fantastic. Leading up to the launch, though there were months, nearly a full year of back-and-forth between the builder and I dialling it in just right. Everyone’s time is worth something and when we purchase a pedal from a company, we have to think about all the time, the blood sweat and tears that went into that design. I can say now that there is so much more to it than I ever knew, and the world of electronics is a complicated one that I will never even pretend to understand.
Josh, this video really touches my heart as a manufacturer that focuses on hand-building and local suppliers. I think nobody of us is getting rich out of what we do... but we all have those annoying discussions about the prices of our products. Many people think, we just pick prices out of the sky to make us rich. Which we don't. I think you were still pretty polite on telling how business works and what costs are involved until a Customer can hold a product in his/her hands. We could go much deeper on this and explain how a product actually has to be calculated from BOM-Cost to final Sales-Price at a dealer... 😉
“Pedal Price Therapy”. The few sentences before and after make the whole video’s intent aware. Thanks Josh for making great pedals! Thanks for supporting America with American jobs putting American parts together making great American Pedals. Thanks for having some nod to the nostalgia and putting Ross back out there! Bummer it didn’t go the way you hoped but always appreciated. Thank you.
I guaran-fucking-Tee if every US business operated on the same values and methods as JHS, everything would probably cost much less and all of our overall happiness as employees and members of a consumer-driven society would be 100% higher than it is now.
uh no everything would cost more. US labor is expensive and its not just the labor to build the pedals- the R&D, shipping, management, time spent ordering parts, etc all add up. Not to mention that you couldn't find some workers who would accept the pay v labor of things like Farm work, cleanings and under-the-table service jobs- which is actually something we've seen play out in multiple southern states (even when the pay is raised).
@@PacificNatureTVyou misses the macro point. Everybody would be employed with more to spend. It’s how things worked when the US was a healthier country, before we shipped off our manufacturing base and became a service economy and, soon, an oligarchy.
@@TheFibtastic You're just describing the natural progression of a capitalist society. Greed never disappears and the profit has to increase. Labor cost is always the first thing to be looked at when trying to increase profit. If local workers won't accept what you're willing to pay, you look elsewhere.
These people will say anything to create content-but his misunderstanding of business processes and downstream costs (employees, building, insurance, social security, advertising, etc) is astounding! Josh, nor any R&D/builder/business builder and employer, needs to justify or respond to stupid, but Josh's class and ethics are very much appreciated!
This goes hard. Well done done Josh. I own two of your pedals, the pulp n peel and the muffuletta. I appreciate you taking the time to dissect your business in a public space. Huge respect, huge balls.
Love this video, man. Really appreciate honesty and your commitment to running an excellent American business that treats your employees and partners fairly. And thank you for all you do to bring us along for the journey. I’ve enjoyed the JHS pedals I’ve had, but I’m a bigger fan now because of this video. Best wishes to you all in KC!
A perfect example of a person who I believe has no malice but also has low to no idea of the topic he is trying to discuss. It's really not helpful to anyone. Well done Josh for offering some hard truths of business and manufacturing at scale.
Whenever a youtuber makes a drama video its only purpose is malice- maligning other creators to get engagement and putting out no-research videos like factory for clicks. Dude is 100% trying to malign JHS and milk the agorithm's love for "controversial" videos.
Hey Josh, I've got a math equation for you. Why don't you send him an enclosure, PCB, jacks, wires, battery harness, dc adapter socket, switches, resistors, transistors, pentometers, etc, and perhaps some instructions to be nice, and challenge him to build it for a video on his channel. He can start the clock when all of the packaging is removed from all the parts, and stop the timer when he's done function testing it. Take MSRP of pedal minus parts cost, and divide that remainder by number of hours so we can determine his labor rate for soldering and assembly...
This is a cool video of you breaking down the costs. I love your show and I enjoy watching it even though I don't have any of your pedals. I find what you have to say intersting fun and exciting. I know that you make great priducts because i hear them and see them everywhere snd i like how they sound. Even if you did want to "overcharge" the customer, its your buisness and your emplyees. People can buy your products or not. There are so many options out there right now anyway, which amazingly you feature on your show instead of just saying everyone sucks but us. If you wanted to spend all that money on a yacht, its your money and your busness and your product and people are paying for it. Its not a pyrmid scheme. You have nothing to justify. Its sad that people dont understand the value of buisness, especially ones like yours that are not a monopoly and have grown from the ground up. Even of I never buy a JHS pedal i am glad they exist. I would rather live in a world with craftmanship and luxury instead of this stupid idea that no one should have it because someone cant afford it. There are people like you that have a good idea, have gone and taken risks and it has paid off, not like all of the people complaining about something because they think that everyone should have it for free.
this is an outstanding educational video that patiently explains the actual costs of doing business in this space. i can't thank you enough, josh, for laying this out so evenly and calmly. your presentation here is clear, concise, and balanced. you just made a new fan out of me.
I have a small electronics company in Australia. We design and manufacture. There are only 4 of us in the business, including me. Before we pay for a single component, or pay a single dollar in wages, the fixed overhead of opening the doors of our 200sqm (2000sqft) space is around AUD98,000 / year (USD65,000). That's mortgage repayments, insurances, council rates, body corp, workers compensation, electricity, phone, internet etc etc etc. Most small electronics businesses are around 50% production staff and 50% admin, management, design etc. So when you look at the labour time per product produced, you really need to double those hours in order to include the non-production staff in the cost calculations. The Aussie dollar varies a lot, so there is exchange rate to take into account. Freight is not cheap, and has to be taken into account. Warranty costs, while not huge, need to be accounted for as a cost. When someone does a simplistic "Cost = Parts + Direct Labour" analysis, it just shows the absolute lack of any deep thinking into what they are talking about.
Absolutely 💯. I am in Australia and this is why I am so grateful for my amp techs and the stuff they have built me. They do not make tons of money and they charge fair rates for their brilliant work. Some would say their work is expensive but it's nonsense. With the the rent they pay and the quality of the parts they have to buy, and most importantly, their expertise and customer service, it's really a bargain!
Josh is a solid, honest, fair businessman and pedal innovator. No need to defend what you do or charge. The pedal community appreciates how you create the tools that make us sound great. I will be using my Colourbox V2 in our church band tomorrow and thinking of Josh! You are awesome!
I am shocked this is making the rounds in the guitar community. Josh, thanks for being a business owner and employing workers in america to produce effects pedals. I remember you saying something to the effect of “when you buy pedals from us you are supporting our ethos” and I couldn’t agree more. I haven’t even watched the video yet and I am ON ONE in these comments. For the haters: if you want another industry to hate on why not try luxury fashion or the fragrance industry. Keep it moving people…
Thank you for your openness and transparency in discussing your business finances. I know nothing about you, your company, or even guitars... But I've experienced exactly what many small business founders have - a public unwilling to understand the basis for not only production costs but also the other costs of business that must be sustained in order for any small business to have a chance of succeeding.
I watched John's video probably right after he uploaded it. I was kinda stunned by his misinformed math and the fact that he seemed to believe what he was saying. So, I had to go to the comments and see if others were as stunned. If I remember right, he was pretty well blasted for his opinions. Some people were saying JHS did no "new" designs which is also misinformed schlock, but no one was waving the "we're being ripped off" flag. On the video John put up next, he mentioned that he was told he obviously has no idea about running a business. I like John, he's a pretty good player and puts up a lot of decent content. I like Josh. He's done well with his business and obviously treats his people well, as well as being a pretty decent player that also has good content. I think this was a good thing over all. John got to destroy a pedal in front of everyone and get beaten in his comment section, the price of which is maybe some shame for which he will receive at least one new pedal. And Josh got a huge opportunity to vent about the amount of misinformation there is out there that he and his friends are continually judged by. If we see Josh going to "space" in his own rocket, then we'll bitch!
Thank you for your empathy, Josh. I'm someone who has really struggled to find a calm voice when dealing with ignorant pushback. This was a textbook lesson on how to practice grace.
I am the managing director of a company in Germany. We produce and sell very different consumer products, mainly through retailers in Europe. But I know the same misconceptions from customers and the media when it comes to selling prices, costs and our profits. That's why I think it's great, Josh, that you explain the basic mechanisms and economic necessities of a manufacturer to a customer, influencer and product user.
Thanks Josh! Most people dont understand business. How hard it is, how many mouths you have to feed, how much unbilled time and how much blood sweat and tears you need to put into a product. A lot of the time you're not making any money. People don't understand that profit comes out a huge cost. It doesn't come for free.
I really appreciate that you keep these pedals made in the USA-it’s awesome to support small American companies. With the Ross line, I get that it might have been a tough business decision, but you went above and beyond by essentially offering them at cost. Major respect for doing the right thing and ensuring the family received royalties-that’s real integrity. Plus, the booklet and the attention to detail are incredible touches. I was lucky enough to grab one of these pedals during the live sale, and I couldn’t be happier with it. I would have loved to snag the phaser, but they were already sold out by the time I got in. Keep up the great work, man. No matter what you do, there will always be people complaining. It’s honestly funny how some people, with absolutely no idea what goes into these pedals, take the time to make a video just to talk trash about something they clearly don’t understand.
I love the transparency and all the behind-the-scenes information. Most people who don’t run or work in a small business, especially a manufacturer, have no idea how complicated it is and how many different expenses there are. Most people also fundamentally misunderstand even basic economics. Y’all produce excellent entertainment and informative content. I’m a fan of what y’all do for the industry even if I don’t own any jhs pedals. I’m a fan of the crazier stuff from Meris, Strymon, Walrus, OBNE, etc. and I like to make my guitar sound like something other than a guitar. Would love to see y’all build something really wild and would gladly support you for the right product (for me). I hope you try selling more things direct. I prefer to either buy used from reverb etc. or buy directly from the manufacturer.
I hope this communicates clearly. During the pandemic I was blessed to have the means to order pedalpcb boards and parts from tayda electronics strictly as a hobby to pass the newfound time at home. This made me appreciate even more the time that it takes to research, develop, and innovate by JHS and it's other pedal creation peers. It seems like it requires artistic personality and tons of collaboration. Additionally, I also love your videos explaining the history of the circuits and how new circuits are influenced by those that came before it. Finally it looks like y'all have fun at JHS and this really encapsulates the spirit of the gear community. Thanks for taking the time to make this video.
A great explanation of what all is involved in manufacturing a product. 99% of people have no clue about running a business. The "corporate greed" culture needs to grow up and focus their attention on the real problem in America and everywhere else in the world. Government greed.
I'd like to work at JHS. Without overly romanticizing, seen from across the Pond, as an engineer I would having lots of fun in both the exiting creative part of coming up with great pedals as in the part of how to get them in a form that a lot of people actually enjoy so much, that they will afford themselves one.
I have a background in electronics and firmware design I've built my own pedals with my own custom PCB, but just used Hammond enclosures that I have to drill myself with my cheap drill with bits I'm not even sure are rated for aluminum. It costs about $80 in parts for even something as simple as a fuzz face PCB layout takes a lot of time even for simple stuff and sometimes your first layout is incorrect. A high end third party design house charges $150/hr or more to do PCB layout. Plus the dozens of hours of prototyping and building it myself, plus not getting able to buy parts at quantity because I'm only building one for myself There's really not much savings to doing it DIY, but I do it when I want to tweak something that I can't find on the market or I do it for the love of it But you're really not saving much money doing it yourself. Maybe on parts, but if you assign any monetary value at all to your time to do it you don't save anything
I’m really glad someone sent this to you and you’re responding to it. I saw it the other day and also thought about sending it to your team but got busy and lost that thought, but it’s wonderful to hear you explain to people how actually expensive it is to run a business and all the hidden costs that nobody ever knows about. I hope many critics of companies with high cost items and of business owners will take the time to humbly listen and learn. Business is a risk. Great content as always Josh, from a new (6 months ago) but already devoted fan.
Great video, very educational. For a lot of people (including myself) building a harware business sounds like a crazy endeavor, mostly because of the lack of realistic, transparent, and easy to follow info on the topic.
It’s wild how it’s the year 2024 and people don’t understand how businesses make money / the costs that go into designing, researching, marketing, etc. This was a really good watch, Josh!
Education system does not adequately educate, not does it advocate autonomous learning and interest. Its not just an intelligent defeciency, and is only more recently that we have the opportunity to hear and see first hand how things work. Via a screen and ether digital stream.
Dang, I work hard to make original designs and the idea that I’m ripping people off is crazy. I can’t even make a living doing it. Dealers need discounts to make money and promoting anything is so expensive. At best, I break even so I can get to do what I love. Which is designing and building circuits. The fact that I simply get to do it is the reward/profit in my case. All the best to JHS. BTW, I own and run Stacks FX by myself.
I have to say as someone who has owned Boss, Dunlop, Beringer, Ibanez, Marshall, Electro Harmonix, JHS pedals - plus I've even built my own. Out of all of those pedals JHS has by far been the best in terms of sound, build quality, thought in the product, packaging, marketing and customer service. I bought a pedal that failed and within 7 days I had a brand new pedal straight from JHS to the UK. You're all doing a great job! ❤ Also id love to see a pedal from you in the future named "The 3 knob" but it only has 2 knobs on the pedal! 😂
We've seen some fiery takes here and over on John's channel. We want to reiterate and stress that we do NOT endorse any bullying or mean-spirited comments directed toward John and his channel. He's a great guitarist, he has a cool channel, and you should go like and subscribe!
@@trevorD1156 That's quite a conclusion to jump to. I've been watching John's content for a few years and have never once considered him to be a con artist or an idiot. Did he shoot his mouth off and display his ignorance for the world to see? Yes. Did he publicly apologize and eat crow? Yes. They both handled this situation with compassion, patience and grace. Three qualities that are sorely missing in the world today. And for what it's worth I'm long time friends with some people at one of the other top pedal manufacturers and even they said @jhspedals making this video is one of the best things to happen to the pedal industry in a while. The only losers in this situation are those that are looking for something to complain about.
@@trevorD1156ignorance does not deserve hate. you just want an excuse to be cruel. not to mention your comment 2 weeks ago about Ross pedals is in accordance with JNC’s original opinion. hypocrisy on your part, at its finest.
@@trevorD1156 ignorance doesn't deserve hate, but outright hypocrisy does,
More than 3,000 fake Gibson guitars that could have been sold for a combined $18.7 million were seized by federal authorities after the typically made-in-America instruments arrived from Asia, officials said Tuesday.
The guitars were shipped to the US by sea and intercepted by Customs and Border Protection officers and Homeland Security Investigations special agents in Los Angeles, as well as other agencies, according to CBP.
@@trevorD1156 Nope. Ignorance deserves teaching.
As a former JHS employee I want to say that the work environment was amazing btw
I didn’t see him do the math on the epic amounts of local coffee he provided every department or the paid holidays and parties
Thank you guys 🙏🏼
♥️
This was brilliant and extremely mature and measured. Bravo, Mr Scott.
Gotta love a company that looks out for their folks. ❤
I chose the wrong career path...🤣
Was that the same coffee that he measures pedal costs in?
Josh you really handled this beautifully and we appreciate you!
Andrew!!!
leading by positive example, just like you Andrew!
@@MadeOnTape ahahahahahahaahahahahahahaahahahahahahah *deep breath* ahahahahahaahahahahahahaha
Build a pedal company in one day
@@MadeOnTape CHRIS! 😃
31:02 - He IS Josh, and HE WILL. I screwed up a brand new $500 Punchline pedal - even after reading the manual! - by not paying attention to the fine print on my power supply, and torching my pedal with 15v. Voided the warranty. Didn't realize what I had done until I asked questions on FB and someone pointed out the error of my ways. Josh happened to see the post, and said "Reach out to us, we'll swap out your pedal, it's cool". I only had to pay shipping one way. Josh didn't have to do that; yet he DID, and I am grateful. Cost of doing business, indeed!
This is why we should all give JHS due consideration when we are buying pedals. He is doing the right thing: Now WE all need to do the right thing.
That sucks! I have actually done the same thing, twice. I'm an idiot!
Genius🎉
@@georgebarry8640 I definitely plan on getting a JHS pedal. I just don't know which one yet. I'm not a good player by any stretch of the imagination, so any pedal I buy is just for bragging rights to say I have a cool pedal.
Josh seems like one of the good guys
I don’t own a JHS pedal, but this video made me want to buy a container full.
Honesty and transparency like this is hard to come across in any business. Thanks for making this video!
There is a Black Friday sale BTW...
Don't. It's a waste of your money. Get a Line 6 Stomp. Instead of these wannabe boutique pedals.
@@RandyCraig-e3c Kind of missing the point? 😅
@@RandyCraig-e3cgo buy your line 6. The rest of us will have real pedals.
Agreed, I don't own one but maybe I will soon.
I’ve never seen a person handle a difficult situation with more class and grace.
In the words of social media..."Tell me you've never owned a business without telling me you've never owned a business". Social media has become a place where some "influencers" do no research on a subject they know nothing about, and give an opinion as though it was fact. I like how honest Josh is and how he never puts down other pedals. I have only ever seen him praise his fellow builders.
Seriously, this guy has apparently never heard of overhead (among many other things related to costs of running a business that makes things)
I've never owned a business... But I am shocked at the total lack of awareness this guy has of basic business costs.
Sure, it definitely feels like many nice pedals are overpriced... But then I remember what health insurance costs for 50 people and figure that nearly makes up the difference on its own.
Not a single mention of any overhead from this guy. Unreal levels of obliviousness.
I do enjoy his channel, and I feel like it demonstrates some ignorance on production costs here and I’m super appreciative of how much josh shared because that’s valuable info to his competitors. Bottom line, jhs costs more because they care about their supply chain. I prefer to buy American because it pays fairly and I’ll never regret that.
End of the day the discount from the super low cost brands is paid for by horrifying living conditions of their staff.
@@chibisvenSo true. That is the whole Far East problem. Western consumers are at ease with buying products made by people working ludicrous 6 day weeks with no benefits, living shitty lives in concrete deserts. Conditions people wouldn’t put up with in the West. Who cares about them and their pollution, just so long as we get an unlimited supply of cheap consumer goods? But if you point this out you are accused of being anti-global trade.
Not just owning the business, but "simply" making fairly complex high quality physical object once in their life would educate anyone on a subject :)
I appreciate this video as someone who makes his own pedals at home and puts in a lot of work to make sure they look good and sound good while not failing. It's a lot of work. Can't imagine doing it on such a large scale.
The best part is him absolutely struggling to reassemble a pedal yet saying how easy it is for JHS to make and distribute these 😂
@@GrandOldPainter We should get him to take apart a dumble overdrive to see if it's worth the cost. Though I would cry to watch it.
Classic TH-cam expertise 😂
😂😂😂
"I can take this jet engine apart in ten minutes, so surely the experts can put it together in about ... Five? But if you want me to put it back together? No way 😂 I can't do that. It would take ALL DAY and it would probably never work again. " 😂 And there you go, you have proven you know absolutely ZERO about manufacturing pedals.
Yeh I definitely just got ripped off $60 on the flight delay , I in contact with seller to get $60 back off the price.
I have never loved this man more. From all of us at Third Eye Blind, Josh, thank you for your service. I turn into a fifteen year-old again every time I open a new pedal box. You are a champion of all the wonderful pedal builders worldwide. You're also my favourite nerd. Keep on brother x
thanks so much! Glad to know y’all
Saw you guys in Omaha more than 20 years ago! Awesome show :-)
you guys rock
@@bitronicc1887uhhh… bad news buddy
do do do, do dodo do do :D
I run a music software company (ML Sound Lab) and wanted to see if we could expand to the pedal market. After going through the numbers several times I was completely incapable of making it a profitable business even on paper. Huge investments in hopes of a 10% profit in the case that you always sell all pedals.
There's a huge disconnect between businesses and musicians as customers - a common request we get is to make free plugins because "it's only software". That always goes down well when I tell my coders, graphics designers, everyone's wifes and kids that for this next project no one gets paid. But we'll get tons of exposure which we can then feed to our kids.
I think I speak on behalf of JHS too when I say - if we wanted to make a lot of money and were not doing this as a passion project, we would've found a more easily monetizable customer segment. We do this for the love of music. ❤
Mikko, well said mate. Love your work and your common sense! Cheers mate!
I also did lots of similar math for pedals and synths and eurorack format modules and came to the conclusion that it's really hard to compete with the likes of the big companies which have completely different facilities and resources to manufacture their products. I see your company is also in Oulu? (Mine is Decyne4 Music, based in Oulu, I make DAW software + DSP algorithms)
ML Sound is fantastic. Prices are fair and the stuff sounds great.
@@DanBieranowski Yep. And I know they’re known for metal. But i use their Dumble model as a clean platform with pedals before it, and it sounds beautiful. Their cab IRs are top shelf too.
by the way your IRs at ML Sound Labs are good..bought some...Thank you!!
As an artist who sells his work, I found that Josh‘s responses were 100% right on the mark. When I have a customer wanting a “deal“ for a piece of my artwork, I find that they don’t understand what goes into the pricing of my artwork. There’s so much more than meets the eye. it’s not only the price of supplies and labor, but the overall cost of doing business. (And we’re not even adding in for original artistic vision.) If I sell something for $100, government income tax alone is taking 30% or $30 worth right off the top. And we haven’t even gotten into insurance, rent, booth fees, traveling fees like hotel, gas, etc. etc.. Unless a person has ran their own real (not a weekend warrior) business, they do not understand (most of the time) how much goes into the pricing of a creation. Josh, thank you for educating the average person. And … you still remained a gentleman by the way you handled your reply!
THIS might be one of the most important videos made in this community. The honesty and transparency are perfectly and concisely communicated through the examples, which, though rooted in JHS, are so relatable to all other small companies.
THANK you from another small company.
I love that Josh's frustration is more-so in the poor disassembly of the pedal than the actual misinformation in the video🤣
I ffwd all his video bro. So boring.
@@nvs6177 As a kid I took apart just about everything in my parents house to their dismay. Most of it I got put back together...
“Say what you want to about me, but you better leave my pedals out of this”
Lolol
@@El...Presidente Yeah, I hear ya. Mexican humor is so simple and pointless to me. I can't stand sitting through it. lol. The JHS crew is hilarious!
This is one of the best video on YT EVER. Where Josh demostrates to be : a great communicator, a man who has learned how to handle social media and get every bit of good from everything, and finally a kind guy. I always loved JHS as company, and this one makes me think i've always been right
I'm impressed that you have treated this guy in good faith. His ignorance is embarrassing, and I'm not convinced he didn't make this video to try and get more attention on his channel.
Such an even-tempered, good-humored response to this guy; it's like a parallel universe internet
John Cordy himself is a pretty even tempered good humoured guy tbf
There does seem to be a lot of manufactured outrage over this in the comments. It's almost as if that was good for driving view numbers and comments.
No joke. Dude meant well and just got some things wrong. No need to rip his head off. Just tell him what he got wrong.
"parallel universe", that's good.
He's definitely had some unhinged takes in the JHS group on Facebook. Not unjustified but it was enough for me to lose all interest in purchasing his pedals.
man i didn't need Josh to explain to know this guy doesn't know what he is talking about. that being said thanks Josh for making good pedals, and for making them in America, and paying your workers well too and hearing you brought in the Ross Family as well dang more than happy to pay a bit more to keep my money in the US while giving my money to a company owned by a good person
@@thekillerirish so true! All the JHS employees look so happy. I’m sure Josh does his best to compensate them well and it’s hard AF to be an owner!
Most of Cordy's opinion pieces are just garbage takes as ragebait.
The bloke plays guitar well, but I had to unsub a year ago because of his ragebait "strategy".
@@ErebosGR Yep. I love his playing but I got tired of his content pretty quick. But it's what gets views and he has bills to pay too. I personally think he'd do better if gave lessons on true fire or had his own website to give lessons, or both.
I worked for an electrical manufacturer for 12 years. It was a UL listed shop that sold to other businesses, and it had 2-4 employees during my time there. With judicious use of American subcontractors for metal parts and circuit boards. Lots in common with JHS as a company, with *almost none* of the added costs of PR- no social media, no film production. I honestly don't know how JHS does it, every line is a labor of love. This is actually the ideal scenario for American small business.
Years ago, when I first started building my pedal board, I sent JHS a DD7 to rehouse for me. Long story short, there were some manufacturing problems that weren’t JHS’ fault, but they couldn’t complete the rehouse for me. JHS went above and beyond, replacing my DD7 and sending me several JHS pedals of my choice. As a broke college student, this blew me away. I will never forgot this act of kindness and generosity. You will always have my business JHS.
If you've ever built a few pedals, you quickly realize there's no reasonable price point (on a small scale), in which you can make your money back. It's basically a break-even hobby. JHS stuff seems pretty reasonable if you ever picked up an iron yourself.
Yep. These 🤡 don’t even realize that R&D is a thing. It’s not just parts. It’s the labor of properly paying employees, then on top of that, R&D, promo, etc etc. Uff. I kinda feel like dude owes Josh an apology.
And if you think these pedal companies are overprice that’s totally valid and you can buy cheaper shit. Behringer makes great pedals for like 25 bucks. If you do not give a shit about looks or marketing, there’s plenty of great cheap alternatives.
@@tannerbarsness9992or durability or a reachable, reliable customer service department.
Facts. If I valued my time at all, I’d be taking a 2-3x loss on any pedal I’ve ever made. Granted, the pedals I’ve made are usually things that aren’t on the market yet and have to figure out how to build
Exactly!!! I've built a few kits, and I'm not bad soldering but I doubt I could output more than 2-3 in an average day and if I had to ask enough money for what I consider a living wage where I live that would put me at no less than having to ask $500 per pedal even if I kept the costs to $100. There's no way that works when you have boneheads like this whining about pedal margins with no knowledge of reality.
Thank you Josh for making this video. Your transparency takes guts and I know that many of us in the pedal making world appreciate it. We make pedals because we love making cool, musical things. No one gets into this to get rich.
People do it because it’s their passion.
I started Red Witch 23 years ago. It’s fed my kids and put a roof over my head. It’s paid our staff and our suppliers. But it’s allowed me to get up every day and create. To use my imagination to answer the simple question “What would be super cool to make for guitarists next?”.
Sending you my very best from down here in New Zealand.
Your Moon Phaser is my favorite pedal. ❤
@budgetbarista Thank you🙏🙂
Transparent, open, honest and always educational. This is one of my favourite TH-cam channels. It’s great to know this company is led by a decent human being. My next pedal will be a JHS pedal. Good people deserve support. I love John’s channel; he’s a great player and an enjoyable TH-camr. I think we’ve all learned from this. Thanks!
Josh, as a small business owner with my wife, I truly appreciate you and your candor. Many do not understand costs, or even business in general. The transparency you gave today makes me respect you guys even more. Cheers!
Josh is my favorite person on TH-cam
Last week you said it was Rob Chapman.. Hmmm.. Something fishy goin' on.
@@Peterbrendanalbert no, he said his favorite person was Josh chapman.
My second favourite after mimisounds
My girlfriend doesn’t even play guitar but she always watches JHS with me, why? Because we both LOVE Josh’s HONESTY!!!❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
Josh your response is super polite and exemplary. Being kind is the highest level of a powerful persona.
Great job explaining the true costs of running a business. My favorite line - "Buying a program for your HR Department..." That can be $1-10k/yr alone depending on license and business size. Thanks for great pedals and great content!
I’m a commercial lender with over 13 years experience in banking. You also have to associate the costs of research/development, total overhead/operating expenses, the expenses associated with faulty parts, not to mention the raw material costs that are utilized, costs of social media/marketing/advertising, state and federal taxes, licensing, legal counsel, and more than likely several other costs I’m not smart enough to nail down. JHS provides a top quality product at a reasonable price. He could easily raise the price of his pedals without hesitation. The demand may be diminished but he could be more profitable. He’s doing the consumer a solid by keeping his prices lower focusing on higher volumes than capitalizing on scarcity. Thank you, Josh and team, for what you have done and will continue to do for the guitar community.
Folks who don’t know how to run businesses have no clue but act like they do.
As someone who is about to graduate with a BBA, these are the the parts of business I never even considered on a deep level until I started college lol
Not to mention the cost of producing his TH-cam channel that I assume he, and hundreds of thousands of people watch. For free
@@timschulte2315 I can't help but imagine the youtube thing is, all factors considered, break-even at worst. 500k subs can keep most average channels healthy, plus it's extra advertising for the business, plus he promotes the whole pedal building community, which definitely helps out the business even if it's not directly financial.
Thanks for parroting exactly what Josh just said. Did you watch the video?
Thanks, Josh and crew. And speaking of crew...let's not forget all the costs of packaging, shipping, order management, customer services, etc etc etc etc
Not to mention R&D. I’ve seen that process up close, and yeah, it’s not cheap.
@@sub-jec-tiv 100% And R&D is more than just circuit design. There's parts sourcing, PCB layout, case layout, testing, documentation, and overhead in keeping your R&D staff trained and, you know, actually paid for their work.
@@SuddenSoundStudiosyeah I cringed when I heard “it’s a clone so it shouldn’t have any R&D.” Hahahahahahhahha literally just the effort of finding current production components to replace out of date components on a 1:1 clone then adapting the circuit the have the same functional result could be a massive time sinkhole….I’m not even an electrical engineer but I’ve built enough hobby circuits to understand this.
Someone has to design, make, paint and manufacture the case itself. It’s not done during a tea break. And those workers need paying too. Maybe time for the Brit to go to business school.
Add in the cost of lawyers and accountants to keep the gubment happy.
JHS is the most transparent pedal company out there. Please do not stop what you’re doing. American made, cares about his employees, I would pay double for a JHS pedal just knowing that. Kudos to you! Thank you for all you do for us nerdy guitar pedal guys
their bypasses are transparent too
I think they could be the most transparent American company period
Man....90% of consumers have no clue how hard and expensive it is to just bring a product to market. Thank you for being honest and laying down the facts! I'm new to your channel and I really dig it and have already learned a ton!!!! Thank you.
I'm 8 minutes in and my favorite parts are:
- complaining about the warranty being voided if the case is opened then watching him break it as soon as he opens it
-admits he doesn't know what hes talking about
- can't take apart a pedal
- compares the prices of a company in the US making original products and paying US wages to the price or Chinese clones. Who knows how their workers are treated
JHS, I love your products, channel and how open you are about your pricing. I don't have the time and knowledge to make pedals, so I appreciate you offering a good product. Some of the best pedals I own are from you. I will pay a bit more to support you and your workers. Don't let people who don't know your business tell you your buisness.
I’ll never forget meeting Josh at Sweetwater in 2015/16, and then having the opportunity to talk with him at the airport when flying home. Josh is one of the most honest and nicest guys, who genuinely cares about people and musicians. I totally get why you’re frustrated here Josh! Love your pedals!
This just makes me want to buy more JHS Pedals.
*chant* COLOUR BOX COLOUR BOX
Me too lol
And conversely, John Cordy will get more subscribers
Same here. I've never bought one, but I value what JHS does greatly. Might be time for a black Color Box.
I might get some JHS now. Great video
As a small business owner and guitarist I really appreciate this video. I don’t even really use pedals and I still like this channel. Also love that JHS is a U.S.A. based business
I really appreciate this video. There are next to no companies that are as transparent as JHS. I own a company that manufactures a high quality product that we do our very best to deliver at a reasonable cost. Whenever you do anything at scale, overhead and manufacturing is not cheap. It's easy to look at a product and say I can make this at home for next to nothing, but ignore the cost of everything that went into you being able to just pick it up off the shelf and enjoy it. I don't care how much a JHS pedal costs, because I'm buying the quality, research, convenience, and the JHS name. These are companies that deliver good honest products, and I'm more than happy to support companies like this.
Josh, as a veteran Engineer and musician I been frustrated by guys like this my whole life that think that there is little or no effort in creating something.
I now have a name for this phenomenon..... I call it "The Easy Button"
As we all watched the guy take apart your pedal...... I would love to see him put it back together and get it to work again....... he has all the parts and the enclosure....... so it should be EASY..... right
I would just tell those people “if it’s so easy, start your own company”. If people think something like the Colour Box is overpriced, I will challenge them to come up with their own design and see how much money they spent on failed prototypes, research and development, and just parts in general while also not being able to get the time back that could have actually been put to making money.
@@tannerbarsness9992yep. When people slag off owners not paying a living wage I say “then go start your own company. Assuming you live in America, you live in one of the easiest countries in the world to do that in.”
In John’s defense, the majority of pedal JHS sells are clones( read: unauthorized non royalty copies of other people work). I know he has been working on his own designs and releasing new designs.
In Josh defense, while some can and do build their own pedals, John Cordy should just buy his pedals from JHS and not complain, because he obviously from this video is not going to building anything.
@@thepostapocalyptictrio4762 To be honest, once you make modifications to a circuit it's ok to clone it. As long as you're honest I see no problem as if we weren't allowed to improve on other's designs we would never make anything.
Behringer on the other hand regularly make 1 to 1 clones of small independent company's models and undercut their price hugely. They also never disclose that anything they make is a clone afaik. That is incredibly dishonest and far more harmful to the industry than what Josh is doing.
@ Moog US synth owner and former fan. I know all about the den of thieves that is Behringer. Someone should finally sue. I was hoping Moog would, but it didn’t and now it’s gone again🤨😢
I'm even more of a fan of JHS after this video. USA made and built with boards from the US. One of the better businesses out there... dude cares about his product, staff, and country. Sure you could argue this, but why would he spend this much time on a video explaining everything? Hope one day to be good enough of a player to meet you, sir. Keep up the good work and God bless!
While Cordy is probably talking out of his ass as usual, also keep in mind this is the perspective of a pedal builder justifying pedal prices. Remember the Victory Fiasco? Even the good ones are businessmen at the end of the day.
@martyshwaartz971 yes and these businesses are 100% entitled to attempt to make money in a competitive market
Nice job Josh.
@@martyshwaartz971sure, but it's not like he has much to justify with 5 percent net profits. That's a lean business.
@@martyshwaartz971 This isn't "perspective" or some angle. This is a knowledgable pedal builder divulging facts, stats and receipts to set the record straight after an outrageously misguided TH-camr who is clearly more interested in views than the truth posted a video that is pretty much nonstop falsehoods and inaccuracies about a subject he clearly has zero understanding of. Also, you say the word 'businessman' like it's some naughty word. "Even the good ones are businessmen at the end of the day" lol what? Modern society doesn't exist without businesses and the vast majority of us wouldn't be able to afford shelter, clothes and food for ourselves without finding a job at said businesses or creating jobs at our own businesses. At least these comment sections do a great job at highlighting who has actually run a business and understands the financials & acumen behind it vs those who clearly don't.
a lot of folks just don't really know how much cost goes into starting and running successful business. It's so expensive and often the owner of the business is barely getting paid themselves to support their dream and the team helping them make it happen. B2B isn't just how it works in the pedal business, it's how it works in ALL pro audio/video/lighting (and i'm sure others as well but I work in this industry). It's a competitive landscape with slim margins across the board. Great vid!
I've been in hi tech manufacturing for over 50 years. Josh, you're right on point. Most folks don't have a clue what it takes to do R&D, research a market, maintain and protect a brand, maintain an inventory, manage vendors and scheduling, maintain and operate manufacturing machines (like CAD, chip shooters, silks screens, IR ovens, and using a "mole" to test the ramp up and peak temperatures), prototyping, first articles, redlining, redesign, etc. Not to mention the overhead (labor, health care, electric bills). You've done the right thing. Keep it up.
To be fair to John, he posed the issue as a question, and almost immediately PINNED and liked a highly critical comment to the top of the video's comments, making many of the points you make here, in effect admitting that he realized he was off-base. (Disclaimer-I wrote the comment.) Pinning it invited a number of other commenters to weigh in echoing the criticism. In many years of YT viewing, I've never seen another creator pin and like a critical comment like that. -Tom
Though it is commendable that he pinned your comment. Most people aren't gonna see that.
And to be clear (just watched the original), he wasn't "just asking questions". In the video he is clearly making accusations in the form of questions.
What's worse, he didn't even do basic research the cost of standard components is real easy to google. The rough cost of custom enclosures and pcbs can be determined by sending a few emails to fab houses.
If John really cares, he should do real research on the subject and issue a follow up video. And maybe he will, it's only been a week.
Probably why everything comes from China
The r and D is copying other peoples IP.
As John releases several videos per week, it’s impossible that he thinks things through. This destroys the credibility of his channel. Most of his vids are hipshots: first impression reviews or an opinion about someone else’s work. On a positive note: he play well.
Economics are lost on most. What I will leave this on: those that assume without research, know nothing, while claiming everything.
It blows me away when people add up what they think the components cost, that suddenly that number is the total amount of costs when running a business, and therefore the pedals should cost X + profit margin (X being raw material costs).
That sums up major political parties.
@castleanthrax1833 It is because most people haven't ran a business or studied business or economics. They are more things that I don't know than things I do know, so it's always best to be cautious in avoid making conclusions.
@pastorkev777 Brilliantly put. It is very disheartening. The default assumption is always "scam" or "overpriced" without knowing nothing or acknowledging any of other costs related to production. It is baffling, specially in "highly educated" people
The entire "review" video was just an uneducated opinion... Our win though... learned a lot from Josh!
I will always look to buy a JHS pedal because of the integrity of Josh AND the quality and creativity of him and this company. Integrity matters and I support it.
As a hobbyist maker whos done amp's/speaker/pedal/custom PCB boards/etc, and admittedly a bit frugal; I would sooner make a pedal before buying one but this is at a HUGE time cost to myself! I can feel your pain watching the video Josh. You did a great job of breaking this down and educating your audience!
I applaud Josh for not absolutely flipping his lid at this, that’s some real restraint. So many people just don’t understand the actual costs that go into creating, manufacturing and taking any product to market, they just sum up the cost of parts and then ignore any other expenses or the need for anyone in that business to make a living wage 🤦
Josh, as a small music software business owner, I truly appreciate this video. Your composure in the face of moral attacks based on misinformation is admirable. While it's somewhat understandable that most people don't understand the cost + effort of doing business, it's maddening when those with bigger platforms spread misconceptions without making any effort to understand the subject matter. So cheers, respect, and thank you for indirectly supporting players in our industry who face similar challenges.
Also, interesting to hear your retailer margins - software is the same.
Software is the worse. People will pirate it then demand all your attention to fix issues brought about by the crackers.
Or they'll question why you don't have this "simple" feature one of the big dogs have when that feature took 9 years for them to implement and they patented that way so you can't use the same implementation.
Just curios, but what do you make?
That’s what I own a JHS pedal. Happy to support you guys. From Canada, but I support made in the USA 🇺🇸
JHS also makes a whole budget 3 series line in order to hit several price points and include people in the brand that maybe can't afford (or don't want to pay for) the more expensive pedals. $99 dollars is a steal and cheaper than some BOSS or MXR pedals.
75 now they are on sale! They’re like cheaper than a Beheinger!!
why is 3 series cheaper?
And to be blunt better products
@@utubehound69 less expensive cases, no fancy paint would be two items off the top of my head
@utubehound69 don’t know. All white, smaller enclosure, cheaper components… ??I have no idea.
I had a small graphics shop. Had many customers (and employees) make statements like those, without taking any overhead into account. Was always tough to hear. As I drove a $3000 truck, and they pulled in driving their $80,000 pickup. You did a great job of being kind, while being informative. Classic JHS, classic Josh.
This response was pure class top to bottom mate, I applaud your level headed and fair attitude to somewhat uninformed criticism, something many or any people could learn from.
For what it’s worth, I (mostly) build my own pedals and definitely started with the impression the industry was a rip off based on “well I can just do that myself for ‘x’ cheaper” economics but by let’s say pedal build #3 I saw the truth! More so when friends asked why I didn’t just start building pedals for a living, I’ve done the maths and it’s not pretty! I’m happy to call it a hobby but if anything peaking behind the curtain has only given me more respect for the people out there doing the real work.
Again, I applaud your willingness to be transparent and give fair time and answers to this subject, no matter how uninformed the original query was, it shows great depth of character and sincerity. All the best!
Yeah try building a guitar once. LOL then you are amazed how they can crank them things out over and over again meeting quality critiria. We are very spoiled today.
I am proud of you for holding yourself together Josh and you can clearly see how much hurt this has caused. It should be a lesson to everyone who survives in life with only a modicum of intelligence to stay in their lane and not shoot off at the mouth about things they have no idea about, and likely lack the intellect to fully understand. I think the fact that John did the video without any thought or research, and then had the absolute audacity to do a lengthy apology that began with a sponsorship add sums up the difference between people. Some are here for a gimmick and some like you (involving the Ross family) and having a channel that is never shy to praise competition shows that you are a rare great human. People don’t realise that most companies in any area and vocation are lucky to make 10 percent on any money that comes through the door
As an executive in business, dealing in COGS, Margins, overhead and general "cost of doing business", expenses, etc. Let me just say; Josh, great job teaching, sir. The basics of how you run your business, and how business in general operates, was clear, concise, and easy to understand. With a pretty good natured response to what was a terribly misunderstood view, bordering slanderous portrayal in many ways, with the assumptions and presumptions leveled in the video you were responding to.
The cool-headed, sometimes a tad "spicy" way you handled them, with the transparency you exhibited, even though you didn't have to, is commendable. You care about how JHS is viewed in eyes of your customers and rightly so. Furthermore, it comes across as obvious, that you care about your customers, your employees and your passion for what you do, with no greed or ill intent. I enjoyed it thoroughly and salute your honesty. I aspire to work with companies like yours everyday and they are not so many out there in my experience. Bravo.
This reminds me of when people would moan that CDs were overpriced because they heard they cost about £1 per unit to make.. When I was in an independent band in the late 90s our albums sold for about £11.99 in most record stores but we'd make about £2 per CD after the distributors and retailers added their markups, so after the cost of recording an album we'd still be losing money even if we sold a lot of copies
@@theshiningtongues there's sort of the opposite problem now as well where the cost has gone way down, you can produce your own album and shove it onto your own CDS and take 100% of the profit... But no one wants to buy a fucking CD
The "producer" and "distributor" usually make way more than the artist for a service that should cost a few pence per CD. If I can buy a rewritable CD with a printed booklet in a jewel case for less than 1 UKP in a store, even if the producer would get 1 UKP per unit and you get 2 UKP per unit, it should cost 4 UKP and not 12 UKP. You as an artist are being gaslighted about the price and cost of the whole process.
@@Google_Is_Evil the costs of making a blank CDR and the costs of making a glass-mastered production CD for retail are totally different
Johns video is an absolute embarrassment. I liken this to my line of work dentistry where if I was to charge x amount for a filling or crown the natural assumption is it’s all profit.
Your intellectual property also has a value John has failed to even take into account . He hasn’t been malicious but stupid
It was really interesting to understand how a pedal makes its way from you guys to the consumer and what that costs. On the outside looking in that is very hard to see. Thanks for that, Josh (and John)
i read this in your voice
@macola467 me too 😁
Excellent video, Thanks. Most of my companies involved hardware with B2B distribution so I am familiar with the ecosystem. JHS Pedals is a private company, therefore Josh's unique honesty regarding Bill of Materials, Cost of Good and Cost of Doing Business should not be taken for granted. Kudos!
Josh I think you showed great restraint in your comments. I worked as a design/manufacturing engineer in high tech around optics & lasers. The number of supposedly intelligent people that get fixated on the cost of goods and forget there is a cost to design, test, stock parts, inspect parts, assemble parts, inspect the final assembly, package and ship the final product always amaze me. Not only do these fixed costs have to be recovered, all the variables costs of the overhead needs to be recovered. And you only have so many units to sell to recover these costs before the market becomes saturated.
I have watched engineers shave $4 off COGs at the expense of adding 1/2 hour to the unit build time and think it's a good trade off. Then they will wonder why the units are taking longer to build and the gross margin is falling.
Good on ya for taking on the thankless task of trying to educate people on business 101
Hi Josh, as a pedal maker, I completely understand what you're saying. When people look at a pedal, they often only consider the cost of the components and base their opinions on that. They tend to overlook the time and money spent on R&D, sourcing parts, taxes, employee salaries, insurance costs, office rent, and-most commonly ignored-marketing expenses.
In a place where the annual inflation rate exceeds 100%, I’m doing my best to keep things affordable, especially for young musicians, by limiting price increases to just 10% to stay afloat. Yet, even that sometimes draws criticism from people 🙃
❤
That’s very frustrating to me to forget all the expenses. And there are looots of expenses (variable, fixed, etc.). Which he could find if he looked up the financial statements. And financial statements better be accurate or believable or the IRS may, or will, get you eventually.
It shows that those people don't know how a business works.
The cost to built stuff is grossly underestimated.
Plus Josh employs ethical business practices.
I'm amazed at the actual costs of the materials. I've never thought pedal companies were ripping us off. I've just never given it a lot of thought.
You are right in what you say. For most people, at first glance, only the cost of the components comes to mind. However, when the time and effort spent, as well as the operating costs are taken into account, things take on a completely different dimension.
"This Pedal could be built at home..." Ok, do it then.
He probably couldn't put it together. He obviously doesn't have a clue about pedal assembly.
Right? He wouldn’t have a clue.
We could also build our own houses, forge our own knives, and butcher our own animals but we don't... because it's best to leave some things to the pros!
I've told Cordy several times over the years to try building a kit from AionFX, for example, if he wants to understand how pedals work and why pedal makers choose to do things a certain way. He never listens to constructive criticism. I had to unsub a year ago because of his constant stream of ragebait videos like this one.
And it can! But you wont get a good quality case, customer support, quality control... I'm all for people building their own things, but they also need to understand that one thing is one thing and another is another, lol. Josh even made some livestreams where he teaches how to build simples circuits... People that say "you could build this at home!" dont know shit.
I can't believe how calm you are. This is legit inspiring.
Thank you for all the transparency! I knew it wasn't cheap or simple, but getting all this BTS is fascinating
The more I find out about JHS, the more I like em. The more I find out about Behringer, the more I’m glad I canceled Disney+ and Netflix, and I can afford to buy a JHS pedal. 😂
Great video Josh. I'm a business Chief Financial Officer and understand where you come from. It's a miracle you can pull off a made in USA model at a reasonable price. Engineering and usability are the key to your magic. You're a good man and I support you.
Cynicism and talking rubbish about things we don’t know much about is unfortunately a human trait that only education can cure. Thanks for the lesson Josh, it was immediately apparent when you started your channel that you are one of the good guys.
Well said.
Josh, i've thought about how companies like yours haven't changed their prices for years even though inflation continues to increase expenses of building the product. Its pretty awesome of you to keep the prices stable while the prices of everything else have shot through the roof! I appreciate you and your company for all the work you've done! Keep on keeping it real
This is one of the reasons why JHS is my favorite pedal company. Huge respect to you Josh!
I own a small manufacturing business here in the USA as well. I love this video! Before I went into business for myself, I had many of these same misconceptions about the type of money business owners were making at companies I was working for. The costs of doing business, as well as the many headaches you have to deal with, are no joke!
yup same; you and I were crappy employees! lol
I love this rebuttal and exercise in educating Mr Cordy. I follow him (and sift through the talented - but let's admit it - wanky self-indulgent guitar playing), and I follow you - so I see all of what's uploaded by each of you. The fact is though, that this video carries a substance, taste, class, humility, and honesty that we'll never see on his channel. What would be most appreciated would be for said channel owner to acknowledge his ignorance about business and engineering and apologize for slagging on someone who has brought so much to the community. You're a damn fine fellow Josh. Thank you for all you do and keep up with your excellent contributions!
Yes, completely agree. I can't stand cordy anymore so assume I'll never see if he does what you propose
I follow both channels, too, and I love John's playing; I often just watch the playing and then skip through the rest. In fairness to him, he almost immediately PINNED a highly critical comment to the top of the video's comments, basically admitting he realized he was off-base. In many years of YT watching, I have never seen a creator pin a critical comment. (Dislaimer-I wrote the comment.) -Tom
In his follow up video he acknowledged that he got flamed in the comments and he was wrong. He asked a question and accepted the answer so let’s not be too harsh on John, he’s a really nice fella.
@@illgottengains1314that’s great he can own the consequences of his actions. I think it’s probably a unanimous sentiment that he shouldn’t have ever made the video.
@@illgottengains1314is he really nice? most of his recent contents are clickbaity and some are rage baits. I stopped following JNC after noticing those patterns.
it seems like he post maliciously to stay relevant and always be recommended on viewer's feed even if he misinform viewers
I love this channel. Following Josh has taught me so much, from music and pedal history, how to use them for different scenarios and just how does someone actually build the thing! Josh an d his team are so open about what they do it's a breath of fresh air. Josh and his team are also incredible players!! I wish I worked there haha!! This is just brilliant stuff from this channel. Josh has shown in his reaction just how much of a gentleman he is.....great stuff! Keep up the good work!!
One of the most educational videos I've ever seen. Not just about pedals but the industry in general. I'm a Boomer who loves pedals, has owned hundreds and has been playing for longer than most of the viewers here have been alive. I know it took a leap of faith to pull the curtain back and still stay so gracious. If all companies were run this way, what a much better world this would be. As always, there is much more involved than meets the eye. An investment of 31 minutes that will last me a lifetime. Thank you, Josh.
Josh is an amazing human being. I love how transparent he is with his videos. I’ve never had a bad JHS pedal. Keep up the amazing work, Josh you and your team!
Josh - count me as another of your customers who appreciates the great work JHS does. I am inspired by your kindness and commitment to having fun! 🤘🏻🤘🏻
Good businesses that make good products and are run by good people should be supported. Josh, get a coffee and a scone while I decide which new JHS pedal I'm buying for synths. 🤔🧠🫀☀️🇺🇸
As a product design engineer I regularly notice that, in general, people don't really know or realize what goes into designing and producing consumer goods. I've even noticed that some people don't even realize that everything that we make must have been designed and engineered by a team of people and that there's always way more to the story than just the material costs.
Loved the video, it made that aspect clear to at least some people who were probably oblivious.
Brilliantly restrained, gracious, educational and fun to watch - God bless you Josh. I'm considering a color box - just need to add up how much the components cost to see if it's worth it... err too soon?
looool
I wish I had the colorbox, i can't justify that investment right now, as cost of living is kind of high In The US, that's why I have my second hand crayon that I enjoy while playing Bodysnatchers. I build pedals myself too, and have been following Josh for years now. I dream of being able to sell my true spring reverb pedals to the masses, but even the thought of being able to set up something at a scale that would allow me to produce sufficient money to leave my job frightens me. You may have the skill, but scaling is a completely different game. Hats of to you Josh!!!
I do some work with a local pedal builder, demoing his products, promoting them, and helping with the prototyping process as an extra set of ears. Through this whole process, I’ve learned that making pedals and developing their designs is a lengthy and unforgiving pursuit. Much like me with my job as a musician it’s a pursuit of love, not a living with which millions will be made.. I had the honour and privilege of working on a signature pedal with this builder this year and it turned out absolutely fantastic. Leading up to the launch, though there were months, nearly a full year of back-and-forth between the builder and I dialling it in just right. Everyone’s time is worth something and when we purchase a pedal from a company, we have to think about all the time, the blood sweat and tears that went into that design. I can say now that there is so much more to it than I ever knew, and the world of electronics is a complicated one that I will never even pretend to understand.
Josh, this video really touches my heart as a manufacturer that focuses on hand-building and local suppliers. I think nobody of us is getting rich out of what we do... but we all have those annoying discussions about the prices of our products. Many people think, we just pick prices out of the sky to make us rich. Which we don't. I think you were still pretty polite on telling how business works and what costs are involved until a Customer can hold a product in his/her hands. We could go much deeper on this and explain how a product actually has to be calculated from BOM-Cost to final Sales-Price at a dealer... 😉
“Pedal Price Therapy”. The few sentences before and after make the whole video’s intent aware. Thanks Josh for making great pedals! Thanks for supporting America with American jobs putting American parts together making great American Pedals. Thanks for having some nod to the nostalgia and putting Ross back out there! Bummer it didn’t go the way you hoped but always appreciated. Thank you.
I guaran-fucking-Tee if every US business operated on the same values and methods as JHS, everything would probably cost much less and all of our overall happiness as employees and members of a consumer-driven society would be 100% higher than it is now.
AKA life before the eighties
uh no everything would cost more. US labor is expensive and its not just the labor to build the pedals- the R&D, shipping, management, time spent ordering parts, etc all add up. Not to mention that you couldn't find some workers who would accept the pay v labor of things like Farm work, cleanings and under-the-table service jobs- which is actually something we've seen play out in multiple southern states (even when the pay is raised).
@@PacificNatureTVyou misses the macro point. Everybody would be employed with more to spend. It’s how things worked when the US was a healthier country, before we shipped off our manufacturing base and became a service economy and, soon, an oligarchy.
@@TheFibtastic You're just describing the natural progression of a capitalist society. Greed never disappears and the profit has to increase. Labor cost is always the first thing to be looked at when trying to increase profit. If local workers won't accept what you're willing to pay, you look elsewhere.
These people will say anything to create content-but his misunderstanding of business processes and downstream costs (employees, building, insurance, social security, advertising, etc) is astounding! Josh, nor any R&D/builder/business builder and employer, needs to justify or respond to stupid, but Josh's class and ethics are very much appreciated!
This goes hard. Well done done Josh. I own two of your pedals, the pulp n peel and the muffuletta. I appreciate you taking the time to dissect your business in a public space. Huge respect, huge balls.
Love this video, man. Really appreciate honesty and your commitment to running an excellent American business that treats your employees and partners fairly. And thank you for all you do to bring us along for the journey. I’ve enjoyed the JHS pedals I’ve had, but I’m a bigger fan now because of this video. Best wishes to you all in KC!
A perfect example of a person who I believe has no malice but also has low to no idea of the topic he is trying to discuss.
It's really not helpful to anyone.
Well done Josh for offering some hard truths of business and manufacturing at scale.
Whenever a youtuber makes a drama video its only purpose is malice- maligning other creators to get engagement and putting out no-research videos like factory for clicks. Dude is 100% trying to malign JHS and milk the agorithm's love for "controversial" videos.
@@PacificNatureTVJosh offering him a new pedal to replace the one he mangled should really make this guy reconsider his course of action.
@@PacificNatureTVfair
Hot take? But I wish JHS was getting rich off my money.
Luckily for pedal fans that isn't his mission statement. Josh seems to be honestly pursuing a dream.
Hey Josh, I've got a math equation for you. Why don't you send him an enclosure, PCB, jacks, wires, battery harness, dc adapter socket, switches, resistors, transistors, pentometers, etc, and perhaps some instructions to be nice, and challenge him to build it for a video on his channel. He can start the clock when all of the packaging is removed from all the parts, and stop the timer when he's done function testing it. Take MSRP of pedal minus parts cost, and divide that remainder by number of hours so we can determine his labor rate for soldering and assembly...
I don't think JHS pedals have a battery harness. At least mine doesn't.
The reciprocal video would get a bunch of views and the guy would make a bunch of money off building one pedal and use that to justify his point lol
Pedal assembly should be about 40 min once you got the process down.
This is a cool video of you breaking down the costs. I love your show and I enjoy watching it even though I don't have any of your pedals. I find what you have to say intersting fun and exciting. I know that you make great priducts because i hear them and see them everywhere snd i like how they sound. Even if you did want to "overcharge" the customer, its your buisness and your emplyees. People can buy your products or not. There are so many options out there right now anyway, which amazingly you feature on your show instead of just saying everyone sucks but us. If you wanted to spend all that money on a yacht, its your money and your busness and your product and people are paying for it. Its not a pyrmid scheme. You have nothing to justify. Its sad that people dont understand the value of buisness, especially ones like yours that are not a monopoly and have grown from the ground up. Even of I never buy a JHS pedal i am glad they exist. I would rather live in a world with craftmanship and luxury instead of this stupid idea that no one should have it because someone cant afford it. There are people like you that have a good idea, have gone and taken risks and it has paid off, not like all of the people complaining about something because they think that everyone should have it for free.
Sorry for all the typos. I have large thumbs.
this is an outstanding educational video that patiently explains the actual costs of doing business in this space. i can't thank you enough, josh, for laying this out so evenly and calmly. your presentation here is clear, concise, and balanced. you just made a new fan out of me.
I appreciate that!
I have a small electronics company in Australia. We design and manufacture. There are only 4 of us in the business, including me. Before we pay for a single component, or pay a single dollar in wages, the fixed overhead of opening the doors of our 200sqm (2000sqft) space is around AUD98,000 / year (USD65,000). That's mortgage repayments, insurances, council rates, body corp, workers compensation, electricity, phone, internet etc etc etc. Most small electronics businesses are around 50% production staff and 50% admin, management, design etc. So when you look at the labour time per product produced, you really need to double those hours in order to include the non-production staff in the cost calculations. The Aussie dollar varies a lot, so there is exchange rate to take into account. Freight is not cheap, and has to be taken into account. Warranty costs, while not huge, need to be accounted for as a cost. When someone does a simplistic "Cost = Parts + Direct Labour" analysis, it just shows the absolute lack of any deep thinking into what they are talking about.
Absolutely 💯. I am in Australia and this is why I am so grateful for my amp techs and the stuff they have built me. They do not make tons of money and they charge fair rates for their brilliant work. Some would say their work is expensive but it's nonsense. With the the rent they pay and the quality of the parts they have to buy, and most importantly, their expertise and customer service, it's really a bargain!
Josh is a solid, honest, fair businessman and pedal innovator. No need to defend what you do or charge. The pedal community appreciates how you create the tools that make us sound great. I will be using my Colourbox V2 in our church band tomorrow and thinking of Josh! You are awesome!
I am shocked this is making the rounds in the guitar community. Josh, thanks for being a business owner and employing workers in america to produce effects pedals. I remember you saying something to the effect of “when you buy pedals from us you are supporting our ethos” and I couldn’t agree more. I haven’t even watched the video yet and I am ON ONE in these comments. For the haters: if you want another industry to hate on why not try luxury fashion or the fragrance industry. Keep it moving people…
anyone who uses the term "hater" cannot handle criticism...
Thank you for your openness and transparency in discussing your business finances.
I know nothing about you, your company, or even guitars... But I've experienced exactly what many small business founders have - a public unwilling to understand the basis for not only production costs but also the other costs of business that must be sustained in order for any small business to have a chance of succeeding.
I watched John's video probably right after he uploaded it. I was kinda stunned by his misinformed math and the fact that he seemed to believe what he was saying. So, I had to go to the comments and see if others were as stunned. If I remember right, he was pretty well blasted for his opinions. Some people were saying JHS did no "new" designs which is also misinformed schlock, but no one was waving the "we're being ripped off" flag. On the video John put up next, he mentioned that he was told he obviously has no idea about running a business.
I like John, he's a pretty good player and puts up a lot of decent content. I like Josh. He's done well with his business and obviously treats his people well, as well as being a pretty decent player that also has good content. I think this was a good thing over all. John got to destroy a pedal in front of everyone and get beaten in his comment section, the price of which is maybe some shame for which he will receive at least one new pedal. And Josh got a huge opportunity to vent about the amount of misinformation there is out there that he and his friends are continually judged by.
If we see Josh going to "space" in his own rocket, then we'll bitch!
This. Please someone @jhspedals pin his comment
RemindMe! 5 years "Did Josh Scott start a rocket company with his untold billions from making guitar pedals?"
I’d expect Josh to have a rocket , actually.
I love that "space" bit 😂
I like Jonathan's videos, but he did get sufficiently roasted in the comment section of his video, and rightfully so.
Thank you for your empathy, Josh. I'm someone who has really struggled to find a calm voice when dealing with ignorant pushback. This was a textbook lesson on how to practice grace.
Amen
I am the managing director of a company in Germany. We produce and sell very different consumer products, mainly through retailers in Europe. But I know the same misconceptions from customers and the media when it comes to selling prices, costs and our profits. That's why I think it's great, Josh, that you explain the basic mechanisms and economic necessities of a manufacturer to a customer, influencer and product user.
Thanks Josh! Most people dont understand business. How hard it is, how many mouths you have to feed, how much unbilled time and how much blood sweat and tears you need to put into a product. A lot of the time you're not making any money. People don't understand that profit comes out a huge cost. It doesn't come for free.
I really appreciate that you keep these pedals made in the USA-it’s awesome to support small American companies. With the Ross line, I get that it might have been a tough business decision, but you went above and beyond by essentially offering them at cost. Major respect for doing the right thing and ensuring the family received royalties-that’s real integrity. Plus, the booklet and the attention to detail are incredible touches.
I was lucky enough to grab one of these pedals during the live sale, and I couldn’t be happier with it. I would have loved to snag the phaser, but they were already sold out by the time I got in.
Keep up the great work, man. No matter what you do, there will always be people complaining. It’s honestly funny how some people, with absolutely no idea what goes into these pedals, take the time to make a video just to talk trash about something they clearly don’t understand.
I love the transparency and all the behind-the-scenes information. Most people who don’t run or work in a small business, especially a manufacturer, have no idea how complicated it is and how many different expenses there are. Most people also fundamentally misunderstand even basic economics. Y’all produce excellent entertainment and informative content. I’m a fan of what y’all do for the industry even if I don’t own any jhs pedals. I’m a fan of the crazier stuff from Meris, Strymon, Walrus, OBNE, etc. and I like to make my guitar sound like something other than a guitar. Would love to see y’all build something really wild and would gladly support you for the right product (for me). I hope you try selling more things direct. I prefer to either buy used from reverb etc. or buy directly from the manufacturer.
I hope this communicates clearly. During the pandemic I was blessed to have the means to order pedalpcb boards and parts from tayda electronics strictly as a hobby to pass the newfound time at home. This made me appreciate even more the time that it takes to research, develop, and innovate by JHS and it's other pedal creation peers. It seems like it requires artistic personality and tons of collaboration. Additionally, I also love your videos explaining the history of the circuits and how new circuits are influenced by those that came before it. Finally it looks like y'all have fun at JHS and this really encapsulates the spirit of the gear community. Thanks for taking the time to make this video.
A great explanation of what all is involved in manufacturing a product. 99% of people have no clue about running a business. The "corporate greed" culture needs to grow up and focus their attention on the real problem in America and everywhere else in the world.
Government greed.
I'd like to work at JHS. Without overly romanticizing, seen from across the Pond, as an engineer I would having lots of fun in both the exiting creative part of coming up with great pedals as in the part of how to get them in a form that a lot of people actually enjoy so much, that they will afford themselves one.
I have a background in electronics and firmware design
I've built my own pedals with my own custom PCB, but just used Hammond enclosures that I have to drill myself with my cheap drill with bits I'm not even sure are rated for aluminum. It costs about $80 in parts for even something as simple as a fuzz face
PCB layout takes a lot of time even for simple stuff and sometimes your first layout is incorrect. A high end third party design house charges $150/hr or more to do PCB layout.
Plus the dozens of hours of prototyping and building it myself, plus not getting able to buy parts at quantity because I'm only building one for myself
There's really not much savings to doing it DIY, but I do it when I want to tweak something that I can't find on the market or I do it for the love of it
But you're really not saving much money doing it yourself. Maybe on parts, but if you assign any monetary value at all to your time to do it you don't save anything
I’m really glad someone sent this to you and you’re responding to it. I saw it the other day and also thought about sending it to your team but got busy and lost that thought, but it’s wonderful to hear you explain to people how actually expensive it is to run a business and all the hidden costs that nobody ever knows about. I hope many critics of companies with high cost items and of business owners will take the time to humbly listen and learn. Business is a risk. Great content as always Josh, from a new (6 months ago) but already devoted fan.
Great video, very educational. For a lot of people (including myself) building a harware business sounds like a crazy endeavor, mostly because of the lack of realistic, transparent, and easy to follow info on the topic.
It’s wild how it’s the year 2024 and people don’t understand how businesses make money / the costs that go into designing, researching, marketing, etc. This was a really good watch, Josh!
Welcome to the Idiocracy.
Education system does not adequately educate, not does it advocate autonomous learning and interest. Its not just an intelligent defeciency, and is only more recently that we have the opportunity to hear and see first hand how things work. Via a screen and ether digital stream.
I had basically the same discussions back in the 90's. Some things will never change.
Dang, I work hard to make original designs and the idea that I’m ripping people off is crazy. I can’t even make a living doing it. Dealers need discounts to make money and promoting anything is so expensive. At best, I break even so I can get to do what I love. Which is designing and building circuits. The fact that I simply get to do it is the reward/profit in my case. All the best to JHS. BTW, I own and run Stacks FX by myself.
I have to say as someone who has owned Boss, Dunlop, Beringer, Ibanez, Marshall, Electro Harmonix, JHS pedals - plus I've even built my own.
Out of all of those pedals JHS has by far been the best in terms of sound, build quality, thought in the product, packaging, marketing and customer service.
I bought a pedal that failed and within 7 days I had a brand new pedal straight from JHS to the UK.
You're all doing a great job! ❤
Also id love to see a pedal from you in the future named "The 3 knob" but it only has 2 knobs on the pedal! 😂