True, but isn’t the blueprint already out there? At least Troy could oversee some quality control and make a small and deserved markup for his trouble.
Don’t get me wrong this would be cool to do. We’ve run all the numbers before including China, the dollars is only one aspect. It’s mainly that it’s one more thing to manage which becomes not worth it for a few bucks here and there. But if it’s a major driver of revenue or awareness that’s fine and certainly on the table over the next year or so.
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That’s exactly right, You would see a generic version on AliExpress for $10. They have been stealing my fake Yngwie Strat videos and re-uploading them. I have to keep an eye out for my videos to keep them pulled down. lol
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That’s unbelievable!!! They are shameless in some respects, especially when it comes to IP.
With regards to making videos, the magnet would be a very handy device but I find that propping my iPhone up against a Coke bottle and trying to aim it down the strings gives a decentish result.
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I finally ordered my magnet parts 
You’ll propably hear some loud cursing across the UK as I try to put it together in the next few weeks!
Just telling: I would order one.
… well next year when my phone contract runs out and I’ll get a phone to put in 
If you don’t mind my asking, Troy, what did you do professionally pre-CtC? I’ve always been under the impression, probably wrongly, that you were in some sort of management consulting role before launching this project, probably because of a lot of the way the first two seasons are structured. At a minimum, you sound like someone who’s spent a fair amount of time thinking about business strategy.
Totally not my business, so feel free to either ignore or just make something up - ran away to join the circus, etc. Just wondering!
I bought the magnet instructions from CTC, and in the PDF there is a clickable link to order the parts from a company called “Shapeways” (I believe @Brendan set this up?). There seemed to be no problem ordering a shipment to the UK.
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Yes should be no problem getting the main plastic body parts from Shapeways. For other components (springs, screws, etc.) we use McMaster but they don’t ship international so a few people have asked about that. Basically I think you just need to find the best equivalents you can locally. See my reply here:
@Drew not quite but pretty close! Prior to Cracking the Code Troy cofounded a boutique recruiting firm in NYC, they specialized in high-level placements in tech / finance. So yeah definitely some experience in the world of business.
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Having had a fair amount of experience both with placement firms and placement firm candidates, I imagine analyzing guitar technique for a web series offers a FAR better quality of life, and far less time working with primadonnas, lol. Good for him, getting out.
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That would be great, I would love a magnet so I’m very interested also. I dont have a tripod and I’m trying to achieve small pickslanting movements and cant tell on my crappy phone that is tied to a chair!!! Lol
Here’s a quick update from me. The plastic parts arrived very quickly, but then I had to spend some time trying to find the right screws, springs etc.
For now i settled on bulding an “Approximate Magnet” that looks like this:
Instead of rods + screws, I found some long screws with a (cap? bolt? nut? dunno the name ), as shown above. Then I bough a bunch of springs of 3mm diameter and lenghts between 1 and 2 inches, used a hard plastic tube for spacers and tried various combinations. There was a lot of trial and error and cursing, it was all quite an emotional journey 
.
I believe I used the 1-inch and 1.25 inch (or 1,50) springs in the end, but am not sure right now. The thing extends enough to hug the neck of a 6-string electric, but it would not fit a classical or a 7 string like the original magnet does (the screw I found is too short).
The “approximate magnet” does the job for now, even though the sliding of the various parts is not super smooth, and I got the two yellow screw cap thingies sticking out on one side, as you can see above. I will slowly try to find better parts to replace the rods.
PS: The padding is done via neoprene sheets (1mm thick) attached via superglue.
I would like to film something with it for demonstration, but this week my playing sucks for some reason!
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Looks great pal! Cant wait to see the video
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Ha, sounds about right…glad you’re still with us @tommo 
Nicely done, look forward to seeing some footage whenever you get around to it!
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Recruiting is not easy work. But it’s far from investment bank or hedge fund levels of hours. And the stress levels, while occasionally high, are intermittent as opposed to constant. For the money that can be made, I would rank it highly on quality of life. Most jobs with similar levels of upside require a total life commitment, massively long hours, or decades of experience to build up seniority, benefits, and so on. In recruiting, you can actually take a vacation if you’re willing to make a few phone calls.
The people we interacted with were nothing short of wonderful most of the time - smart engineering types with super-powered skills and diverse interests. It was a privilege to sit down with most of them.
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Heh, that’s awesome, Troy. You’re either luckier, nicer, or more diplomatic than I am, haha. Though I guess to be fair my experience in finance has been, while mixed, generally positive (and coming at it from a background in American Lit made me a sort of unconventional fit, anyway), and looking back I was writing that at the end of what’s usually the busiest two months of the year for me. Any dissatisfaction with the industry (I work for a small boutique fixed income shop, corporate credit research, performance and GIPS compliance, and muni trading) was largely situational, when I wrote that, lol.
I’d say that while I’ve been lucky to make some very good friends in the finance industry and work with a number of people I respect and hold in very high regard (especially, thankfully, at my current firm), I’ve also met a number of people ranging from wholly lacking in empathy to outright malicious. It’s an interesting industry, in that respect - we have a “type” and that type is one I’m not overly fond of… But, I think to a larger extent than many outside the industry would expect, it’s also far from universal.
Ok, I finally managed to record something using the magnet (that I am not ashamed of 
). It is a short DWPS etude that I have written based on an E straight blues. Well, I say written, maybe I unconsciously copied all the riffs from somewhere… who knows!
I ended up recording the same thing twice for the two camera angles, so it ended up being a sort of unison etude as well.
Oh and sorry for the low video quality, at the moment that is what my lighting conditions / smartphone allow in the evening.
And this is a pic of what my magnet looks like these days:
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Man, great playing tasty sound and awesome precision and phrasing. That’s simply good stuff, like it!
… but the most sexy thing is the owl
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