Happy holidays everybody!, it has been a while since the last update, but sometimes this work is a bit overwhelming and i have to accumulate news to do long posts like this ;)… well here I am with exciting news about the advancements of the Ironclad Plus project.
When the Ironclad Plus was announced about a year and a half ago, i talked about an accessory I had in mind to improve the audio fidelity and incorporate headphones output, and i did the Ironclad Plus from the beginning with a special port called “Audio Exp” with that purpose in mind. I was certain I wanted to launch such a great add-on, as I am a big fan of retro synthesizers myself, but we had a rough year, supply of the necessary components was hard, or too expensive to be practical, and the Ironclad production was taking 100% of my time… Well i managed to improve on that over time and…
Introducing the Ironclad Hi-Fi BLASTER!. It is finally finished and ready for “mass” production, and i must say I am very satisfied with the final quality and sound fidelity it delivers, go and check it out in its web page section HERE.
The Hi-Fi Blaster will be available to order as an add-on when placing your order of the Ironclad Plus Batch 6, and will also be available to order individually to all previous purchasers around March-April with immediate shipping, the same process I did with the MT32-pi Hat for previous purchasers, which i think went pretty well.
Batch 5 production and shipping status:
Batch 5 was projected to be shipped in December-January, part of the manufacturing process is done in China, then sent here for another stage of manufacturing, afterwards the final manual assembly of the “non standard” parts, and finally the testing and shipping process. This time the first stage, the China one, took much longer than expected, probably due to the “covid” situation they are having… They had me the first half of December pulling my hair out, seriously, but the boards finally arrived, second stage of production ended quickly and i am now in the Assembly -> Testing -> Shipping since the beginning of this week and a few orders have already been shipped… and all this with the holidays in between. I will double-up to try to have everything shipped before the end of January, that’s going to be… Intense, wish me luck, and as always; thank you so much for your patience and support.
Batch 6 starting… probably TODAY.
I spent today updating the web page, adding new pictures, sections and removing outdated stuff. I also updated the Ironclad Plus shop item by adding the new Hi-Fi Blaster add-on and better pictures more representative of everything. All parts are arranged and sourced to start producing a new batch so… let the 6th batch begin!. It will start later today and a proper announcement will be made via Tweeter after new year’s holiday, so people subscribed to the shop will have a big edge. This batch is expected to start shipping in March-April, in order of purchase as always.
And that’s it for now, time to get back to work, I know I have still some important e-mails to answer, please give me a couple of days more and i will get back at you to solve the remaining issues.
Love you all!!!
