The last hiccup is done and over with.
Wow. The things I have learned over the past few days.
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Back up and running.
On February 1st this year I thought I transfered my domain registration to another company. Turns out that I made a simple error that caused my website to be down for two days. Thanks to some kind gentlemen especially Sandy who is a patient fellow and walked me through the mistakes that I made. One thing I have learned is to follow up on emails from web providers! I started out in this business doing custom enclosures and basic loudspeaker engineering.
It has been a part of my work for almost 30 years now. And a part that I thoroughly enjoy. This double set of enclosures has been chronicled here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjhL86Eih-SnTPGByh9RfKw I put up different videos on my channel. And slowly they are getting a little better. There is a huge following ( 10 people at the moment ) ! If you have an idea for something that is a little different. Or quite complicated I am your man. The equipment and capabilities of my shop are second to none. And there is a bald guy in there from time to time that can perform modest wood working miracles to. There's a couple of things that never seem to coalesce in the life of an independant audio designer. I have time to spend designing and engineering, or I am swamped and have money but no time.
Being an independant means I answer to my clients. Not a corporate agenda on squeezing blood from tired old stones. Being independent means that I can both design to spec and design to the very hairy edge of what is possible to reproduce. And happily I have a build house that is more than willing to take on a challenge. Being independent also means that I have to fund my R&D. That is what holds back some of the best stuff that I have done design work on. I'm at a stage right now where I have lot's of time and the other part is in short supply. Sitting on four driver designs that are both wanted by the public and pushing the envelope of what is currently available. I have a shallow 8 and a shallow 6.5 that are very high performance but I do not have the funds to push through the development. There is a small form factor tweeter that is almost ready for production and a subwoofer that is ready for production. There are a few perennial designs that can be produced that would provide such funding. So either jump in on the cutting edge or fund a proven design up to the individual. A shallow 15 inch ultra long throw is an idea that I have been kicking around for quite a while. I also have options to produce parts sourced abroad and assembled here if that is of importance. I take pride in being able to offer some of my stuff to people in a made in Canada or made in the USA label on them. The truth is I work with the largest loudspeaker forging company on earth, and I know who they make parts for. It's easier to say who they don't make parts for actually. Almost no one does their own heavy forging independently any longer. How much are we talking about? Well in small runs $13 to $15K for tweeters in a 250pc run. Woofers can be done close to the same amount for a 100 pc run. Those are numbers for the product to be landed here in North America. Not FOB China. So looking for an investor. Not massive amounts of money just someone that wants a decent return over about 12 months design build cycle. If a person is serious about giving this a shot drop me an email and we can talk. I have had a few discussions on the warranty part of the store. The impression is that there is none. That could not be farther from the truth. Think about this. Selling to DIY clients is labour intensive. On the average I spend at least an hour with each person answering questions and preparing responses when I have to give a more in depth answer. ( Usually great questions and appreciated.) One in three actually purchase products. So why do I state that these are high performance drivers and if you smoke them your on your own? Pretty simple actually. The level of Quality control that goes into the fabrication of my drivers is unprecedented. Even the famed Scandinavian driver houses are not ahead of the test regime that my drivers go through. And actually I know of none that are even equal to my test protocol. Every cone is weighed. Spider compliance is tested throughout the run. All hard parts are tested for dimensional accuracy. Most of my baskets are custom. I take off the shelf baskets, work with an awesome factory that is willing to custom machine them to allow for greater utility in the design work that I am looking to accomplish. It's how for instance I can get the excursion I do out of some of the baskets that I use. They are not stock baskets! A great case in point is the shallow woofer that I am working on. The assembly methods are fool proof in the centering of the magnet on the motor and the height of the voice coil in the gap. Once set, they are no longer able to be altered. That means that if they pass the testing, they meet or exceed the design targets. None of the famous build houses for instance test the motor flux density by an actual probing of the motor at four points on the clock. ( 12, 3, 6, 9) That is every single motor on every single production run. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwkjpKO0V80 Every single driver I make available is tested in this manner. The drivers that are low in flux density are either recharged or scrapped. Every single driver is frequency response tested, and T/S parameter tested. They again either pass or fail. If they fail they are not shipped to me. And I do perform random samplings of testing just to make sure my build house is performing these tests. I have been there and verified the accuracy of the testing methods and that their calibration is indeed correct. So in effect I buy no duds. I sell no defective or suspect articles. The reasons for any failure are not related to the manufacturing processes. Yes this costs money. In the realm of 8 to 10 dollars more on woofer compared to competitive build houses. But the competition doesn't do the same level of testing either. So rather than work in the good old dragnet fashion of selling everything that comes off the production line. And offer a warranty because there is no other way to protect yourself against failures. I work the other way around. I sell products that are guaranteed to perform as they are specified. And I use no fancy wording to exclude their warranty. I state it up front. I have done my job to the limits of what I know and understand to push the limits of quality and performance. I have done everything conceivable to provide a quality product. So if you smoke em, well that's simply not my fault. |
AuthorMark's Ramblings, show and tell. And other sundries. Archives
December 2019
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