Do you ever feel like musicians are gouged a little on accessories? Looking at prices for some synth racks, mixer/monitor stands etc. Some of it is nothing more than a bent piece of metal with some holes in it. I know, gear is expensive and you don’t want it to fall down. And some materials maybe dampen resonance and prevent unwanted frequencies, i guess. I’m just a little short of room on my desk where a modest 3 piece rig is sitting and the monitors make it a little crowded. Shopping for wall-mounted shelves with the weight capacity is easy. Try to find something similar for studio monitors and you just added at least $100 to the price. I know a lot of that is intended for the big ballers with high-end Danish gold-foil chinchilla-lined elliptical dispersion waveguide folded ribbon driver-quantum bass response waffle cone subwoofers housed in African blackwood cabinets built specific to ancient Egyptian algorithms, and those guys spare no expense because they know quality and will accept nothing less. I on the other hand, will occasionally dabble in mediocrity if necessary.
Feel like i don’t always need industry-rated things (and some industry rated things aren’t even that sturdy anyway). Just SHELVES.
Probably. I just waxed 124€ at Elektron.se to get a decksaver and two CV connection kits for my A4 
Should be easy to replicate from your local home improvement store then?
Teenage Engineering meme-table aside, stands aren’t that expensive to me. Especially whatever modular On-Stage models. Jasper stands are simple but shipping can be a bitch, they’re also well-made.
How cheap do you need a stand for the value of what you’re supporting?
Scale is a huge factor for pricing and recently prices for metals and also other goods/services have increased. Aluminium is 50% up in recent three years (saw a massive +125% spike in january 2022).
Edit; There’s so much competition, I’m pretty sure they’re all trying to cut costs wherever possible, but if you’re a niche company, not much room to cut anything and increasing prices will affect you even more.
And how about Decksavers? So expensive…
That manufacturing process is actually really expensive (IIRC because of the shape, they can’t do injection molding, they use thermoforming. Also polycarbonate is a very tough material, those Decksavers are really strong) and again…Scale.
That too!
If you just want to recycle your own plastic surely it will be much cheaper 
If fabricating was easy, cheap and just as good, why not roll your own?
I once managed to slam the metal extension wand from my vaccuum cleaner full force onto my OTs decksaver… I was vaccuuming the ceiling and idk, something went loose and the whole thing slammed onto the desk…
That overpriced dust cover saved me some serious money. 
I hadn’t considered much about the manufacturing process for Decksavers. I believe it. On the surface it looks like an expensive piece of plastic, but yeah, I can’t make one myself… Definitely not for $50. I still find it hard to justify buying one for all my instruments, so I use some cut fabric that was originally a blackout curtain – it works well as a dust cover and doesn’t shed fibers. I don’t get the hard protection factor of Decksavers, but my only concern is dust, really.
Yeah, if thats all you want it for a cheap brown wrapping paper template for fit and a pvc cutting from a fabric store.
The “saver” aspect is necessarily from having your pots cleaved off from a collapsed stand or baggage tossers.
Considering it was “deck”, i imagine the main original use case was being able to step up without someone pouring beer in a dj deck.
I definitely recall catching a Girltalk set at a block party where it was one of those press play and get the crowd to mosh scenarios, and since the audience at those may also toss beers onto the stage i could justify the laptop being nearly encased in acrylic.
I bought one for my OT and one for my AR, because you can easily fasten them with a velcro strap and then tuck them safely into a bag pack. If you’re just looking for a dust cover, I understand why you’d think they’re expensive.
I think with everything small-scale, you’re looking at significant costs for manufacturing and materials/parts. And I guess a huge part (most?) in music gear is small-scale.
I know a guy who runs an online shop for eurorack cases and rails. He gets asked questions like “why are you charging so much for a few pieces of wood and a bit of electricity?” or how can a few grams of aluminium cut to shape be so expensive?" all the time.
But he already barely gets through. There’s not much room left, if he still wanted to pay his own salary…
When the aluminium prices sky-rocketed, he had to re-design all the rails (trying to save every percent aluminium possible), because there was no way people would have payed the price he’d have to charge them.
Those small (1-3 people) companies usually don’t make much profit (if, at all).
Whether these types of things are overpriced is hard to say as there are many factors to consider to make that determination but they do tend to be expensive.
I tend to use a combination of approaches to stay outfitted with accessories. Plain old opportunism is one of them. If I’m at a thrift shop/ junk yard/ garage sale/ etc and see something that looks like it might make a good stand (or has parts that would be useful) and it’s dirt cheap I just grab it, even if I don’t have an immediate use for it. Frankensteining stuff together is often a good route. You can make great purpose specific stands by combining the various parts from random junk though you might have to fabricate a part or two. All out diy fabrication is probably the ideal solution though it is usually the most time consuming. Working with wood and metal (and some plastics) is pretty easy if you have access to basic tooling. I rarely see commercially available stands that are perfect for my needs so I might as well save some money and do it this way.
Decksavers are harder just because I don’t have the equipment to form polycarbonate. I suppose I could make molds and use acrylic but it wouldn’t be as tough and with the amount of work required for each unique piece it probably makes more sense to buy them.
I heard in an interview with a small gear manufacturer the other day that the music gear industry is slightly smaller than the clothing buttons industry. I haven’t made any attempt to fact check that but he didn’t appear to be saying it hyperbolically.
Feels weird to type “How large is the clothing buttons industry?” into Google. 
Seventh?
While it’s interesting to know, it would still make a huge difference if there were many small businesses competing or a few very large companies each with their own share in the market. I imagine that’s what the buttons industry is like…
Many small companies competing for customers would still have to do mostly small runs and pay high prices for the manufacturing/parts/materials.
Afaik Yamaha is pretty big, they can afford to do custom ICs, that’s not something a small company could do. I think Roland also uses (or used) custom ICs, but both are pretty big in digital pianos and e-drums. Roland has a robust accordion business, if I’m not mistaken and Yamaha offers instruments from electric guitars/basses to brass, woodwinds and pianos, drums…
But if you think about Superbooth for instance, how many small/very small companies that compete for a niche inside the niche are there?
Of course there are also established brands somewhere in the middle, like Waldorf, Elektron etc. but I can think of so many small companies and very often when I see a thread about (over)price(d), it’s about a product from a small company.
I use to think that too but there one specific bit of studio accessory I don’t mind overpaying for. I’ve got all 7 of my Elektron boxes covered with them and wish I had the rest of gear covered as well. They’re great for setting your drinks on top of, which I’ll have you know wasn’t in the manual.
Wow, lot of responses to this…Ive never had a decksaver, and I understand production costs go up, supply chain issues, etc. But I’ve been noticing a disconnect among major manufacturers /retailers. Picture a keyboard player shopping for a stand, he’s likely to find plenty of options to hold his Triton or Motif in the X-type variety, he may have a whole stack of workstations that he needs to access during a Keith Emerson tribute gig.
But take the bedroom producer/ desktop synthesist who really just wants to prop up his smaller, semi modular stuff that won’t even fit those stands. He’s going to end up paying more than he has to for a product that’s more complicated to use than it needs to be. All he really needs is a little elevation, at an angle that makes it easier to play everything. Most major retailers & manufacturers don’t know he exists, or they don’t want his business. Sure, he could DIY & shoehorn a bookend into something that does the job, more or less, but he really wouldn’t mind spending a few bucks on something with a little more polish & purpose-built utility, if it’s reasonable.
then hallelujah, Enter:. Etsy to msave the day, where people like him with similar needs are able to produce something that fits the bill and offer it at a price that doesn’t seem inflated, some even under $20. Fascinating how technology changes and the landscape shifts with it.
L