ADG-1 Pre-order & Rev A Build Status Updates
Check back here often as we will be sharing weekly updates on the status of the ADG-1 and your preorders. I know you are putting your trust in me and for that I am grateful. Since there are still some unknowns and scheduling concerns I intend to handle the preorder process with complete and total transparency.
Thank you for your patience!
-Hawker
Hawkers Log: January 29th 2021
Random Musings : And that’s a wrap of Pre-Orders
Hello All;
I want to first say this will be my last weekly update. As I have time, I will migrate this to a blog format and post semi regular updates. I will also post to both Facebook and Instagram as well as make semi regular mailing list updates. So please sign up for the mailing list and check our social media for more information.
As of this week all US and International Pre-Orders have shipped. If you have ordered a pre-order and have not gotten a shipping confirmation and a tracking number e-mail please message us and we will look into it. Please do tag me in your social media posts. I love reading what you are doing with the ADG-1.
This week and the next we are making updates to the design for Revision B. The updates are minimal but are mostly to make the ADG-1 easier to build and calibrate. It also solves a minor issue when the using an out of spec power supply and increases the control voltage range when using an expression pedal. We also will also add one small new feature as well as add some hooks for a special edition version. We will make announcements on the details as we get closer to build time.
Once that is done we will continue to build the existing inventory and chip away at the wait list backlog. Currently the wait list is much larger than the Revision A PCB and enclosure inventory so we will offer these on first come, first serve to the wait list and the rest will be offered Revision B. I expect to ship around middle of February with these units. At that time, I will send an e-mail to the first half of those on the wait list offering them units and depending how many purchase will offer again to the rest of the wait list on a first come first serve basis. So if you are on the wait list and want a unit in February watch your e-mail.
If you’re not currently on the wait list, and think you want a unit, please sign up now. Our e-commerce site does not handle wait lists very well making it hard to manage so we may close down the wait list to those on it soon. So don’t miss your chance if you know you want an ADG-1.
I’m writing this now so that those on the wait list can make a decision on what they want when it comes time to order and know what else I am likely to offer.
Alas we are going to require a price increase. The cost of low volume manufacturing, increased shipping charges and the recent tariffs have seriously dug into costs. I had hoped to honor the pre-order price moving forward but alas I just cannot. Also with the increased 2021 shipping charges and porch pirates I will need to raise US Shipping to $15 and international slightly as well, but can now offer insurance with each shipment. I hope to add an option to use your own carrier or local pick up as well.
The existing Rev A inventory will be offered to those who signed up early on the wait list for $369. This is your last chance to get the original ADG-1 and most likely your last chance to get this special paint we used on the pre-orders and get in at this low a price.
Around the end of March we will have the ADG-1 Revision B to offer. It will be almost identical to the Rev A with an easier to apply paint and some small changes as mentioned above. This will most likely be slightly higher price than the Rev A is currently being offered for.
A few weeks after (early April?) we will offer and ADG-1 SE this is a special edition with some added features and perhaps longer delay as well as a stunning special high gloss and durability paint for this edition only. There will be limited quantities of this and it will be priced accordingly. Consider this a collector’s edition unit. We are still working on the feature set and will not announce them until after prototypes have been approved, most likely in February.
Again thank you all for your continued support though this project. Your support has been what keeps me going.
Hawker
Hawkers Log: January 23rd 2021
Random Musings : Gratitude x1000
Hello All;
Wow Wow Wow that is about all I can say.
I knew the ADG-1 sounded good to us, but there is always that little bit of doubt in all of us until it gets into your hands. However, as last week’s shipments got into your hands, the reports starting coming in fast. I was simply blown away by how much y’all seemed to love this pedal. The reviews, the videos, the first impressions, the messages were all over the top more than I expected. I cannot believe how much y’all enjoyed this pedal. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Not only does it mean a lot to me and our crew that our hard work is appreciated, it is invaluable to help a new company build trust and sales. So thank you to all that posted and linked to us. Please keep it up.
This week we finished building and testing all the pre-orders. All the US Pre-Orders were shipped this week. So if you have not gotten a confirmation e-mail from us yet please message us as your order should have shipped. I will be shipping the international orders the first part of this week and that will conclude the pre-orders.
What is next?
We have a good number of units more we can build with the current inventory. But honestly the wait list is over twice the size of the existing inventory. So we are going to take the next two weeks to stretch, get organized, and get a Rev B PCB in the pipeline so that we can get caught up. Then we will build the rest of the existing inventory and offer it to those on the wait list on a first come first serve basis. The Rev B will be basically the same as Rev A, however we are likely to use a different paint as this one was very challenging to use and we will incorporate some small changes to make the PCBs easier to build and calibrate. This means those of you who ordered pre-orders will truly have something unique that will not be duplicated. Alas Rev B will be released at the start of Chinese New Year and this will delay us getting parts up to a month. The PCB assembly and final assembly are both US Built but the parts that go into them often come from China.
The timeline is as follows
· Early February, build and ship the remaining inventory to the first people on the wait list.
· Late March begin to build the REV B PCBs.
In the mean time I have some questions for you: We really love the paint we are using, and it looks even better with a clear coat that really brings out the color and makes it more rugged. But this is expensive. So to keep the cost down we mostly want to move to a simpler paint. We are considering offering the Rev B in two options – the improved paint with clear coat and a simple textured paint. The improved will be at a higher cost, perhaps $20-$50 higher and perhaps a limited edition. Is this something people would be interested in? Already we know we will have to raise the price slightly as low volume manufacturing, and the new China tariffs brought the price higher than we wanted. Is a special edition unit something that you are interested in? What if it offers extra features like Delay Insert?
Again thank you all for your continued support though this project. I will keep you posted, but perhaps not quite on a weekly basis from here on.
Hawker
Hawkers Log: January 16th 2021
Random Musings : We are shipping now!
Hello All;
This was a week of thanx and gratitude where it all comes together. I am grateful to each and every one of you who has been with me through this journey of designing both a product and a company. We successfully built and shipped about 1/3 of the pre-orders this week and are about 2/3rds through building the remaining preorders. I expect the US units to ship by January 23rd and the international orders to ship the week after. If you have been sent an e-mail with a tracking number your order has been shipped. If not, hold tight, it should ship this week.
I can’t wait until they get into your hands and you get to hear them for yourselves. Please post unboxings and your thoughts, videos and sound clips and tag us. We want to see what you do to take this delay on a trip to your creative collectiveness.
As I said before, there will be some more units available once these ship out. After pre-orders are done our crew is going to take a much needed break and then start to focus on a re-order of the PCB but should have more units available in a few weeks (early Feburary ETA). They will be offered first to those who signed up on the wait list (this is a separate list from the mailing list). Currently there are about twice as many people on the wait list as I will have extra units so depending on how many of you purchase from the list there may not be enough for everyone. Have no fear. We are going to be building more PCBs soon but it may be at least March or later before they are available.
As a side note, once the initial Rev A units are all shipped this update will be closed down and we will move to our social media and mailing list to keep y’all updated to what is going on at AmpT. So if you are not signed up for the mailing list or following us on Facebook or Instagram head on over and do so now.
Hawker
Hawkers Log: January 8th 2021
Random Musings : Moving forward but some unfortunate set backs!
Hello All;
This was a stressful week. Since the first batch of units were built last week, only needing final QC and shipping, I was sure we were going to start shipping early this week. That did not happen. We had three setbacks that we are now past and should ship the first part of next week but I apologize for getting everyone’s hopes up.
The two small issues were that I had invested 2 weeks into some new shipping software that I ended up having to give up on and abandon as not usable. It was billed as for someone our size but it was really for enterprise level integration with a large server and just not usable with our process. So for now, until I have time to select and set up a new shipping service, we will have to brute force this with USPS Click-And-Ship, which only allows us to ship 20 packages at a time. That should not be a big issue as we are a long ways from 100 packages a week and the Post Office is less than a mile from both our office in the country and our shop in town, but it is a PITA.
We also had a snowstorm this week that prevented both myself and our technician from making it to the shop the later part of the week. Safety first. We will return Monday.
But the big show stopper, and why I temporarily called off shipping, was a technical issue that our technician, Liz uncovered at the 11th hour. She discovered that with some power supplies (actually only 1 of the 5 we had at the shop) a few units would have some background artifacts at some settings. This caught us off guard as no beta test units showed this and none of or normal power supplies caused this issue so we had never seen it before. I wanted to be sure I both understood and corrected this issue before shipping. Digging deeper this one supply was out of spec (voltage was too high), but since it was a name brand popular supply I was worried this could happen in the field. This only affected some ADG-1 units but not all. Eventually we discovered that any supply that the voltage is enough over 9V could cause this issue in some units.
I am now confident I understand the problem, have applied a good fix and am ready to retest the units and ship this week.
The issue turned out to be that our on board power system can go into a low power mode. It is good in either standard mode or low power mode, but the act of transitioning from one to the other causes a noise that can be faintly heard. The point at which this happens is not exact and varies from unit to unit. With an out of spec, over voltage, power supply this can happen, on some units, when the unit is in the lowest current draw mode. It is not very likely to happen in the field, but since it did for us I assume it can happen to others. To fix this, we were able to effectively move the point of this low power mode transition down just enough so that it is now very very unlikely to ever switch into it unless the power supply is dangerously out of spec. The units now draw about 8mA more (it was 60-110mA now it is more like 68-118mA) but I do not see that as an issue, and I feel comfortable shipping again. Liz is an amazing technician and we are lucky to have her. She did a great job uncovering this problem that escaped every beta tester and engineer before and isolating it to where the problem was.
Hopefully the issues are all behind us now. The units look great, they sound great and are ready to ship. Thank you all for your understanding and patience.
Hawker
Hawkers Log: January 2nd 2021
Random Musings : Success! Finally ready to start shipping!
Hello All;
NOTE: If you have a preorder coming and your address has changed since the order please contact me through the website feedback submission ASAP if you have not done so already:
I hope everyone has had a great holiday and are ready to make 2021 a great year. 2021 kicked our collective ass in so many ways but not it is, ahem, behind us. So here is to 2021, now that 2020 is truly hind sight.
The good news is that before the holidays we got the last of the missing parts in stock and started production with final assembly. The units look and sound great and I am excited about some of the small touches we have done to make them special that I will be sharing on social media over the next few weeks. We now have just under half the pre-orders built and tested. We will do final QC and listening this week and get them shipped out in the order that the pre-order sales were received. The remaining pre-orders, as well as extra stock for those on the wait list, should be completed and shipped in the couple of weeks after.
We will start shipping US pre-orders first with the international pre-orders following 1-2 weeks later (mid January). Once the pre-orders are all built and shipped we will open sales to those on the wait list and then, IF there is any extra stock, we will then open orders to the public. There may also be a couple of B-Stock units to offer at that time. We anticipate putting in another order of PCBs and enclosures to our vendor the end of January but due to Chinese New Year hold ups it is unlikely that we will have any new stock until March or so. So be sure to get on the wait list if you are not already.
I appreciate all your patience as we moved to production and am excited to see these finally get into your hands.
Hawker
Hawkers Log: December 18th 2020
Random Musings : Delays and more delays of the delay
Hello All;
It has been a great but frustrating week as we get closer to production. There have been several small setbacks and so it is time to for me to face the music. We will not be shipping until around January 1st. Due to late parts, and the upcoming holidays, risk of shipping near Christmas it just doesn’t seem to make sense to try to rush things out right now. I don’t want your babies to be lost in the Xmas shipping rush. Thank you everyone for your understanding in this. I want to be completely transparent about why this has happened and where we are now.
These are interesting times we live in, small staffs, shipping issues, covid shutdowns and other problems have all added to unexpected delays. We are moving forward but at a slower than normal pace.
We have started manufacturing of the parts we can work with. Much of this is prep work. Stomp switch PCBs, boxes, manuals, etc. Unfortunately we still do not have PCBs or enclosures to build with. We expect to get the remaining items to start coming in next, Christmas, week with most coming in right after Christmas.
Monday I took a trip to our PCB manufacturing house in the mountains of West Jefferson. They are a fantastic board house and well experienced in BBDs and music devices. On Monday they had the first 3 boards off the line for me to test where I took them to my motel to test at night. They look, sound and tested fantastic. And they have since built and shipped a small batch more arriving today. The boards were late due to long shipping time on some parts and a small technical issue we found. The Voltage Controlled Oscillators they used were a different lot than the ones I used and so they calibrate differently. We had to change a few resistors and caps to get them to calibrate the same as the prototypes and first articles built with my parts. That has since been resolved – lesson learned old VCO technology needs hand trimming by date code lot. Other than that, they are fantastic. We had the first production batch shipped to use yesterday and will start testing them Monday!
Our enclosures are also delayed. In starting production we were not happy with the adhesion wear of the printing on the textured powder coat paint. This hinted itself in prototype but we did not realize it was an issue until production. Scott, our vendor, did a great job contacting the paint supplier and print supplier. Unfortunately neither one was much help. It turns out the more environmentally friendly TGIC free paints, like the one we are using, often does not print as well as some older less environmentally friendly paints. Therefore, it was up to use to find a solution. We tried a clear overcoat to hold the print. While this made a durable finish, either it dulled the paint and the color was lost or it made the paint glossy and hard to read under light. The paint looks so amazing on this delay that I just didn’t feel good about covering it up with a clear coat. In the end, we found a baking process that seems to have resolved the issue and we are back in production. I hope to receive enclosures right after Christmas.
Moving forward we are going to have to select an easier to work with paint for the next run of ADG-1 delays. This means that those of you who get the initial batch are are going to have an extra special paint that we are unlikely to be able to use moving forward.
All other items we were waiting for including the clock/noise shields, serial number labels and more came in this or last week. Check out our IG and FB pages as I post pictures this week of the production facilities, parts and the manufacturing of the ADG-1.
Due to the holidays I probably will not post an update next week. So everyone have a great holiday and we will be in touch soon.
Hawker
Hawkers Log: December 11th 2020
Random Musings : So you want to get into Manufacturing?
Hello All;
Many good things have happened this week. We have gotten our people trained and ready to go. Stomp switch PCBs are built and ready and other prep work has been done waiting on PCBs. The manual should hit the printer (1 day turn) Monday.
However, it has also been a frustrating week here at AMpT playing the waiting game. We are still waiting on four late items to arrive. Those are the PCB boards, the enclosures, the clock shield, and the serial number labels. The shield and labels were promised to be shipped yesterday but I have not had confirmation.
The blank PCBs have been stuck in shipping/customs for about 3 weeks and we are not sure why. We are hoping to get them to our vendor to populate Friday. I will be driving up there Tuesday to do first article approval and hopefully shave off a few days. I am looking for confirmation later today that they got the PCBs.
The enclosures are more frustrating. We are having some issues with the powder coat paint. Our vendor has gotten the paint vendor involved. Since we tried two companies that both had the same issue I feel confident this is a paint issue. The paint is the brand preferred by most pedal builders so I am clueless and surprised that there is a difference here. Our vendor is working overtime to try to correct this and we hope to have enclosures next week.
All this of course is delaying shipping and we are in a waiting game with everything else prepped and ready to go. I have been getting some messages of people needing alternative shipping arrangements due to this. If you also require this please message us at orders at Asheville music tools dot com with any updates.
Until next week
Hawker
Hawkers Log: December 4th 2020
Random Musings : Waiting on late deliveries
I hope everyone had a great holiday. I did not give an update last week as there was little to report and it was a short week.
At this point production is being held up by late deliveries from a few vendors. There are some parts that are only available in China and the entire China shipping pipeline is slowed down. Therefore, it is my understanding that our board assembly house is still waiting on raw cards. Our enclosure vendor had some equipment issues and all of this is pushing us back on delivery. We also have had some small delays with the labels and a metal shield that protects the input signal from the BBD clock. I hope that we will have circuit boards and the rest of the parts next week, but that is still 3 weeks later than the original schedule.
We have taken the last two weeks to review our documentation, test procedures and get our folks trained. We have also started production on what we can. We are trying to get ahead on the hand-soldered stomp switch PCBs, cables and optimize our assembly procedure and environment, get boxes ready, and get the crew trained. So we will be ahead on some steps. But alas I think we may not be shipping until right before Christmas. I will keep folks posted. Stay tuned next week for pictures from our assembly process and our assembly contractors.
On a positive note, Today I went and visited our enclosure machining, paint and printing house and I am convinced we have found the right people with the quality and care that Asheville Music Tools requires. They are about 90 minutes drive from Asheville up in the foothills and so it was easy for me to drop in and go over any quality concerns to dial the machining in perfectly. I will be sharing more about them in future updates.
In addition, I am very excited at some of the members that are joining our crew. We have some talented folks in the Asheville area, as there are several audio company vendors. For this reason, we have found some very talented and experienced audio and electronics folks to help us out. This means that we have people helping with assembly, testing, and calibration that all have experience with these kinds of products and some I have worked with before at past companies. I hope to more about them going forward. We also have some talented engineers that will be working with me on future products that I am also excited about.
Hawker
Hawkers Log: November 20th 2020
This weeks theme: Getting ready to start production.
Hello All;
This week has been a lot of finishing up loose ends, production and printing issues, and getting ready to start production.
I had hoped to be testing PCBs next week, but alas, I think we are still two weeks out from that. Still there was plenty to do this week. A lot of the week was wrapping and releasing the artwork for the labels and manual. I am glad to say we found yet again another great local vendor who can make some amazing silver polyester over silver foil labels for the back of the pedal. I think you will be impressed by these. They are also making the aluminum shield that protects the input section from the clock oscillator. The price was almost twice that of China but I do this to ensure that Asheville Music Tools feeds our local economy and jobs as much as possible. I am dedicated to Designed, Manufactured, Machined, and Assembled in North Carolina. Our state’s economy was devastated by the loss of manufacturing from NAFTA replacing high paying manufacturing jobs with low paying service and tourism jobs. This is my contribution to rebuild our local economy and help make Asheville a Music products mecca with several pedal and synthesizer companies here already.
We also spent this week reviewing the preliminary ADG-1 Rev A PCBs with some other listeners and agree on some slight changes to the tone we all wish to make that further tweaks the delay. We still have to finish evaluating moving the knee of the tone control up about 80Hz to 605Hz from 520Hz but I believe this is a change that we will also make after more carefully evaluating it. Two of our beta folks have already signed off on it; they just need to convince a stubborn engineer who types way too much.
We also released a 20 1/4 page draft of the manual with 12 presets. Check it out on the ADG-1 product page and give me your feedback. This manual will be printed, again locally, on heavy 28lb stock and included in each pre-sale ADG-1 shipped. https://www.ashevillemusictools.com/s/ADG-1_Manual_Rev1-Draft.pdf
In other great news we were gifted a large production space that is much larger than the one we initially were going to use. This gives us space and lighting to spread out and do more efficient production with less chance of quality issues due to being cramped in a small space. This weekend will be devoted to cleaning it out and setting it up to start initial production. Monday we will start hand soldering stomp-switch boards, cabling and box and tracker printing to get ready to receive enclosures and circuit boards after Thanksgiving.
Thank you all for sticking with is. We are excited to get this into production very soon.
Until Next week... Don’t eat to much Tofurky - and by all means WEAR A MASK!
Hawker
Hawkers Log: November 13th 2020
This weeks theme: Things take longer than you always wish..
Hello All;
As promised here is another Friday update on the ADG-1 Rev A Pre-Order build status.
It’s been a slower week, a lot of waiting, and some recovery from long days up to now. But we are getting close!
The most important thing I want to be upfront about this week is that we believe the shipping date has slipped 1-2 weeks. This has been an unfortunate consequence of recent shipping delays, some material issues and some processes that took more effort than we expected. The final straw convincing me that we would not catch up was hearing that PCBs will not be shipped until the first week of December due to Thanksgiving holidays and some delivery delays. I will do the best we can to update you when I know more. We will get enclosures, boxes and everything else prepped and ready so we are ready to go as soon as PCBS arrive.
I spent the bulk of my week going over the first article Rev A PCBs with a fine tooth comb. This has taken way more time and effort than I hoped. I did find some minor issues here and there, mostly due to component substitutions I made for rush delivery. All known issues have currently been addressed but there are still more areas that need confirmation as well as other beta testers to listen and confirm I didn’t miss anything. We also have some debate about the center frequency of the tilt style tone knob between those that use it for folding under the mix and those that like it more present. I hope to wrap all this up next week so we can give our assembly house the final BOM. The good news is the Rev A ADG-1 board works, it sounds great, the known issues were solved, and there were no big mistakes going from Rev 1 Proto to Rev A production. The biggest mistake has been a minor solder mask issue on a future hack port I included, but our PCB manufacture has fixed it for production.
Other than testing the pilot board, this week was focused on trying to finally get the artwork all done. We are still waiting on artwork for the rear labels from the artist so hopefully that will not hold us up for production. The box artwork arrived today and looks great (see our social media pages for pictures) and the enclosure artwork was finished this week and sent off for fabrication. The good news on the enclosure artwork is we found a way to make the knob for the expression pedal work so we will be adding that to the shipping product.
I had hoped to release the manual this week for everyone to look at but I am still having another round of proofing on that going on.
Until Next week...
Hawker
Hawkers Log: November 6th 2020
This weeks theme: Everything always is more complex than you think.
Hello All;
This was an exciting week. Monday we got a rush prototype shipment of the Rev A release PCBs in. I had made a few quick turn PCBs in China with most of the caps and resistors populated and I hand soldered the rest of the parts on it here in the lab. I am happy to report they work; they sound great, and as far as I can tell, all the known issues have been addressed. We had tested all the changes on the Rev 1 prototype boards but it is always good to try it on the final PCBs to be sure we didn’t overlook anything. I want to caution that I am still going over them with a fine tooth comb and could still find issues, but all look great and ready to rock and roll. There are some small component tweaks we may still make for the limiting threshold and EQ center frequency as we weigh in the views of the different beta testers but those are all very simple changes.
Parts continue to come in and we are getting closer and closer to being ready to start the builds.
Meanwhile there have been some minor setbacks that should not affect shipping. We still have not gotten a firm date back from our PCB Assembly vendor on delivery date. However they have completed boards for our partner company ahead of schedule so this looks good for us. We have also had some delays in getting final artwork for the labels and enclosure finished but those are wrapping up now. Hopefully that does not delay production. Lastly my primary reference unit blew up and was damaged from being a mechanical sample, and I lost a day fixing it :-(
I’m hoping to get feedback from the folks reading the manual soon for updates so I can post it for y’all to weigh in on. The manual went to exactly my 16 1/4 page limit without presets so I may need to include an extra page with presets.
Otherwise it’s been a slow week mostly focused on getting the Rev A PCBs built and tested.
It’s been an emotional and uncertain world out there this week for many of you. Take care of yourself, watch the doom scrolling and turn off the computer and get some sunshine. I’ll see you next week.
Until Next week...
Hawker
Hawkers Log: October 30th 2020
Random Musings : It’s getting real…
Hello All;
It’s been an active week here at the AMpT Labs. We have had production parts and tools coming in left and right from all over the country and I have had to verify, QC them and check them into inventory. Most everything has gone smoothly but there has been some damaged in shipping and hardware issues to deal with. We also have gotten the shipping boxes in and samples of some very special and unique Merch/SWAG I hope to be able to tell you about soon.
The rest of this week has been mostly focused on finishing all the artwork; and there is lots of that. We have been working on enclosure artwork touch ups (based on feedback from the first 10 samples) from our artist, box cover and side artwork, manual artwork, serial number label artwork as well as back cover and inside traveler label artwork. I never quite realized how much artwork can go into these.
In addition to that I have been writing the manual that will ship with the ADG-1 and I’m really excited about how it is shaping up. This will be a really nice manual around 16 pages. I have taken time to write some history, education, and some great information about why BBDs sound different not normally mentioned in most articles I read. I think you will enjoy the educational aspect of the manual and I will share it on line hopefully before we ship. I also hope to eventually write a mods, tweaks tips and present manual to let you pedal hackers know some points and ideas to hack from.
Lastly today was an exciting day in that the proof Rev A Production PCBs came in. Up to now we have been working with Rev 1 prototype PCBs that were hand modified to meet the Rev A changes. The changes are minimal but it is still good to double check. We get the proof PCBs quick turn from China with about 3/4s of the parts placed and then I will hand solder the rest to verify the PCBs are good and to use them to write the test procedures or for extra demo units. Fear not the production boards are not China assembled and are built by my long term assembly partner right here in the mountains of Western North Carolina. They are a great women owned assembly company I have been working with for over a decade. They are already experienced with analog stomp boxes and BBD calibration so I expect no problems.
There are three PCBs to an ADG-1. The two surface mount boards are being made by our assembly partner. The through hole board will be hand made by us in house for at least these first pre-order units. All the parts are here for that now and I hope to start building them next week or the week after. We still do not have an update from our assembly partner when we will get production PCBs but are in constant contact with them as we work through some purchasing issues that have come up. As soon as they give me a date I will let you all know. At this point we hope to ship around the first week of December.
Until Next week I remain your humble engineer and nerd...
Hawker
Hawkers Log: October 23nd 2020
Random Musings : Catching Hell for the buckets, and enjoying the ride.
Hello All;
I want to start this update to talk about the artwork decisions and our Bucket Brigade Firemen. I have gotten a lot of slack about the “comic men” and the “dated” artwork. I get it; it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But I have noticed that once folks get why we made this decisions their opinion changes. I think because my past pedals have mostly targeted the synthesizer market, and not the guitar market that what I thought was obvious references was lost. I need to be better at merging my synthisizer world and my guitar world people and not assume they always cross over.
The artwork is intentionally dated with some inside references, but I had hoped in a good way. It is a homage to my past pedals and old modular synthesizers. The lines and boxes around function blocks is how modular synths were organized back in the day. You may notice I use synthesizer terms like “LFO, VCO, CV” and very literal function knob names rather than the more sonic based names of guitar pedals (Feedback rather than Regeneration, Time rather than Manual). I like organized artwork and with my more complex designs I think this helps the user understand what is happening. There is an educational aspect to my every design I hope to be able to pass on. So the crisp, clear boxes are my way of doing this.
And then there are the Firemen.
Back in the 1990s Panasonic released an app note and data sheet book about BBDs. On the cover of this book was a picture of firemen in a bucket brigade line. An analog delay works by passing the sound from one capacitor or “bucket” to another and 4096 times before it goes out (8192 times for us). This is how the sound gets delayed. A clock rate steps the sound from each bucket to bucket and controls the delay time. Panasonic drew the men in homage to how the core of the product works. Alas I don’t have that manual anymore and I can’t find it on the internet but I did scan it once. This is my scan - note the distortion where the book was damaged. I used it on the back of the PCB of a certain well known analog delay I designed that some people have caught pointed out.
Bucket Men taken from a 1990s Panasonic Application book
You can also see it in this old Digikey catalog listing from 2000. Note the cost of the MN3005. They were not cheap. And in the catalog a few months later the MN3005 was completely removed from the catalog (much to the dismay of one Bob Moog who was releasing his, soon to be famous delay and had to scramble to redesign it with the MN3008 buckets to replace the MN3005 he could no longer get).
https://web.archive.org/web/20000304172631/http://www.digikey.com/EC/V3/195.pdf
I had the talented Geoff Sebesta redraw the firemen to fit on a pedal and that is the result you see. So it is a homage to the original Panasonic BBD data sheet. And now you know. If you want to learn more about BBDs check out this great Electro-Smash article.
https://www.electrosmash.com/mn3007-bucket-brigade-devices
In other news this week we have been very busy.
We got a nice article in Audio News Room. Check it out.
We had a very successful Pre-Order run. I had to close it to keep it manageable and there is a sizable wait list and dealer request log waiting. Sign up on the wait list if you want one of the first productions run in December otherwise it will likely be January before we have more units.
This was a week for spending money and getting everything in the pipe line. The large items have all been ordered or are already here in stock. Some items like Knobs we ordered months ago to have them custom made for us. Other items are just now getting ordered. We ordered the PCBs, placed a PO with our board house (who will get back to us next week with a ship date for me to update you all with), updated the mechanical drawings, and got the enclosures ordered. Hopefully we will get some videos to share of the boards being stuffed and assembled and the enclosures being CNC routed. Both partner companies are also located here in the mountains of Western North Carolina as part of my commitment to keep production as local as I can.
The silk screen is being tweaked now, and most of the parts for final assembly are on order. Most of the rest of the parts will be ordered later today. We also ordered some quick turn prototypes from China to make sure there are no surprises when we get production boards. Next week we focus on manuals, labels, artwork and getting the first articles built for testing. The week will be devoted to artwork, labels, manuals and other text items as well as building up the first articles from the quick turn China PCBs.
Thanx for listening to my ramblings. Tune in next week……..
Hawker
Hawkers Log: October 16th 2020
It’s been another exciting week with lots of progress!
We have reached our production goal but still need a few more sales to pay for the holiday production. Pre-order sales are closing Monday the 19th, so get your order in now if you want to be able to get an ADG-1 this year. Chris Stack of Experimental Synth made three amazing demos with his cousin Vincent yesterday. Check them out on Instagram if you haven’t already.
We continue to get feedback from our demo and beta testers and incorporate those tweaks into the design. Tweaks will probably continue until pick and place manufacturing starts in a few weeks. We are ordering a few quick turn Chinese boards for more beta testers before then (don’t worry our production boards are made right here in the mountains of Western North Carolina).
We had a few small setbacks. The biggest of which is that PayPal has flagged and suspended our account as we did too well too fast triggering a warning on their end. Although these funds were intended to pay for the pre-order production it looks like they are likely to not release them until next year and without a lot of hassle and time on our end. For this reasons we are encouraging folks to order with a credit card using Strip (our other payment processor) instead but leaving PayPal as an option for those that are more comfortable with it.
The PCB updates are complete, but due to dealing with the above, we did not meet our goal to get the production package out today. The PCB is currently being reviewed and the production package should go out Monday if all goes well. From there we expect 4 weeks until we have PCBs and then 1 more week until we start shipping. This keeps us still on our target for shipping the end of November.
Oh and check out this PCB. Just shy of 450 parts (just over counting the stomp switch board). It’s a doozy.
Until next week, I remain your humble hippy engineer
Hawker
Hawkers Log: October 8th 2020
Location: the fall colors of the Asheville NC mountains
It’s been a busy and exciting week!
The announcement we sent out today
Be sure to get your orders in tomorrow. We are releasing a limited number of these at 2PM EST sharp for pre-order at a reduced price. If you don’t get in on this it will be the 2nd build before you get your ADG-1.
This week we reviewed all the feedback from our beta testers and got the changes we wanted tested and implemented. There are still a few more sonic tweaks to make over the next week but we are happy with the ADG-1 and there are no known issues left. It sounds good and it is so much fun. Sonic tweaks are a hard balancing act. You can “fix” one thing for one person while breaking something else for someone else. One tester may want less low frequency, or a slower easier to dial in LFO, while another wants audio rate modulation and deeper low end and both conflict with the others desires. You can’t satisfy everyone and so must balance the changes to work best for the most people. The EQ knob has been a good example as some use it to add highs and articulation with every repeat while others use it to let the sound fold under their playing getting less articulate with every repeat. Finding the perfect cross over frequency with only one knob is not an easy balance for those two uses. I’m confident we have it pretty close to nailed.
Now that testing and tweaks are done I am moving to updating the PCB and releasing it to manufacturing next week. As I write this the Powe r/ Input / Analog Logic PCB is nearly complete as is the Stomp Switch PCB. These should be done today. Over the next few days I will be finishing the main board and hopefully getting this off to manufacturing next week where they tell us 4-6 weeks until we get boards. There are really not a lot of changes that need to be made so the work and risk is very low.
Thank you again for all your support. As always I will do my best to keep you updated on the schedule and status of the ADG-1 as we move to shipping over the next few weeks.
Hawker
Hawkers Log: October 2nd 2020
Location: A piled lab mess of tweaks and builds, Asheville, NC
What a long strange trip it’s been!
The announcement we sent out today
As I write this we are getting ready to announce the pre-orders for next week. We currently have several beta test units with multiple people and are starting work on videos to come soon. There has been a lot of work to get to his point but the initial responses from everyone who has tried it has been an overwhelming success, with many saying it is not only better sounding than my past, now famous, delays but the best sounding analog delay they have ever heard. But now we need you to put your excitement into orders I can take to manufacturing.
The ADG-1 is near the end of its beta process. We are compiling the results and need about one more week to implement the final tweaks. The PCB is in great shape with minimal changes, and all have been tested on the prototypes. I have previously designed many, well received, analog delays in the past with literally 10s of thousands out there in the wild, so I am confident in the ADG-1 design integrity. Given this, we anticipate a quick and easy turn to to update the boards, the enclosure artwork, and any other requirements and get the ADG-1 into production. Much of the hardware, knobs, and other support items have already been purchased and are waiting for the PCBs to be released. The current time line looks like this:
Week ending October 9th 2020: Complete and test the last of the changes requested by our beta testers
Week ending October 16th 2020: finish any changes to the PCB required and send this off to our local NC partner for PCB manufacturing.
Week ending October 23rd 2020: finish any adjustments to the enclosure artwork, labels, boxes, etc and get that off to our local NC machining, painting and printing partners. The prototypes from them look amazing and we have the highest confidence in their work. We auditioned more than one vendor and while the vendor we chose was more expensive than others, the quality of their work was an order of magnitude better.
The longest lead time will be the PCB assembly process. Since this is a local company I can easily go there to help and support the process if issues or questions come up (as a bonus they are right next door to the most amazing cheese factory and 7 year aged cheddar this cheese snob has ever seen). We have selected a company that has built thousands of my past delays so I not only have an existing relationship, but they know music, stomp boxes, and how to calibrate and build with persnickety BBDs, PPS capacitors, OTAs, and all the normal problems one gets into with a non audio experienced manufacturer. They are telling us 4-5 weeks is the expected time to produce these for us.
From there we have to assemble, test, listen to them, and get them off to you with our loving care. We expect this to take 1-2 more weeks after we get PCBs.
This means we are looking at, ideally, 6-8 weeks from today to start shipping.
We will do our best to keep you updated on this schedule and progress as we move to production. I can’t wait till you all get to play the hell outta’ your bucket. I’m confident you will enjoy the ride.
Hawker