I just read through the entire thread and it still amazes that so many people keep thinking that DIY is inferior because it costs less.
Back in April during the headfest07 I was speaking with Tyll from headroom about business and pricing of products. He told me this:
To get a ROUGH estimate of the comercial MSRP of a product you should add all the parts and shipping costs, add the number of work hours @ 12.50$ an hour and multiply the sum by about 1.65. So in the case of a balanced B22 you get 1000-1750$ on parts alone depending on the attenuator and case used. Lets go with a middle value of 1400$ which gives you a nice joshua tree attenuator, custom two case design and professionally made front panels. Now the build time. I would say form my own DIY experience and from what others have said that it takes 25 hours to build one of these, from receiving and unpackaging all the parts, build time and set up, testing and all and add on top of that 5 hours for listening tests and for quality control(something a business should always do) That gives us: 30 hours x 12.5= 375$
1400+375=1775
1775x1.65=2928 so about 3000$ shipping for such a beast with insurance and a sturdy package will cost what? 150$?
I would say that the 65% markup would cover all the bills( human resources, rent, insurance, electricity, internet and phone, and so on)
This value doesn't account for: R&D expenses, marketing and advertising, and other business related expenses, possible sales taxes and the profit that a business company needs. So you see with such an amp would easily go over 5K$.
