As we head into August (and towards our 100th sale! Who would have guessed?) we’ve got some stuff to announce! We’ll start with the important bit, though… prices.
Price changes
We’ve updated the pricing and shipping in our Etsy store. We’re now offering free standard shipping on all items (we’ll be adding tracked shipping as an option soon, too) and we’ve rationalised how our prices are calculated across the board. This is for a number of reasons:
- Etsy have changed the prices that they charge us; we run to the bone on margins so we had to work to incorporate this.
- Our PCB costs have increased over the past few months.
- Our original pricing was, to be honest, pretty much made-up-as-we-went-along; we’ve improved that to reflect our costs-of-sale and a known, uniform margin across the range.
The bottom line is: some things have gone up a bit, some have gone down. On average our prices will increase by less than GBP 3.00 across the board – and there’s no longer a shipping charge to add to that!
New products
You may have spotted some new stuff floating about on the site…
Finally it’s here – the stand-alone version of our popular poly string module. Featuring it’s own power supply and big-boy MIDI connectors, this is otherwise pretty much identical to our StringTheory Eurorack module.
We’ve built StringTheory Synth to the same form-factor as our ThruBox MIDI splitter (that is, it’s designed to dock in a widely-available aluminium stompbox enclosure). But we wanted something simpler that we could ship flat-packed, too, so we’ve come up with this simple kit that puts a really nice bottom on your ThruBox or StringTheory Synth.
While we were designing a DIY Eurorack power supply (more about that later in this post) we knocked out a really simple little module that just consumes power and turns it into heat – so that we could measure how our PSU performed under different loads and be brutally honest about its capabilities. We thought this might be useful to DIY-ers out there so we’ve turned it into a kit. If you’re going to blow anything up whilst messing about with the supply in your rack, make it one of these instead of one of your precious modules.
We’ve updated the software for the original StringTheory, improving note-handling and adding a (much asked-for) MIDI offset feature.
Details are in the owner’s manual; the hardware remains as it was.
Owners who can burn their own ATMega chip can get the software now, for everyone else we’ll be adding a chip replacement item to the shop.
All of the above are already on the site and will be in the shop this week.
Yet more products
As if all the above wasn’t enough, here’s what’s currently on the bench for release during August…
Dualist
Our dual power supply for Eurorack is based on the tried-and-tested MFOS wall-wart supply designed by Ray Wilson. Designed to integrate seamlessly with our ThirdRail and MiniBus products, this unit provides ample, stable power for a handful of modules.
Also in the pipeline is a matching 4HP front panel, with AC inlet, main power switch and an indicator LED for each rail. Ultimately, we’ll be selling a complete set of Power panel, Dualist, ThirdRail and MiniBus, all securely mounted on MakerBeam rails for instant integration into your system (we’ve already got the prototype powering our test rack!)
In development
Meanwhile, when we’re not packaging and shipping all this lovely stuff, we’re busy designing new things. Here’s what’s currently in the development pipeline…
TimePiece
One clock to rule them all – a system master clock that outputs MIDI and a range of analog clock signals, for tying all your lovely kit together. We’ve included 1, 2, 24 and 48 ppqn analog outputs, plus a MIDI in and MIDI out, so that you can inject the clock signal into your MIDI chain. Currently being prototyped, we expect to have the final PCB design and software ready by the end of the month. This will be available in both Eurorack and stand-alone formats.
Telegraph
A Eurorack module that fires out pseudo-random gates, based on Morse code. Clock in, morse out, happy days. This one’s a bit of a way off from a finished piece (we’re trying to incorporate an elegant way of the text that the Morse is generated from being user-programmable) but it’s definitely going to happen!
That’s everything for now – see you in the Autumn (if you survive the heat, of course!)
StringTheory Synth
NiceBottom
DummyLoad
StringTheory Software Update
Make Synths Not War 