Boss Waza Air Bass

I skip the first two, so I don’t need the third and I can spend more on the 4th.

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It seems like it is a great tool/toy. I’d be nice if at least it had the same price as the guitar version. Why more if fewer strings? :wink: Should be less.
For now it is more expensive than what I paid for my newest (new) bass that turned out to be great. Thanks for your input! Merry Christmas!

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I presume it costs more because it covers additional and lower frequencies for bass, so there is additional engineering and firmware as well as a smaller market for return on investment.

That’s my guess, or they’re just charging more because bassists gas.

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What you say makes sense but I wonder if selling them for the same price and compensating with the sales of the guitar version wouldn’t lead to more sales… Perhaps Boss will lower the prize once the “new” craze simmers down.

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Pricing is a funny racket. I worked for Fortune 500 retail firms for years, and I can recall a time we were selling house brand toasted oats about 50 cents less than Cheerios. They didn’t sell well. We raised the price so they were 15 cents less, and they flew off the shelves. At 15 cents they were a perceived value. at 50 they were cheap.

Consumers are fickle.

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I consider it equally likely my to theory is correct, or they sell more units at a higher price because we perceive a greater value because of our lower frequencies.

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The guitar version was initially the same price and went down in price after a year or so. The bass version is just new. I wouldn’t be surprised if it has the exact same circuit as the guitar one.

Just wait a year and it will go down in price as well.

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I’ll wait a while to see if I still like the idea that much and the price has gone down.

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Ugh…I bought it!

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I hope we get your comments! Enjoy and Merry Christmas!

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I’m beginning to realise that reading these forums might become an expensive hobby :grinning:

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@vince.suttle We’ve said all along that people who join this forum will get their money spent by everyone!:smiley:

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Again, I got it for 382 -by calling guitar center and asking if they could give me a better price on the headphones. They took 15% off. So it was cheaper than the advertised price of the guitar set (though you could probably ask for 15% off that guitar set too…)

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This statement is completely untrue.
The word might is totally and utterly incorrect.

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Consumers are irrational, but also predictable to a degree. For example, a price of 0.99 will always out-perform a price of 1.00. Some pricing psychology is hard-wired into our brains.

Pricing has been my career for over 20 years and I could talk all day about this, but I can quickly tell you what I would recommend to Boss. I would have done perceived value research (conjoint analysis to be precise) to figure out roughly what the product was worth. This would have given a band of values as we all value things differently. Given that this is a niche product, I would assume the value is higher than average. I would then recommend to them that they charge more for early adopters at launch, who tend to have lower price sensitivity, even more so at Christmas. Then I would move to the identified target price probably after 6 months. I would re-evaluate the value of the product and remaining market dynamics every year at a minimum (or sooner if a competing product, etc. enters the market) and continue to adjust the price accordingly. Of course, it is not this simple, but that is roughly how it likely would go.

Now keep in mind that we are talking about recommended retail price here. What the retailer does is a different story, though sometimes their arms are twisted by the manufacturers. You might see the price drop due to retailer competitive pricing and nothing to do with what the manufacturer (or distributor) is charging them. It only takes one major retailer to pull the discount trigger and then the whole market might adjust to a new price. Note, this would usually be the wrong choice for the market (discussion for another time), but it almost always happens because someone in Sales at some company thinks they know what they are doing.

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Considering there is nothing on the market that matches what it can do at the quality it can do it with the feature set it has, this helps drive price up. Bass is as others have said a smaller market and even smaller options. Roland/Boss has been pricing niche things higher than what people would like for a while now in lots of products, banking on their differentiators. This makes the products “not for everyone” but I think they know this and are ok with it.

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Boss / Roland stuff has always been top notch imo. They created so many legendary pedals and synths. That’s one of the reasons why I prefer to buy from companies that aren’t afraid to innovate (instead of cloning other company products). Sure you pay a bit more but a portion of that money will go back into the company R&D.

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I already own 2 Boss items: the DR-3 drum pedals (including 2 the external pedals) and the GT-1B effects…and now I’m getting the Waza-Air Bass…the good news is my dad sent me $200 for Christmas so it makes getting the Waza even better. I like the quality of Boss (I also have Roland pedal for the GT-1B).

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Lookie what arrived today!

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I’m jealous. Hope you enjoy.
Be good if you could add your thoughts about the unit at some point. Cheers

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