Well July is basically over, I should probably start talking about what I've been up to.
As most of you are aware, I've been taking time off from my typical building to redesign the lineup, and I have most of the lineup right where I want it, there are a few units that just need a couple tweaks and a new circuit boards revision. But basically this is what we're looking at:
- Switched over from all SMD capacitors to all film capacitors in the signal path. These are the same capacitors that were in Nobelium and Neptunium, and I like the difference I'm hearing. This is something I've wanted to look into for a while and had been waiting for an excuse to do it.
- Soft-switch relay bypass. Tubes are sensitive, and are more prone to popping from loud mechanical switches. This isn't as big of a deal with things like preamps that you don't generally switch in the middle of a song, but I still felt like it was an upgrade worth making.
- Attenuation toggle switches instead of trimpots. With my super hot output pedals like UA, Elementary, JC Emerald, Detective, and Dreamcatcher, it always seemed like people used it stock, which was the trimpot set at 12:00, or they ran it fully dimed, because those two settings made the volume control respond well for the application, either running into another pedal or amplifier or running hot to drive a power amp. So I basically made two presets for attenuation, "INST" is a lower level like I've been shipping things for years now, and "LINE" is a hotter output if you need to drive something harder. No more twiddling with a little screwdriver to dial in a trimpot, just toggle the switch.
- Board-mounted jacks. This one isn't going to be as noticeable to the user, but it helps with manufacturability since I don't need to solder in individual wires anymore, and it helps with reliability because you won't need to worry about snapping wires when you tighten a loose nut on a jack.
As I've alluded to in previous posts, these upgrades are coming with a price bump, which as I've mentioned before I take very seriously. Nobody likes when prices go up, myself included, and I will always do what I can to keep prices down, but when I do feel the need to raise a price, I will make absolutely certain that the changes being made justify the price increase, and I feel confident that I've done that here.
Currently I have Underground Accelerator, Elementary, Slampegg Bee Pre, and More verified and ready to go and will start building up some stock of these units to reopen the store. JC Emerald and Black Eye are very close, I expect to have those before the end of August. Dreamcatcher and Detective have been giving me trouble so they have been pushed back while I focused on the others, but I expect to get them up and running around early September.
Finally v2 is the only thing that will not be changed at this time aside from basic manufacturability upgrades, so the price of Finally v2 will stay the same, and as soon as I get the new circuit boards in (they're in the last stage of manufacturing, hopefully have them early next week) I can start offering Finally v2 again.
And because a picture is worth a thousand words (this post comes to 590 total), here's a shot of what these upgrades look like on an Underground Accelerator.
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