We hope it to be really soon. Yet, I can tell you (and you know it by now) that hopes and reality lot’s of times are misaligned in this process.
Just last week we were expecting to get a bunch of units from the factory, but an issue with the self test of them made us get stuck and not get out for our office so we could QC them and then ship.
On this specific case, this doesn’t mean necessarily that the devices are faulty. It could be that something was wrong on the self test. But before making the units move around we need to be sure.
Thanks for your fast reply Jon.
As Human beings and workers we are all subject to Murphy’s law…
Still proud to financiate your Project.
Hold on Guys in these dark times!
I wondering here… how many 3rd tiers there is?
As of now I´m starting to feel the need to buy something else, since the MOD DUO hardware limitations became really obvious with the latest plug-in updates.
Hello @rogeriocouto, sorry for the late reply. I’ve been off for a few days.
There are quite a lot of backers. Yet, we expect to start this shipments soon (right now we are finishing the few left on the 2nd “wave”).
The fact that the number is big doesn’t directly mean that we will take a lot to ship any device or not. As soon as we can we will start shipping this devices, as the number of them is big, what will happen is that the process will take a while to finish completely. How much is “the while” depends on a lot of things as you are already aware. We can’t certainly stock all parts and accessories for these devices at once so we need to rely that the supply chain will not have issues again or at least not take long to re-stock any part, component or accessory.
I believe the MOD devices all use SoC/SoM solutions, so you don’t have a separate CPU and RAM in sockets. The exact details would depend on which SoC/SoM are selected.
I realize that there has been an ongoing number of mitigating circumstances that continue to cause delays in the project. I also realize that much of this is out of the MOD Team’s “circle of control”. That said it’s starting to feel like we are stuck in the movie Groundhog Day. As a Tier 2 backer we are being told repeatedly that the remainder of Tier 2 is on the verge of being shipped however, it never seems to happen.
February 4th UPDATE #33 "These enclosures should be coated by the end of February, by which time we also expect to finally have the 2nd group of backers completely fulfilled and to start shipping the special “Founders Edition”.
March 3rd UPDATE #34 “We’re only a few devices away from finishing group 2”
April 22nd UPDATE #35 “But we just got a shipment from the factory and are shipping to the remaining backers of tier 2 now.”
I am not at all unsympathetic to the challenges that the MOD Team has been facing throughout the project. However, considering how far beyond the original timeline the project has crept I feel like communication from the MOD Team needs to be improved. Honest assessments of when units might actually ship would be helpful in managing backers expectations. Have any Tier 2 units shipped in the last 60 days? What is left to ship from Tier 2 -is it 2 units or 200?
I also feel like having a few members of the MOD Team do a monthly “fireside chat” as a live stream YouTube or Zoom event so that backers can get updates and ask questions would go a long way to restoring faith in the project.
Though I’m trying to stay excited and positive about backing the Dwarf, I admit that it is becoming increasingly difficult.
Yes, it’s hard being totally in the dark about the status. Also acknowledging that at times the MOD team may have very little reliable information to go on, all we can do is purely speculate. I’m a Tier 3 backer who pledged for a Dwarf more than 26 months ago. I have no idea if I’m number 10 in a list of 30 remaining or number 245 in a list of 250.
I’ve been a regular reader and contributor here for more than 5 years because I love the MOD concept and the community. Not long after placing the Dwarf order my Duo became too unstable to enjoy so I’ve been without a MOD device for > 2 years now. For a while it was fun and exciting to see the new development features arrive and seeing what content people are creating. Now with each passing week I feel more detached from it all. It’s harder to justify spending my leisure and brainstorming time on something that may never appear in my life at this point. I’ve moved on to another modeling unit and I come back here mostly out of habit and morbid curiosity now.
Has the MOD team considered any alternative compensation plans (that they can share publicly)? For example, a backer purchases their own Dwarf from a 3rd party and in return gets unlimited access to the store plugins? Are there ways that backers (who can afford it) could purchase a device from a reseller and receive some form or compensation or refund from MOD in lieu of canceling the pledge order? This should benefit MOD - if only slightly - by having units being sold on the market and being able to cancel orders from the Tier 2/3 shipments to relieve some logistics pressure. Ideas for compensation could be unlimited commercial plugin bundles, hardware discounts (on DuoX or future Dwarf), or receive an expression pedal.
Thank you for your time and consideration. I sincerely hope the team is able to find good fortune and smooth sailing in the near future because I know you’re pouring your hearts and souls into this effort.
All the difficult circumstances of the last months were repeatedly and kindly mentioned here and I believe they are well understood and respected, same with the reasons why is it hard to make any accurate estimations, however being just a bit more specific and transparent about the progress would really be appreciated.
Yes, this is true. Nowadays this is not only happening with MOD Devices, but even with car manufactures.
No, at this point this is true for tier 3. Tier 2 is on the verge to be finished. During the last few weeks, we shipped quite a lot of devices to cover more of this tier - that was started to ship a while back - and more should be following. The number of missing backers here is getting close to the end. I understand that it may feel a bit unfair that you are one of the few missing, but as it is a human process we can’t QC and pack the devices all at once.
These statements are all true, at least as far as we have been informed.
Again, the enclosures are not coated all at once neither on the same day as the devices are set up or even less shipped.
We were indeed close to finishing the tier 2 a while ago, but for a few weeks and caused to a few different reasons we didn’t receive more devices from the factory. That changed a couple of weeks ago and we moved even closer to finishing, but we still didn’t reach the end. As you may understand, the devices are all checked and fulfilled one by one and we don’t have infinite space and resources to store them or do the human labor all at once. Neither does the factory.
This was exactly when we started again getting more devices, meanwhile, they were checked and quite a lot shipped. We still miss shipping a few and fix some registration issues in the other few. Yet this will not be enough to finish the tier 2 just yet. But with this, we get closer and gain more margin of all resources to accommodate what is left of this tier. Then, eventually, we will move to tier 3.
Yes. A lot. I can’t precise the number, without taking sometime to check the logs, but really a lot.
About 50. In order for you to understand the magnitude of the number on our side, we shipped more in the last weeks, and at the end of December, we shipped more than this in 2/3 days. Yet, for quite a lot of weeks, we didn’t manage to ship even close to those numbers and that’s exactly why we can’t give extremely accurate estimations of timing.
Trust me, at this point, I would say that there’s no one who would like more to have this process finished than we do. I will even take it a bit further and be more personal and say that I do. Not with this saying that my colleagues care less. I was out for the last couple of days last week and I was forced to be out early this week. When I got back yesterday, I can tell you that about 70/80% of the messages that I had to answer were about backers asking for info on the shipments. When we do get units I try to jump on QC so we manage to get the units out faster and when I get back to the messages part a lot of people are asking about the units. I feel that without this on the way MOD would have way more margin to do a lot more cool things. But unfortunately, we live in a world that influences us and we can’t simply bypass what happens in this world. We can’t simply do our best.
We also get a lot of unfulfilled expectations in this process. A lot of devices, components, etc. should arrive X day and they don’t and sometimes they take much longer. We use these promises a lot of times to feed the backers understandable requests for updates and a lot of times (like now) we end up explaining to ourselves why those reports may have a slight feeling of inaccuracy - and that’s exactly why we tend to let them a bit vague. At the same time, we are trying to solve the problems to remedy those issues.
Again, sometimes we manage to ship even 100 devices or more in a single week, and in other weeks we can’t ship even a single one. That’s exactly why we can’t be precise in saying that the device or a particular backer will be shipped in a particular week or even month. We just do our best.
We love all these sorts of ideas. I would say that we would love to do it. But at this point, we are a really small team and really overwhelmed (as I mostly need to jump into QC so we get units out). Doing this kind of thing at this point would most likely mean that other things would get even slower…including shipments of units.
We can’t be anything but thankful for that. We understand exactly what you mean and respect that. We will simply keep doing our best.
EDIT: @pavel I guess we wrote at the same time. I understand what you mean and understand that it feels weird that in December I told you that you were one of the few left and now (in June) you are still. I would be frustrated as well if I was in your place, but that was actually accurate. In December we manage to ship a lot of devices. We were expecting that to keep going the same way, but it didn’t. Just recently we manage to do shipments on a scale closer to what we did in December.
I believe what I wrote above also answers your “why”
EDIT: I learned about a small but important English typo of mine one some of the reports to you guys. When I wrote you “a few” up to now, it was not my intent to talk on a scale of single digits, but often dozens. I will try to fix that perhaps misleading writing of mine for future communications.
I took a different approach, more positive I hope, this massive delay cured my GAS, I’ve stopped buying more gear with the premise “the dwarf will probably do that well”, and kept pushing my current setup and getting good results with that. (mpc500 sequencing a zynthian a zoom ms50 and a boss rc-10.)
But it lost a bit of the sparkle, didn’t even see the new guitar synths videos, one of my initials goals for the dwarf, because they probably only add to the vanishing sparkle.
I will see them when I got it.
Best,
I really don’t want to be tough with the MOD team as I understand the problems you’re facing but that’s the kind of contradictory information that can make some backers loose confidence. So even without adding work to be accurate, only a bit of consistency would be appreciated.
Nothing personal, I’m not angry angry with you guys and appreciate your work. It’s just that we are so used to enthusiastic bullshit communication with other companies. You’re better than them so be careful not sounding too much like them. A few can’t become a lot depending on the situation.
Yes this is very frustrating, but the wait is well worth it. Expectations for many things are not always met, but for a very small team and a very large, ambitious project - especially given all the unforeseen circumstances - this whole thing is a pretty remarkable achievement. I was in (I think) the beta Dwarf group so I’ve had mine for a few months. It’s a pretty slick little device. I’m more frustrated by not being able to find replacement tubes (valves) and buy gasoline (petrol), and we in the US are not experiencing nearly the huge increases in cost in other parts of the world.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand the problems and I’m OK with the wait, even though it feels long. I’m still excited about the Dwarf and grateful to the MOD team to have launched this project and managed to stay alive despite the difficulties.
My only concern was about the contradictory communication. I feel like we are children who needed to be calmed down with words like “only a few” when there were still a lot of units to be shipped.
@Elk_wrath
No big deal. You’re not a moron. Morons don’t acknowledge their mistakes.
As I fixed with my edit, I was mention a few up to now to what I should have written a “few dozens”. Sorry about my misleading English typo.
Anyway, what you are pointing out now are two different things. A lot has been shipped, this is completely accurate. A few dozens miss being shipped.
I even gave the number here.
I was taking my “a few” expression based on the bigger picture, so to say something along the lines of “the minority of tier 2 is still to be shipped”.
Again, I’m sorry for my misleading communication, it was not meant to trick you guys, it was a little English typo from my brain.
