Eagle-eyed viewers will have noticed that I've got a lot of stock listed at half-price - a few have even asked 'Why? Are you winding the business down?'
No. I'm not.
Whilst there are often times I feel like packing it all in, there are still a number of crazy ideas that I want to unleash on the world, plus I want to continue to lower the barrier of entry to modular synthesis by making stuff that people a) want and b) can afford.
The reason is rather more simple and pragmatic than that - I decided last year that I was going to investigate other fabricators in order to minimise the 'single supplier problem' (not that I had such a problem - I use, and still use, a number of different fabs depending on the project)
I've now found a fabricator that produces good quality boards at a reasonable price, has a pretty quick turnaround time (about a week, which is nice) and, best of all, allows me to produce both mainboards and faceplates in black - other colours are available, and I may yet use them, but for now I'm sticking with black.
People have been asking about this for ages and now that I'm able to deliver it's time to say bye-bye to all the stock with purple panels (as fabbed by OSHPark in the US). As a result, most purple-panelled moduled stock is reduced to half-price to pay for (and make way for) new, black-panelled modules.
In a lot of cases, the new-look modules will be functionally identical to their predecessors although in a couple of instances I've taken the opportunity to tweak the circuit design somewhat. I'm concentrating on the 3U modules for the moment and will move onto the 1U tiles at some point in the (near) future. Any properly new modules (eg. the 1U active mult) will come with black panels by default.
Nothing else will change: the boards are still designed, hand-built and tested by me.
Hope that clears things up.