Huge VV Announcement and State of the Union Address!
The first of several announcements over the coming weeks! Lots of great things on the way! We are committed to continuing to move tech forward, providing quality products, and expanding and adding to our product lines.
First off, officially announcing the Plecter Labs Crystal Shard 4.0!!! Just 3 words. Absolutely. Freaking. Amazing .
This little board is jam packed with all the latest features.
Including:
New:
Dual Digital Sensor motion detection, identical to CF MotionFusion™, extremely high swing sensitivity and vibration/battery ripple immune
Mute during power off. OPTIONAL silenced power-off sound when Mute on the Go™ is engaged
RGB Neopixel/WS2812 (and alike) support with power saving and adjustable timing
LEDstrip power saving StripOff™
LEDstrip localized & accurate blaster bolt defelction AccuBolt™ and MultiBolt™
Omnisabers™ support/Omnisabers™ Ready
16 Color Profiles and 16 Flash on Clash™ Profiles
2 boot sounds (up from 1)
4 blaster sounds (up from 1)
Force Effect (brand new for CS)
Pitch Shift, a sound effect modifying the playback speed and therefore the pitch based on the tilt of the saber
3 sequenced accent LED pads with RGB blade matching capability
Legacy:
Dimensions : 28.5 x 18.5 x 5 mm
Power supply : 3.4 to 5.5v / 2A per LED channel. SINGLE li-ion cells (18650 or 14500) or 4xAA rechargeable NiMH batteries recommended.
Enhanced deep sleep mode : < 0.1 mA (deep sleep mode)
Flash on Clash™
Flexiblend™ 3 channel color mixing with main blade color and Flash on Clash colors
4A high-power LED direct drive (no current regulator) per channel
Speaker: 4 to 8 ohm
True 16 bit, 22.050 ksample/sec regulated audio engine
Audio output Power : 2W max
Handles NC/NO/momentary switches for blade activation
Blade Flickering Fx
Blade Shimmering on Clash
Pulse Fx
Trident™ support for cross-guard sabers
Anti Power Off technology (A-POP™)
WAV file support
Up to 6 sound fonts
SD card support : up to 16GB, FAT16 or FAT32. Sandisk brands preferred
So what this means is that all sabers shipping now include this awesome board! We were artificially holding back sabers in preparation for the new board so, yes a few folks have passed our ETA BUT, a boatload of sabers will be shipping in the next two weeks and we should actually be able to drop our wait time yet again once those ship.
Yes, Hero folks, this is what you were waiting for!!! We couldn’t let the cat out of the bag early, but we wanted to make sure you all had the latest tech in your sabers! Oh, and as an added benefit for Hero folks, all Heroes going forward are shipping with Juansith’s new incredible Father and Son font which will also be available soon on Saberfont.com. While there are a lot of great Luke ROTJ style fonts, this one was the font we felt we wanted to see on our Heroes. This is NOT retroactive. If you are a past Hero customer, you received Legacy : Imperial Knight with your saber. New Hero customers will get Father and Son in lieu of Legacy : Imperial Knight. However, unlike our Combat Class specific fonts, you CAN purchase it for your Hero on Saberfont.com very soon.
Next up, what can sometimes be an uncomfortable situation, price increases. Dun, dun, dun… We have not had an across the board price increase since 2011. Our expenses have gone up significantly in the past 6 years as we have expanded to meet the demand of a much larger audience, and we can no longer operate this way. We are going to have to increase :(. We are trying to make it as painless as possible. Most of our sabers are going to have a just a small increase. However, to ease the pain, we have decided to do away with the single emitter option. We have gone back and forth on this the past couple of years. We love seeing that $299 entry level price point. But, in practice, almost no one orders single emitter. Our average is 1-2 per hundred. This is another product we have to carry that almost no one orders. This is a waste of resources that could be used elsewhere and, more than that, seems to cause mass confusion on the site. I am often tracking folks down because they ended up placing an order and not choosing either type, so they end up with no led at all. We are trying to streamline the site to be less confusing and, when the new site launches, hopefully it will be even better. But what this means to you all is every saber includes Suncrusher. So all increases INCLUDE the $39 upgrade that used to be a separate charge. So most sabers are only increasing by a net of around $11 this round. We are going to try that and re-evaluate in the next several months to see if we can remain profitable with only that small increase. Believe me we are trying folks.
Before all the suggestions flow in, let me cut to the chase. We spent the last several months looking at other options. The most obvious being go to China for our manufacturing needs. And, this is meant with no offense to those that are OK with sabers made there, or to our vendors or peers that are based there. We do not feel that the majority of what we see coming from Asia is of the quality we want to put our name on, nor do we have the same level of control on the quality, fit and finish of the end product as we do going down the street. We would rather have lower profit, a slightly higher retail price, and offer a product we can be proud of. Have it made here in the US, keep jobs here in the US, and be able to control the quality at the standards we want to provide to our customers. And before people get up in arms about this and say, “Well what about so and so” please know that I have (or have had) examples from every major saber manufacturer and even a goodly majority of smaller ones. I KNOW what the quality of those are compared to ours from an educated, professional standpoint. This is not a slight against other companies or what they are doing. This is about US at VV, and what we believe in. We believe in our product and our quality and are not willing to compromise on that particular thing. We never want to be a “mass producer”, even though we do sell a lot of sabers. We always want to be a boutique business with direct customer service and care and offering a level of quality and attention to detail that is unmatched in the price level, and keep a small elite team of skilled artisans and electronics specialists so that we can continue to deliver the best product in this pricepoint to our customers.
In light of this, we will soon be releasing a new Combat Class model that will be our entry level price point saber, as the REV-N, Havoc and Fury will be going up a bit. In addition we will be releasing several new Combat Class Sabers over the next few months, all across our pricing spectrum. With these new models, before anyone asks, they are NOT necessarily going to be added to the product line up. We are going to judge demand, the sabers that are popular will remain in the line-up, those that are not, will be retired. We may even retire a few of our current line up over the coming months also. Moral of the story, if you really like it, get it while it is hot. That will ensure you get the saber you want, and also show demand for the product so that it stays in the lineup :).
We will be taking the website down for a few hours on Monday 7/24/17 to enact the price changes and some other streamlining to the site to try to improve some of the things that seem to be confusing folks. While we do have a new site in progress it is still not quite ready so this is the fix for now. SO…get in before the price increases! They will be happening Monday. If you have been on the fence, or were planning on a single emitter option for some reason, this weekend is your last chance to get single emitter or current pricing. Consider this sales pricing to get your saber with all the new features at today’s price, prior to Monday’s increase.
A few last things:
We still do not have pricing on Plecterpixel™, but the product development is going very well, so we should have more information soon. We have a lot of folks in the industry collaborating on the product together so as a group we can bring a cohesive, durable, streamlined system for this great new tech to the hobby.
Starkillers are also very imminent (release in 6-8 weeks or less), with the internal core finally in full swing production. Before anyone asks, “will these be Combat Class?”, answer’s no. They will be a higher end limited run and you will all know why when you see them :).
TFUII folks, we have not forgotten you. The core on the new Starkiller is a test run for the techniques and features we want in the TFU II core so that will follow soon!
Too many other great things coming to announce it all but definitely stay tuned. The next couple of years are rocking and rolling at the Vault.
We want to say Thank You, especially, to all of our loyal customers. You are the reason we do this. You share our love and passion of Star Wars and glowy flashlights and we are honored to build your sabers for you!
Finally, we want to thank our competition. You are attentive and direct and eager to take our place if we do not keep improving, adapting and developing. You inspire us to find new ways to improve our products and services. We salute all of you! You have been good for us!
We hope these changes will be positive for everyone and that we continue to earn your business.
May the Force Be With You All!
Topic: Huge VV Announcement and State of the Union Address! (Read 4278 times)