Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: MOTM

A bit of ground to cover in this one :)

UPDATE
=======

Will be shipping kits/modules Mon-Wed of this week, then taking off until
Mon Dec 1 for Thanksgiving. While wife is out scouring the malls for
bargains, I usually have a massive office cleaning. I also need to gather up
the remaining MOTM-730 SMT parts, program the PICs, and send over to board
stuffing on the 1st. I will not be able to ship all the MOTM-730s on order
this year but probably 60% of them. I'll still work on them the week after
Christmas during 'video game madness' (I did my gaming computer upgrade
yesterday, I didn't blow up the motherboard so I'm OK).

This week I am ordering the last of the sheet metal: MOTM-380 and MOTM-700
panels. I am also ordering more rack rails to keep up with demand. MOTM-940
panels ship to me on Tuesday.

SALE
====

Dec 15 to Dec 31 I am running a 15% off sale for assembled modules. The
shopping cart will automatically reflect the new prices during that time. I
expect the lead time on these modules to be 6-8 weeks dropping to 4-6 weeks
by April. The main issue will be ordering more Spectrol and Bourns pots and
when they show up. Both are quoting 12 weeks now. With 600pc ∗minimum∗
orders.

WEB SITE RELAUNCH
=================

I'm going to overhaul the website, essentially starting over from 'ground
zero' (the shopping cart will be about the same). The current source code is
so thrown together that it is difficult to edit/add/delete content. I'll
have 'test pages' put up after Christmas, so everyone can verify they work
with browsers I don't use (like FireFox, Eudora, etc). I hope to add new
features, more content, better organization, etc.

NEW FORUM
===========

I'm going to move away from the current yahoo group to a 'self contained'
forum on the site, using phpBB3 (www.phpbb.com). This is the software that
www.modularsynth.com uses. If you go to the phpBB site, you can look at the
different styles offered ('skins'). I personally like the PS3 and the
fisubice2 ones. The reasons I'm changing are:

a) I'm NOT the moderator of the Yahoo Group
b) I like the fact the php-based forum has categories, and it's much easier
to find stuff
c) I'm going to allow anyone to join/post, but trust me I'm going to boot
folks off if they misbehave
d) the Yahoo group is 'hidden' and no other synth forum is. I've had several
people tell me that joining a forum ∗before∗ buying was very useful

I have not decide if I'm going to do this before of at the time of the new
site roll-out.

I consider 2009 to be the 'official' MOTM 2.0 start-up. It will be 11 years
and ~ 8,500 modules with 650 MOTM customers after starting. I know what
people expect now versus 10 years ago. I understand the marketplace better,
the expectations and the 'hot buttons'. And, I am reacting accordingly. I
just hope the economy improves so that there continues to be a market for
the new modules coming out. I still have LOTS of modules, in various
formats, that I want to do. I also hope that my suppliers continue to offer
the parts I need without jacking the price up 15%/year
(cough....Tyco....cough) to the point a 100K pot costs more that a 500,000
gate FPGA or a 32-bit, 75MIPS ARM processor.

Paul S.