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Blog Index March 23, 2008by Jim "The Amp Surgeon"
Happy Easter!
We were expecting to receive our first 20 chassis enclosures on the 21st, but they've
been delayed by a couple of days. The sheet metal shop was done building them, but they
were still at the paint shop getting texture coated and silkscreened. We're expecting them
to be finished tomorrow.
That hasn't slowed us down, though. We're building and testing circuit boards as fast as
we can, though we're closed today for the Easter holiday. We still fully expect to have
pedals ready to sell on this site by the first week of April.
The online ordering system will not be activated until we have pedals to ship,
so please don't email us asking to place an advance order! You can still add your
email address to our mailing list by joining our forum and
posting a message in this topic.
Building cool pedals is fun, but when you add a layer of business beaurocracy, it sort
of sucks some of the fun out of it. You have to jump through a lot of hoops to
keep the city, county, state, and federal governments happy. The worst part is the
bookkeeping. That stuff makes my head hurt! Electronics engineering is a pleasure by
comparison! Anyway, I gotta suck it up and deal with it. It's just part of running a
business. Still, I can't wait for the day when we can afford to hire someone who actually
enjoys accounting! ;-)
There are still some beaurocratic steps we're trying to complete with the county where
we're located in California. Until we can get those done, we can't set up our own
credit card merchant account. So, initially, the only form of payments we'll be able
to take are through PayPal. We've had a PayPal account since 2004. We upgraded
it to a Premium account last year so we could sell some gear we bought and repaired
on eBay (our feedback rating is 100%!). We've now upgraded to a PayPal Business
account, and we've set up the account to accept credit card payments even from people who
don't have a PayPal account. So, if you have a PayPal account OR a
credit card, you should be able to place an order for a pedal.
Remember: The first batch of pedals will NOT be RoHS compliant, so we
CANNOT ship any of them to EU countries. Yeah, we think this sucks as much as
you do, but we have to comply with international laws.
The first build is only 20 pedals. Judging by the response we've received, we're
guessing these will be sold in the first couple of days. It will probably be three weeks
before we have another build of pedals ready, and that will hopefully be 50 pedals.
This means there's a very high chance that we will receive many orders for pedals after
we've run out of them, and before we have any more to ship. This is how we plan to
handle that:
If you order a pedal, and we don't have a pedal in stock to send to you within 48 hours of your
order, then we'll contact you by email and ask if you'd like to keep your order in place and
wait for a pedal to become available, or if you'd like to have your order cancelled. If you
decide to cancel, then we'll refund your payment in full.
The same applies if you order with a shipping destination in an EU country, and we don't
have any RoHS compliant pedals to ship to you. We'll offer you a chance to either keep
your order in place until a pedal is available, or cancel it.
If you have any questions about this policy please email us at info@wattson-fx.com.
Keep on playing!
March 14, 2008by Jim "The Amp Surgeon"
One week left until we should be getting our enclosures from U-Mec! We've been pretty
busy preparing, but there's also lots left to do.
We received our first production PCB boards last week. They look great, and we've already
stuffed one with parts and installed it in the "contest" pedal chassis. We've also gotten
the screws we'll be using for production, so the "contest" pedal is complete and ready to
go! We were going to take some pictures of it tonight for the user's manual, but Chris
forgot to bring it to work today, and left it at his house. Feel free to bash on him in
the forum for this! ;-)
We've still got business stuff to do in the coming week. We're waiting on some paperwork
from the county, which should be here any day. We need to take that paperwork to the bank
and finish setting up our accounts, and then we can set up our credit card merchant account.
I don't know if we'll get all of that finished before the end of the week, but it will
definitely be done by our projected April 1st release date, so we'll be ready to take orders
and ship pedals.
Remember - the first batch of pedals will NOT be available for shipment to Europe.
They won't be RoHS compliant. However, we've worked out our sources, so the second batch
and every batch thereafter will be compliant. We're hoping to have RoHS compliant pedals
ready by the end of April.
If you'd like to get on our informal mailing list, please register for our forum. We've
created a topic in the SuperFuzz Contest forum
where you can sign up just by posting in that topic.
We'll post more news as it happens.
Keep On Playing,
March 6, 2008by Jim "The Amp Surgeon"
It's here!
We got a call from our friends at United Mechanical in Hayward, California. They said that
our first "proof" chassis was finished, and asked if we wanted to check it out. DUH!! Does
the Pope wear a funny hat?!?
I grabbed a bunch of chassis mounting parts from the bins, and Chris and I bolted down to
U-Mec to get a look at the chassis.
 Pretty Sweet!! It was every bit as sweet as we'd hoped. All the parts fit pretty well, but we asked for a few minor changes anyway just to 'tweak' it to perfection, then we placed the order for the first production run. They are forecasting the first boxes will be finished, and ready for pickup on the 21st of March, so we should begin building the Wattson Classic SuperFuzz over the weekend of the 22nd and 23rd. We're about 95% certain the pedals will be finished, and we'll be ready to start selling them on this site, by April 1st. It's possible we may be ready before then, so be sure to keep checking back!
Keep On Playing,
 The back side
March 2, 2008by Jim "The Amp Surgeon"
Welcome to our first blog entry!
Chris and I have been hard at work trying to get the Wattson Classic SuperFuzz
into production, and ultimately into the hands of guitar players everywhere. It's only
been a little over four months since we started this journey, but we've done so much in
that space of time that it sure feels like a lot longer!
 The "Tone Model" for the Wattson Classic SuperFuzz Our original goals were certainly ambitious. We wanted to produce a pedal that was, above all, faithful to the tone of the classic Super Fuzz pedals from Shin-ei and Univox. We wanted a chassis with the same classic style and finish as those vintage originals. We wanted to add the modern features that guitarists desire the most, such as a power adapter jack and an "effect on" LED indicator. And, we wanted to deliver all of this at a price that was comfortably affordable. All in all, we've think we've hit the mark pretty well.
 First Wattson Classic SuperFuzz hand-wired prototype We're gearing up for the first production run, which will be 20 pedals. We'd love to have prepared for more, but we've spent thousands of dollars so far in developing this pedal, and we have to work with what we've got left. For now, we don't need to pay bills with the profits, so we'll be building up our capital and increasing the size of each production run, until we have a steady supply of materials coming in and pedals going out. That will probably take a few months to become reality. In the meantime, there will probably be a lag of two or three weeks between production runs. Some pedals ordered between these production runs may take a few weeks to ship. Be patient - we'll get there! We've already stocked up on the electronic parts we'll need for the first run of pedals. A couple of items are backordered, but we're working on securing alternative sources for everything. We also have local sources for most of the parts which we can turn to in a pinch. The bad news is that the semiconductors (transistors and diodes) we're using in the first batch of 20 pedals will NOT be RoHS compliant. This means we won't be able to ship any of the first 20 pedals to Europe. Our supplier had led us to believe that the parts simply weren't available in RoHS compliant versions. We've since discovered from the manufacturer that RoHS compliant parts ARE available, and we've found a distributor that stocks them, so every pedal we build after the first lot WILL be RoHS compliant. We've already got all of the other materials and tools we'll need to ensure that we'll be fully compliant with the EU regulations. Eventually, we'll even secure a European distributor for our pedals, which will save you folks across the Atlantic from having to deal with the delays and fees for customs. We have the first 100 printed circuit boards on order, and we're expecting them to be shipped on March 11th. We've also got all of the packing and shipping supplies we'll need for several months worth of production.
 First Wattson Classic SuperFuzz prototype printed circuit board The only thing remaining is the chassis boxes. We're working with a local sheet metal fabricator here in Northern California for these. They've gone over our blueprints, gave us some helpful suggestions, and are now building the first "proof" of the chassis design. We're expecting to receive that first box any day now. If everything looks good, then we'll order the first 20 production boxes, and should receive those about two weeks later.
One of the blueprints for the Wattson Classic SuperFuzz chassisAs soon as we get that first box, we're going to build a pedal in it. This will be serial number "zero", and is the pedal we're giving away in our contest. Of course, we'll take lots of cool pictures and post them on the site so everyone will be able to see what the pedals are going to look like. So, all together, we're expecting to begin building and shipping those first 20 pedals in the second half of March. We'll begin taking orders as soon as all of the parts have arrived, and we've started building them. Stay tuned. We'll post more news as it happens!
Keep On Playing, |
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Copyright (c)2008 Wattson Classic Electronics All Rights Reserved |
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