Hi Bill,
Been to both places. AES is giving me a better price retail than Accutronics is wholesale
Cheers!
Electronic sales was my lifetime career so I have some perspective on how things work.
Many places will give you a small courtesy discount for being "in the trade" but when push comes to shove it all comes down to money!
AES orders a far bigger number of tanks each year than us little guys. So they get a much better cost. Period. End of story.
Wholesale and retail is not simply a matter of belonging to a club or knowing the right people and connections. If you want a big guy cost then you must order in comparable volumes.
I've been looking at a line of decent quality pots for years now. You know, real ones! Mil spec RV4 style, 2 watt with real audio tapers. What's stopping me? I know the source but I also know that I need to buy a minimum production run. That means a couple of hundred pots at a cost of over $10 Cdn. I can't buy one or two. I can't get a thousand piece price unless I order over a thousand. And although lots of guys claim they would buy from me I really don't have confidence that they wouldn't just wuss out and buy the cheapie Alpha's.
It's all a matter of scale and it's one of the things that makes breaking into manufacturing so difficult. What you really have to do is make your parts cost less important to your resale price. If you're selling a custom unit then you can charge more. You can never compete with mass-produced products on price. You have to charge more but give the buyer value that your competition can't, like easy service to lower repair costs and circuit tweaks custom to the player.
If you worry too much about parts costs the Chinese will eat you for lunch! If the player wants a cheap amp they will ALWAYS be the cheapest! I laugh at those Chinese Epiphones. You pay for a cheap amp and then spend the same again in good parts, let alone costing out your added labour!
Anyhow, that's why I've never entertained the idea of a standard line of amps. I do custom builds, with every amp a "one-of" both in circuit tweaks for the player and in cosmetics. With even Fender having abandoned production in North America in favour of Chinese production I just don't think copying the larger mass-production companies is a good survival tactic!
Just my humble opinion....
:food-smiley-004: