Ep. 3106 - TBT: Fixing Guitar Pedals Becomes High-Margin Hustle
Side Hustle School
Chris Guillebeau / Onward Project
4.8 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 3 July 2025
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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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