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FEA fan club!

#441
HeavyJazz77 said:
My first FEA arrived yesterday (a DE-CL). In terms of build quality, I think this and the RMI Basswitch are the best I've seen among floor units. Really first class. As for sound it's quite remarkable. Dead quiet, very transparent, flexible and a tone tweaker's delight. It sounds fantastic with my Zon and the limiter doubling with the compressor is completely epic on the Taylor. Haven't tried it with the G&L yet (and that bass has a massive bottom end), but I don't foresee an issue. I normally use the Analog Man for the G&L anyway so it wouldn't be a deal breaker anyway.

Great stuff! ...Even if it IS built in Syracuse. ;)
Click to expand...

Thanks for the great feedback!!! :bassist:

Downunderwonder said:
Probably the cost of international mail and import tax added up to making the smuggling option attractive.
Click to expand...

Exactly…. He PM'd me and the import taxes are insane for some countries.

-Frank
 
#442
Frank,

Have you considered partnering with a smaller shop contract manufacturer to populate your PCBs?

I have a friend who was in a similar bind "drinking from a fire hose" with his business. Partnering with a contract manufacturer really saved him some frustration and eliminated his backlog. He got the boards assembled and all final assembly/QC was done in house.

He now operates without a contract manufacturer, but, they were instrumental in helping him grow to meet his demand.

Just figured I would share.
 
#444
jazzy grille said:
Frank,

Have you considered partnering with a smaller shop contract manufacturer to populate your PCBs?

I have a friend who was in a similar bind "drinking from a fire hose" with his business. Partnering with a contract manufacturer really saved him some frustration and eliminated his backlog. He got the boards assembled and all final assembly/QC was done in house.

He now operates without a contract manufacturer, but, they were instrumental in helping him grow to meet his demand.

Just figured I would share.
Click to expand...

Hi Jazzy, thanks for the post.

Recently I had an outside PCB/PCBA manufacturer populate a large batch of main PCB’s. Before signing the contract, I was assured that they could duplicate the quality that we require. Let’s just say that I was less than happy with what we had received. They tell me that they have over a 95% customer satisfaction rate and argue that they are built properly and my standards are impossible. So these circuit boards are now being reworked by Ryan and Pat to bring them up to FEA standards. Ryan and Pat have been working with me for about a year building the circuit boards and do excellent work. The reason to have the circuit boards built outside was so Ryan and Pat could move into product assembly. Now this batch of circuit boards is going to cost twice as much as they did before. And because reworking the circuit boards takes a lot more care, they are going to take four times longer than if we originally did them ourselves. This is just another one of those issues that I talked about in a previous post.

I have plans to redesign most of the PCB’s to surface mount components so that they can be built by outside manufacturers. Since surface mount PCB’s are populated by machines, the quality should remain high and consistent.

The good news is that with some of the changes that I talked about before, the cycle times are being reduced. Another batch of DB-CL’s will be going out sometime next week.

-Frank
 
#446
boomertech said:
Hi Jazzy, thanks for the post.

Recently I had an outside PCB/PCBA manufacturer populate a large batch of main PCB’s. Before signing the contract, I was assured that they could duplicate the quality that we require. Let’s just say that I was less than happy with what we had received. They tell me that they have over a 95% customer satisfaction rate and argue that they are built properly and my standards are impossible. So these circuit boards are now being reworked by Ryan and Pat to bring them up to FEA standards. Ryan and Pat have been working with me for about a year building the circuit boards and do excellent work. The reason to have the circuit boards built outside was so Ryan and Pat could move into product assembly. Now this batch of circuit boards is going to cost twice as much as they did before. And because reworking the circuit boards takes a lot more care, they are going to take four times longer than if we originally did them ourselves. This is just another one of those issues that I talked about in a previous post.

I have plans to redesign most of the PCB’s to surface mount components so that they can be built by outside manufacturers. Since surface mount PCB’s are populated by machines, the quality should remain high and consistent.

The good news is that with some of the changes that I talked about before, the cycle times are being reduced. Another batch of DB-CL’s will be going out sometime next week.

-Frank
Click to expand...

Okay, yeah my friend designed his PCBs for SMT production ahead of time. He is a picky SOB as well, I worked with him on the SMT PCB conversion when he saw demand increasing. Don't even try sourcing SMT version of your poly film caps, they are almost 4x the cost.

Was it just crappy solder jobs? A lot of these assembly houses just hire people off the street who have never soldered a day in their life, and throw them in an assembly desk for piss-poor pay.

I have seen gut shots of some of your PCBs.. You use panasert (radial bend) for all of your axial components.... Bless your soul. Talk about tedious!
 
#447
bongomania said:
That is one of the things I admire about you. :)
Click to expand...

Thanks Cyrus! I guess us picky $%#holes can relate.;)

jazzy grille said:
Okay, yeah my friend designed his PCBs for SMT production ahead of time. He is a picky SOB as well, I worked with him on the SMT PCB conversion when he saw demand increasing. Don't even try sourcing SMT version of your poly film caps, they are almost 4x the cost.

Was it just crappy solder jobs? A lot of these assembly houses just hire people off the street who have never soldered a day in their life, and throw them in an assembly desk for piss-poor pay.

I have seen gut shots of some of your PCBs.. You use panasert (radial bend) for all of your axial components.... Bless your soul. Talk about tedious!
Click to expand...

The small numbers of PCB’s that I looked over appear to have good solder joints.
I won’t go into details with the issues I had with this manufacturer. I have seen a lot of their SMD PCB assemblies and they are beautiful, so they are very capable of producing nice work… just not with hand assembly.

-Frank
 
#448
Just thought I'd give Frank, Glen, and the fine folks at FEA Labs a shout out and say "Thanks for the OUTSTANDING DB-CL I received a few days ago!". What a great compressor! I've only played one gig with it so far, busy at work/slow gig month, but this thing is BEAST! I'll have some time in the next couple of weeks to really get it dialed in, but, so far, it was worth the wait and every penny.

Well done, sirs!!
 
#452
boomertech said:
Hi Jazzy, thanks for the post.

Recently I had an outside PCB/PCBA manufacturer populate a large batch of main PCB’s. Before signing the contract, I was assured that they could duplicate the quality that we require. Let’s just say that I was less than happy with what we had received. They tell me that they have over a 95% customer satisfaction rate and argue that they are built properly and my standards are impossible. So these circuit boards are now being reworked by Ryan and Pat to bring them up to FEA standards. Ryan and Pat have been working with me for about a year building the circuit boards and do excellent work. The reason to have the circuit boards built outside was so Ryan and Pat could move into product assembly. Now this batch of circuit boards is going to cost twice as much as they did before. And because reworking the circuit boards takes a lot more care, they are going to take four times longer than if we originally did them ourselves. This is just another one of those issues that I talked about in a previous post.

-Frank
Click to expand...

So which pedals are these PCBs gonna be used in?
 
#456
TC5 said:
Any gut shots available (or is that too intrusive)? :)
Click to expand...

Here is a pic of the main PCB’s from the DB-CL. All of the FEA pedals have similar looking circuits.

CompBoards.jpg


Here are the power supply PCB’s that are used in all of the FEA pedals. They provide split power rails for audio circuits and split power rails for all non-audio circuits. The audio power rails are filtered separately from the other rails to keep power noise contamination to a minimum.

PowerBoards.jpg


Here is a gut shot of the DB-CL from 2009. All of the pedals look similar inside.

WiringComplete.jpg


Here is a pic from bassfuzz.com of the Photon Fuzz that shows the completed inside with the battery tray installed. All pedals have a battery tray.

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]


-Frank
 
#459
Another happy user here.

I got my second one a little while ago and have been test driving since.

Before anyone accuses me in anything , I was lucky to get my first one used while I was still in the waiting list. I decided not to cancel my order and get another one anyway.

This unit is build like a Russian tank! Very Strong. unlike the russian tank it is lightweight and beautiful.
I am very impressed with the sound quality that I get out of it. It is silent no coloration except for the obvious one of the compression it self. It simply does what you would expect it to and it does it well!

I am using wide range of bases and iam using wide range of playing styles from fat rounded warm sound to extremely fast modern technical metal to loooooow tunings and slap in between this unit eats all the sound that I can dial with it is always pure satisfaction.

I can nothing but recommend this unit to anyone who is looking for reliable top notch sound quality highly flexible unit.

People in FEA, big thank you goes to you!


And here they are in their glory
One is for the input and the other one is for the output.


IMG_20140114_222031_zpso2gvotdq.jpg
 
#460
ruins said:
Another happy user here.

I got my second one a little while ago and have been test driving since.

Before anyone accuses me in anything , I was lucky to get my first one used while I was still in the waiting list. I decided not to cancel my order and get another one anyway.

This unit is build like a Russian tank! Very Strong. unlike the russian tank it is lightweight and beautiful.
I am very impressed with the sound quality that I get out of it. It is silent no coloration except for the obvious one of the compression it self. It simply does what you would expect it to and it does it well!

I am using wide range of bases and iam using wide range of playing styles from fat rounded warm sound to extremely fast modern technical metal to loooooow tunings and slap in between this unit eats all the sound that I can dial with it is always pure satisfaction.

I can nothing but recommend this unit to anyone who is looking for reliable top notch sound quality highly flexible unit.

People in FEA, big thank you goes to you!


And here they are in their glory
One is for the input and the other one is for the output.


IMG_20140114_222031_zpso2gvotdq.jpg
Click to expand...

Thanks for that great feedback! Thank you for being so patient.

-Frank
 

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