"Warm lamp" sound with your own hands. What if you cross the store, club and workshop?

The phrase “Warm Lamp” has long become a meme. It is used everywhere and in the most unusual context. For me personally, with these words, an old tube radio from my childhood comes to mind, to which I attached an external antenna (in order to increase sensitivity) and a converter to escape into shorter waves, on which the jamming of “enemy voices” was less intense. For most, they are more likely to be associated with low frequency amplifiers.

However, this article is more about marketing. Today, offline trading in gadgets is beginning to experience a crisis, but it is still early to bury it. But to look for new sales formats is the time. The pioneers on this path can repeat the success of the creator of IKEA.
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Under the cut, I will try to expand the topic in more detail using the example of one of my ideas put on a distant shelf - there is always not enough time or money to implement them. For a number of reasons described in the article, an unusual format with signs of a club, shop and workshop, is ideal for uniting fans of lamp technology. It can become a testing ground for new sales forms, organically combining the advantages of offline and online processes.

What is common between the lamp and art?

Lamp technology is a very unusual direction for electronics today. Circuit design of tube amplifiers is much simpler than transistor, but this apparent simplicity. A feature of tube amplifiers is to work with a path with a minimum level of feedback. On the one hand, this reduces the distortion characteristic of transistor technology caused by the presence of deep environmental protection (more details can be found in my article two years ago ), which manufacturers of semiconductor ULF now skillfully camouflage with a well-chosen set of parameters that look beautifully in the operating instructions, but are not always strongly correlated with fidelity real sound signal. On the other hand, tube amplifiers are more prone to self-excitation, and a lot depends on the characteristics of the components used, the method of their installation, the relative position of parts and connecting wires.

Two lamps with the same marking and even of the same manufacturer may have significantly different characteristics. As a result, to achieve stable quality work, careful selection of the values ​​of passive components and individual setting of the operating modes of each amplification stage are required.

In addition, the “sound” of the amplifier can strongly depend on the type of passive elements used - capacitors, resistors, winding products, since parasitic elements play a large role. Very significant and contradictory requirements are imposed on matching transformers, especially output ones. Under the conditions of high-resistance and high-voltage circuits, noise noise, parasitic capacitances of the lamps themselves, passive components and installation become a serious factor. As a result, without understanding the essence of the processes taking place in the amplifier, it is very difficult to hope for success even repeating a successful scheme that has been proven over the years. All this is an ideal environment for the emergence and spread of numerous myths on which fraudsters of different levels and parasites successfully parasitize.

The process of setting up the amplifier sometimes acquires magical features. In many respects thanks to this, not only the nostalgic “old men” were drawn to the “warm tube sound,” but also the younger generation, tired of virtuality and numbers. Everyone wants to feel like a little wizard.

Well, girls? and the girls a little later

Let's try to summarize the portraits of people interested in lamp technology.

• The group doing super-expensive shopping in stores is unlikely to be carried away by the assembly process, this is not our client, at least in the first stage.
• The second large segment is people over 40, most likely even over 45. At least in childhood they managed not only to witness firsthand, but also to listen to working lamp equipment at home. They remember the smell of warming up dust on the surface of electronic lamps, their mysterious light, receiver noise in the shortwave range, smooth movement of the frequency change vernier, slow plate rotation ... Most of them never heard the sound of a high-quality tube amplifier, but nostalgia for the times when they are in the pioneers' palace disassembled parts written off TVs, pulls to it. These are mostly average-income people who work in offices closer to the city center, whose main tools are telephone and computer.
• The next large audience segment is youth. Students and young professionals. Age 18 - 30 years. IT and technical education. In this group of consumers a certain fatigue from digital dominance is felt. In addition, a great desire to stand out among their peers, including in the eyes of the opposite sex. Gadgets have become very similar to each other, with their help it becomes more and more difficult to do. But to spend the evening with a girl surrounded by a warm tube sound created by yourself, and even turning off the main lighting to better see the contours of the electronic tubes ... This will leave few people indifferent in our digital age.

What now?

So, we found out that there is a demand in the market for lamp-based ULFs, and there is a growing one. However, the market itself is already divided into segments, in each of which there is a rather intense competition.

Salons for the sale of expensive devices HiFi level of factory production. In the best of them, selling becomes a glamorous process. You can listen to the sound of the device you are going to buy. Get advice from the seller on the connection and the required additional accessories. Finally, take the chosen piece home to audition with the guarantee that if the sound is not liked, the product can be returned without explanation. The level of service is the highest, as well as the prices. The profit margin is also great. However, the opening and promotion of such a salon requires huge investments, and the demand may go down, following the leaching of the middle class.

The cheap segment of ready-made devices is represented mainly by Aliexpress. However, quite cheap it already does not turn to call the language. Buying a finished device in this market is fraught with great risks. The sound of tube amplifiers very much depends on the quality of the assembly and tuning, in which there are a lot of manual operations, and this is just what the Chinese manage to do the worst. In addition, they simply have blood in their desire to replace components with cheaper ones. As a result, having saved a couple of dollars on the resistances, they can easily ditch the sound of the ULF for a few hundred dollars, that the purchase will lose all meaning.

In addition, lamp devices are distinguished by a solid weight. As a result, their delivery costs a lot of money, and special requirements are imposed on the quality of packaging. Return such a product is almost impossible. To understand for what reason your hopes were not justified, and all the more so it is impossible to correct mistakes without rich experience.

Those who want to save even more and / and do something with their own hands designers are buying. The main problems there are about the same as in the previous case, to which are added the lack of assembly experience, the necessary tools for setting up and the poor supporting documentation. Personally, I bought for the sake of interest in my time a set for assembling a simple tube amplifier for stereo phones, the network transformer of which turned out to be broken in the primary winding. This is despite the fact that, separately, his simple equipment in the stores of radio units could be bought at least two times cheaper than they gave me this kit!

By magic, according to my desire!

Imagine that you decided nevertheless to open a store selling lamp technology and fantasize what you would like to get ideally.

I buy only the details. The buyers themselves collect the amplifier, and I also pay extra for it.

Good, but not enough.

In addition to commercial premises, you need a warehouse, a workshop for minor repairs, a kitchenette for the staff ...

Let the buyers pay for it all themselves, and I also bring new customers!

This is how much better it already looks, but if you think well, it will not be enough again.

The store, it's a lot of work - buyers become smaller, problems with rent checks. Why do I need all this? Let others open these stores better, but I will receive money !!!

Now it turned out very well, even Ivanushka would be jealous! It's time to remember the cherished words, as it was there in a fairy tale: “According to the dictates, according to my desire!”
Eeeh, what a life then would have begun!

You say that this is only possible in fairy tales? And if not?

And what does the buyer want?

Let's try to understand what our potential buyers want?

Most of them are not averse to working and assembling their own amplifier with their own hands, to put into it the soul and a part of their individuality, but for this they lack the smallness, namely:

• Knowledge and experience
• Documentation where the assembly process would be described in detail.
• Specific advice comrades with more experience
• Instruments and tools required for assembly and configuration
• A wide selection of high-quality equipment, experimenting with the installation of which in the amplifying path can achieve the best price / quality ratio
• Rooms in which it would be possible to test the sound quality of the assembled device at a subjective level
• Experts to help make an assessment

So let us drink to ensure that our desires coincide with their needs!

Let's remember the founder of IKEA. When creating his network, he applied a lot of innovations, but one of the main ones is that his furniture is wonderful for self-assembly even by low-qualified buyers who do not have tools at home.

However, we have set ourselves a somewhat more difficult task, so we have to go further than Theodore Kampra.

If we analyze what was written above, we can come to the idea that we can satisfy our desires and their needs by combining a club, a workshop and a shop.

For people who are ready to assemble amplifiers with their own hands, communication is very important - exchange of experience, support, signs of approval. Correspondence in messengers and conferences is not able to give such an effect as personal communication. But it can provide the club system. Like fitness visitors, club members are issued a card containing a flexible tariff plan, depending on which the number and time of visits is determined, and other conditions.

The easiest option for involving newbies in the design of lamp technology is, of course, the sale of simple starting designers. First you need to select some of the most easily reproducible models. In the future, the model range can be expanded, increasing the complexity, output power and reducing distortion.

Main concept

Base room - workshop. It contains workplaces equipped with soldering equipment, devices for resistance welding, measuring equipment, a winding machine, etc.



I would especially like to note the need to access a set of expensive active and passive components and accessories. One of the serious problems of beginner designers of amplifiers is the selection of components that are optimal for each specific case, for example, the price of capacitors of the same capacity may differ by orders of magnitude, depending on the material of the dielectric and the quality of performance. Buying expensive components in the store, and especially on the Internet, a person takes great risks. There is no guarantee that by spending 10 times more money he can significantly improve the sound quality. Due to the wide choice of components for testing, club members can choose the appropriate option for them.

Club members are not obliged to buy the available designers, they can bring to work out their own amplifier or a kit to buy in another place and build it to perfection. The most experienced members using the facilities and equipment of the club can do the development and assembly of their own models from scratch.

In the second room is the basic equipment for machining and painting. Cheap, but decent quality models with manual control. Drilling and milling machines with coordinate tables, napped, hand tools. As for more complex operations that require expensive equipment and high qualification for handling it (for example, manufacturing a chassis), it is easier to outsource them, establishing relationships with long-term partners with selected performers. Club members should provide support in the development of documentation for their production and place orders on a centralized basis.
If the dimensions allow, a separate room can be allocated for the assembly and refinement of acoustic systems.

A storage room is also needed for equipment storage, where each club member can rent his own cell in which his child will be stored.

A separate room must be allocated to listen to the collected equipment, it can also be used as a place for holding master classes.

Online business support and scaling

At the initial development stage of a project with such an unusual sales format, many interesting solutions will probably be found, processes will be streamlined, supply chains will be established ...

Having groped for the optimal model, it will be possible to successfully organize the sale of a franchise, moreover, to go with it outside the territory of Russia.

This will require the need to develop an online part of the project around which the community will be formed. Website, pages in social networks, blogging, notification of master classes and listening sessions.

An additional incentive for membership in the club may be assistance in selling devices assembled by its members through a single Internet portal. All amplifiers exhibited in the online store for sale will undergo a quality check, which for the buyer can be a definite guarantee that he will not spend his hard-earned money on a frank hack.

As a result, in a few years after the start of the project, we will have a certain “ecosystem”, a network structure penetrated by horizontal links, the advertisements of which will be distributed not only through paid channels, but also through opinion leaders and through word of mouth.

I invite you to take part in the survey

I am very interested in the opinion of habrayuzer about public workshops. This format was born in the USA and received the greatest development there, but recently it is becoming more and more fashionable in Europe. I suggest abstracting from a specific workshop specialization and imagining that its direction corresponds to your hobby, no matter what your hobby is - robotics, smart home or or assembly of tube amplifiers. It is important to relate to this format.

Update: the user Ivanii shared in the comments an interesting link of institutions that have signs of public workshops , I hope many of them are active. I did my research about three years ago on this topic, and then most of the institutions whose coordinates could be found in Moscow were stillborn - made by officials for a report and a tick. I hope today everything has changed for the better. In January for a month I will return to Moscow, I will try to visit some for the sake of interest.