Hi guys,
I apologize for the recent delays. We had a bit of a hiccup in the production of the ceramic composite PCB's that we use for the C12 microphone boards, but Matador was able to get that ironed out with the fab. Because of that, there was a backlog of C12 related parts orders that were severely delayed. I believe I have reached out to all of the people whos orders were effected, but that specific backlog is nearly cleared out right now.
I have unfortunately completely lost contact with one of my factory representatives that was one of my most reliable partners to date which is quite unfortunate. The situation could very well be the most common scam/ghosting behavior from Chinese factories that I have experienced in the past, but my suspicion is worse. I think something very bad may have happened to him as there were multiple financial and personal life situations piled on top of each other. Nobody from the factory or mutual friends have heard from him in months now. There are indicators pointing towards scam and other indicators pointing towards tragedy. Either way, the results practically speaking are the same.
What that means for me, is that I have 100% lost a fully paid production run of SYT-5 gen 3 bodies which is something that I figured would happen at one point or another when importing things in this manner. It is unfortunate, but also the reason I do not do any pre-orders for anything. Yes, I am woefully delayed in my shipping and order handling often, but there is never a guarantee that quality and delivery of ordered products will happen. I only sell things in the webstore that I have in my hands confirmed.
What this means practically is that I need to work through a different factory contact to re-confirm via production samples all of the items that I purchased through him as he was physically on the factory floor confirming production details and insisting things get re-done when not up to spec . This includes the SYT-5 gen 3 bodies that have gone through a couple of iterative changes. All of the tooling should still be in place, however.
In the interim, I have re-ordered the first gen SYT-5 body as a quality brass option as well as another run of the Budget YT-5 body which is a cast zinc alloy/aluminum construction but quite affordable. Those will be incoming on the next incoming shipment. I am also asking for samples for the Gen 3 bodies to see if we can get those back on track from the same factory that I worked with to develop them, but with a different Chinese contact coordinating with the factory on the production runs as I have lost touch with my original contact.
HT-11A bodies have also been ordered and will be coming in the next production run. The Type 1 headbaskets will be problematic from the same factory drama, but all other headbasket types are solidly in stock at this time. The order quantity is quite large so once I receive the order, they should stay in stock for quite a long time as they did last time.
Regularly placed orders are all in queue at this time, and I am pushing to clear that shipping queue in the next week.