I'm still waiting on the day this thing comes out! C'mon, Roger, give us a little hint as per the date?
At this point, estimating a ship date for the amp seems something akin to shooting myself in the foot, so I'm trying to stay away from giving out dates at this point. I can tell you a bit about what is going on with the amp, but will have to leave it at that for now. A few months back, we had what we considered a final prototype that we could go into production with and were getting geared up to do so. We started working with a new manufacturing partner and quickly came to the conclusion that all the hand wiring on the amp was going to be a very labor intensive procedure. Labor intensive is never a good thing when it comes to manufacturing. Going over the amp, we just found a lot of places where the wiring could have been made easier, had the boards just been laid out a bit differently. There were also a couple other places where we felt the design could be improved, like using larger, higher temp rated supply caps on the power supply board.
One thing I have learned about manufacturing is that there are two schools of thought when it comes to getting a product on the market. School of thought number one, says you get the damn thing working, put it on the market to get some cash flow going, then fix everything you know could be better on the next revision(s). Sounds horrible, I know, but a lot of companies work this way because at some point in a product’s development positive cash flow really is of the utmost importance. The other school of thought says that you keep tweaking the product until you know it is absolutely the best it can be and you don’t release it until you are really happy with it. Inevitably, a much more self fulfilling, yet expensive option.
So, the issues at hand presented us a dilemma. Go forward with the amp as is and get some cash flow going, or go back in and fix the things we know could be better and in the end, let us get manufacturing cost down a bit. Well, being the typical Virgo that I am, it really just didn’t sit right with me to put the amp out there, knowing it isn’t as good as it could be. I also feel like the early adopters put a lot of faith in us and it just didn’t feel right selling them an amp I know will be better on the next revision. So, I bit the bullet and decided to go back into the boards one more time and make some improvements.
Right now, we have all the new boards and components ordered, with the goal of having the new and improved Valkyrie prototype to show at NAMM. With the schedule we have it’s going to be close, but if the amp gods are kind to us, I think we can pull it off. Of course, this means we will be putting the thing together about two days before the NAMM show, but this seems to be normal NAMM behavior for most companies. After NAMM, we go right into building a small beta run of probably 5 to 10 amps that will let us get the manufacturing and testing procedures a bit more ironed out. After those go out, we should be starting our first real production run which will probably be 25 units at a time.
So, no delivery dates, but I wanted to let everyone know where we stand. I know we have taken some flack for not getting this out sooner, but this is really a very complicated endeavor that requires a lot of time and effort to pull off. I also don’t have the luxury of a big company bank account supporting all the R&D like the big boys do. Every little step forward means having to find the financing to do so, so there have been times when progress has been halted simply by a lack of funds to proceed further. The good news is, we are making progress and the goal is definitely in sight. As always, many thanks out to the TB community for all their support. I’ve seen some other companies eaten alive on here for taking so long to get a product to market, so I really appreciate the fact that everyone seems to be rooting for us!
