MOTM

[I'll have my expert panel of judges select the '730 contest winner by Sat. 
Pm, still only 2 people have entered and a 3rd person would spice things up 
a bit]

As previously predicted, my MOTM time in March/April has been limited. I am 
about 100% caught-up in 2.0 orders. I even managed to ship a few kits out 
last week :)

I am running about 15 assembled modules behind schedule where I thought I 
would be 8 weeks ago. Looking forward until the end of May, I'm still going 
to be about this much behind (it's just going to be a *different* set of 15 
modules). Between tomorrow and May 1st I will be able to ship between 10 and 
14 modules, which is 'light' due to my real job workload. The month of May 
will be *much* better for MOTM shipments, *including* more kits going out. I 
should be able to ship a minimum of 30 assembled modules in May which will 
drop the backlog to < 50 modules (including 2 recent, rather large orders).

The pc boards that Shane will be working on (in order) are:

'320
'410
'420
more '300s

while I am making some more '310s and '800s.

Bottom line: Things will continue to be slow until May, then I can ship 
quite a bit more through June. My goal is to have <25 modules left to ship 
by the end of June. My day job essentially shuts down the first 2 weeks of 
July, and that is traditionally when I really catch up and do R&D (last year 
at this time is when I did the '730 production CAD work).

Sometime this summer, I will be switching over to the BTI pots and moving 
away from Spectrol. The Spectrol pricing is getting silly (like $13ea). What 
I will do is "pace myself" based on the current log pots (still Spectrol), 
so that for example the '420, 440 and '480 VCFs that use 3 log pots and 1 
Spectrol pot on the pc board will still all be Spectrol until I just can't 
ship anymore. Modules like the '820, '190 and '490 will quickly be 100% BTI 
pots.

This brings up the issue of the VCOs. Yes, the cermet elements are the 
lowest drift and make sense in VCOs. So yes, I will use the 148 there as 
long as I have stock (I have about 175 left) but *eventually* these will 
also be BTI (which are conductive plastic). Will this cause future 
'300s/'310s to be unstable/unusable? Of *course not*. As far as I know, 
every other synth vendor uses carbon pots in their VCOs, and they are still 
being bought. MOTM VCOs will still exhibit the *lowest drift* of any VCO.

Remember, the shafts of the BTI pots will reduce the gap between the bottom 
of the knob to the front panel by about 0.040in. Which in reality, looks a 
bit nicer IMHO.

When I get low on the Spectrol 248J log pots, I will order equivalent log 
pots from BTI which are an *upgrade* IMHO from the Spectrols.

Paul S.