Ep. 3106 - TBT: Fixing Guitar Pedals Becomes High-Margin Hustle

Side Hustle School

Chris Guillebeau / Onward Project

Business, Entrepreneurship, Careers

4.8 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 3 July 2025

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this week’s Throwback Thursday segment, hear how one side hustler learned to repair broken guitar pedals using YouTube tutorials—and built a profitable business fixing, modifying, and reselling vintage gear.

Side Hustle School features a new episode EVERY DAY, featuring detailed case studies of people who earn extra money without quitting their job. This year, the show includes free guided lessons and listener Q&A several days each week.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Lemanada.
0:11.0	Fixing guitar pedals becomes a high-margin hustle.
0:14.6	I'm going to hear today from a guy who has a little side hustle repairing broken guitar pedals.
0:18.9	He learned how to do it by watching YouTube.
0:20.6	That's how we all learn these days, of course. He learned how to do it by watching YouTube. That's how we all
0:21.1	learn these days, of course. He's built a profitable business fixing, modifying, reselling gear.
0:26.7	In fact, he discovered that guitar pedals were actually more profitable than selling guitars.
0:31.4	So that's interesting. And I should say as well, welcome to Throwback Thursday. This is our weekly
0:36.5	segment where we take a look at someone
0:37.9	whose story has evolved since we first feature them. We've had all kinds of people on the show over
0:42.1	the years. Last week in this segment, we heard how a sarcastic embroidery project turned into a
0:47.7	long-time hustle after a single joke hat went viral and sparked hundreds of sales. Maybe it was
0:53.3	thousands. I'm not sure. Lots of sales.
0:55.3	But today in our latest feature, we're going to go to Dave. He's the guy who learned how to
0:58.7	repair broken guitar pedals. He built a profitable business, fixing, modifying, reselling them.
1:04.1	What's happened since we first had him on the podcast? Let's hear the story or the update
1:08.2	directly from him. I'll come back at the end with a few
1:11.2	brief words of wrap up.
1:22.0	Okay, so I've been playing guitar forever, but I never really thought about pedals as anything more than just little boxes that make weird sounds.
1:31.3	But a few years ago, I'm scrolling through eBay and I noticed something.
1:34.3	There's a ton of broken guitar pedals listed for dirt cheap.
1:39.3	Like doesn't power on, foot switch busted, LED flickers, but no sound, stuff like that.
	...

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