I felt that was as good a title as any.

First off, thank you to everyone who purchased an A2-300 in the last couple weeks.  We are working as hard as possible to get items out the door, as fast as possible.  As discussed in last weeks blog, this means a couple things.

• More production of cabinets built in house.  We increased our production staff this week allowing us to get more out the door, in a shorter lead time.
• Building more speakers here in house.  This means some staff reallocation, and working nights to build speakers.   I personally find this relaxing, and enjoyable to do once the shop is closed for the night.  Being able to just concentrate and be super productive is a great way to end the day.

This last week we finished up a custom subwoofer for a gentleman who needed to fit the unit in a specific area.  He also didnt want it in black.  Here are the results.

A 13Av.2 sealed enclosure with 500 watts.

The white grill cloth really does look great and sets the whole unit off.

Speaking of truckin, we made a deliver on Friday for the dry erase white boards discusses earlier in the year.

Thank you to my friend Matt from back in Michigan.  We are thankful for allowing us to use your truck.  It was also nice to see you for a couple days.

Some of last nights production.

DIY 13Av.2 Kits have also been a huge hit lately.  I’m sure most of you know this, simply from them being in so many newsletters.

Here are some LT/1300’s being modified to be shipped for kit customers.

We have also been recycling as much as possible over the past couple months.  With producing more speakers in house, we have been saving old package material which was most likely being to be sent to the recycling facility.

Custom speaker stand have been pretty common lately.  Here is a photo I got of one before it went out.  Its not the best picture, but you can see how an angle was needed.  It also has a hole in the back and bottom for hiding speaker wire.

The nice ladies at FedEx also brought us some liquid pick me up last week.

Thats right folks, the highly popular A2-300 will soon no longer be on sale.  March 8th, 2010 will mark the last day of the  sale.

Starting March 9th, the everyday shipped price for the A2-300 will be $415.

All units ordered before that date will still fall into the sale price.

Growth…We have reached the point once again where we have to decide to keep producing here in Iowa, or move them to Asia.

You all know how we feel about that.  We take pride in our Iowa production team.  The choice was made to keep building these items here.

Why raise the price you ask?

Raising the price slightly allows us to expand and create growth here.  This growth means shorter lead time due to more staff and production capabilities.

Current A2-300 orders have backed up production on not only that model, but due to the production requirements, are backing up other models.

We want to have these items back in stock once again, and increasing staff/ production capabilities will once again allow this.

While Asian produced cabinets are not bad, we would lose a couple things that set us apart from the competition.

• EFS, Its a superior wood product, and we use it for a reason.
• Made in Iowa.  Not many companies can say they manufacturer products in the United States anymore.  We take pride in this.
• It can turn into issues later down the road, due to variations from one production run to the next. This is not easy to correct when a container shows up with the incorrect product.

If we have the capabilities to make it ourselves, why offer a product made with inferior materials just for the sake of a slightly lower selling point.

The slightly higher selling price allows us to do the following:

• More entry model speakers will be produced here in Iowa.  See the beginning of this weeks production run.

• Reduce lead times due to increase production staff.  Eventually a once again stocking item.
• Keep cabinets produced in Iowa, using superior materials, such as EFS.
• Deliver the highest quality product.
• Easy to improve production in short period of time. Examples:  Cosmetics and design.

With the A2-300 price increasing, it will once again be an option in our package builder.  This will not only bring the price on the A2-300 to $350 shipped, but allow you to save an additional 15% on some full range speakers.

Free shipping will still apply.

A2-300 Product Page

Especially free food.

We had a visit from our friends Tammy and Angela over at Fedex and they surprised us with some delicious pizza. We dig pizza, but we dig free pizza way harder. Kudos to those 2 lovely ladies who are always thinking of us! Can dinner be on us next time, please?

I know we haven’t had very many updates around here lately, but hopefully that tells you that we’re so crazily and insanely busy that sometimes it’s hard to stop and realize we need to throw some pics up! We’ve had tons of huge shipping days lately, between in stock amps and home theater subs going out the door, we’ve packed the Fedex truck to the brim more than once.

Here’s a few pics. Enjoy!

The pallet of pieces of wood you see to the right of that last picture is an entire pallet of DIY kits.

An entire pallet of DIY kits.

Am I allowed to say it again?

An entire pallet of DIY kits.

An entire pallet of DIY kits.

This winter has been insane. We’ve had a total of 3 confirmed blizzards and an intense ice storm. Some of these storms has prohibited us from shipping things through regular means. A good example? Amps needed to ship out. Shipping company could not get to our facility to get those guys out. So we drove them to the nearest drop box to make sure they will get to the people who needed them.

THIS SNOW NEVER ENDS!

If you’re waiting on a home theater subwoofer, we apologize for the delay. We’re doing the best that we can to process orders more efficiently and quickly. We’ve even recently added 8 more carts for the paint booth to up the quantity of items being painted. Here’s a quick shot of some of the cabinets ready to be painted.

Stuff being built. Stuff being prepped for paint. Stuff everywhere.

A drink to that!

Yes, I’m drinking Monster with a twizzler straw.

This post begins and ends with Fedex. Thank you, Fedex, for the food and the daily laughs. We love you guys. We really do.

Starting February 17th the LT/1300 amplifiers will be back in stock and shipping.  This means any A7 series subwoofer and Dual 13Av.2 DIY Kit will start shipping as well.  Order will be shipped on a first in first out basis.  Please feel free to give us a call for an update on projected shipping time.

For those unfamiliar with the LT/1300 amplifier, it is based on the very popular B&O ICEpower module.  This is a class D design which offers extremely high effeciency at  87%, yet offering sound quality rivaling its class AB brothers.  All while producing an astonishing 1300 watts RMS power at 4 ohm.

So what upgrades did we make you ask?  In our quest for producing more energy efficient products and lowering power consumption we made some slight changes to the power supply.

The new power supply has a 1 watt power consumption when off.  This would cost around $1-2 per year to operate when turned off.  Much lower than some more common energy vampires in the home such as video game systems, and computers.

We also changed the turn on circuitry to feature a dual stage- slow turn on.  Instead of an inrush of current required by the amplifier at turn on, the new units have two stages.  The first stage turns on instantly allowing a minimal amount of power to enter the power supply.  Five seconds later the second relay turns on.  This prevents any possible issues caused from poor in home wiring, or if you decide to run two LT/1300’s on the same circuit.

The standard units ship with a 20hz subsonic filter, but we have the ability to do modifications in house which remove the subsonic filter all together.  These modified amplifiers provide more power into the 10hz region.  These work extremely well for sealed applications requiring more power.  A prime example of this is the A7S-650.

The LT/1300’s still have all the same great features as before:

• Sealed case design.
• 115v/230v AC  switchable.
• Auto On/Off feature.
• LFE input with crossover bypass.
• Speaker level input/ outputs.
• 50-100hz adjustable crossover.
• Heavy duty detachable power cord.
• Adjustable phase control.

And as always, the LT/1300 ships for free in the CONUS.

“Heigh-ho, heigh-ho It’s off to work we go!”

The last couple weeks have been extremely busy, lots of late nights and early mornings.  We put a lot of time into organizing and cleaning some of the work areas which became a little chaotic over the holiday season.

We relocated some tables which had been used for storage and packaging.  We are once again bringing more production in house from overseas.  This means we need more space for speaker production and preparation.

You can see a small run of SQ10’s happening at this time.

This last Saturday, Matt and I came in to work on some amplifiers modifications for sealed subwoofers.

On the custom front these last couple weeks we have something pretty out of the ordinary for an audio manufacturing company. Dry erase whiteboards.

Yup! You read that correctly. Our friends over at Dwolla set us up with a company in Des Moines looking for some large format dry erase whiteboards.  As usual, our answer was, “Heck ya, we can do that.”

Matt next to the boards to show the size.  My understanding is that they will be covering the walls in a conference room.  Not many places make 4×8′ dry erase boards.

We also built some powered subwoofer cabinets with dual 12″ subwoofer, and dual 12″ passive radiators.  One on the back and one on the bottom.  I am excited to see this loaded up and in room.

The production team has been doing a great job trying to catch up on A2-300’s and still keep up on other products.

Matt was pretty proud of one days cabinets getting QC/QA before shipping out.

We also had a big week of A7-900’s.

Here are a couple photos of some in various steps.

We also had a big shipping week.

Its fun when we get to fill the truck, and Roy our driver has to put some packages up front by the passenger seat.  He some times comes a couple hours early to pick up some HT subwoofers for “traction” weight.

To touch back on the production one last time, we ran into a hiccup.  As some of you might remember, earlier in 09′ our paint gun broke. The manufacturer mentioned how the new gun has an almost indestructible  body.  Apparently that doesnt prevent the metal trigger from breaking.

The next day we had a replacement trigger and painting had resumed.

Late last week Matt ran out of fuel with the fork lift. What an inconvenient time, don’t you think?

Speaking of forklifts, Anthony started unloading trucks the earlier in the month. He was pretty excited about being able to drive the beast.