Since discontinuing Neptunium I have received an average of one email per day asking if/when they will be available again.
For those unfamiliar, Neptunium is designed to be comparable to the XLR output of the legendary Noble preamp, in a much smaller size and a much smaller price. These were not particularly difficult to build, and the build process is almost identical to my current
Finally v2 preamp/D.I. They sold very quickly and I was thrilled to hear how much everyone enjoyed them.
So why the hell did I stop selling them?
At the end of the day, Neptunium is basically a Noble clone. That's what it was designed to be. It can be argued that it's not an exact clone because it's only part of the Noble, and legally there's nothing Jack can do to stop me from making and selling them as long as I'm not using the Noble name to do it. But that's not what I want to be as a brand, and to be candid it's been a little frustrating that of all the pedals I make, the one that's garnered the most hype has been the one that wasn't an original design.
So why the hell did I make them to begin with?
It was literally a dare. I was working on an update to my Finally preamp and was talking to a friend, thinking out loud about how much I could fit in that size of pedal, and he dared me to stick a Noble in there. I jokingly said "the Noble's XLR output only uses one tube, I'll bet I could do it." And the dare was launched. It sounded pretty good, and I figured this could be a limited quantity thing I did to raise some more money for R&D on projects I really cared about, and it filled that role beautifully. With the proceeds from Neptunium sales I was able to redesign my entire lineup and I am immensely proud of what I've been able to come up with.
And now, at the risk of sounding facetious, I'll give the other reason I don't really want to make more of them: because I think I make things that are better. If I thought the Noble was the be-all end-all best pedal in the world, I wouldn't bother spending sleepless nights working on new things. I have immense respect for Jack and for his work, but if I didn't think I could do better, it wouldn't make sense for me to be here
Venus Z is an original preamp/D.I. design that's the same price as Neptunium was despite being immensely more complicated to design and build, and in my (admittedly biased) opinion is a better sounding preamp.
I have two more preamp/D.I. units in the works right now that I hope to have available before the year is over, and I'm sure there will be more to come.
Anyway, sorry to ramble, but rambling is my love language so maybe I'm not that sorry. Happy to answer any questions (with more ramblings) if anyone has them.
