Hi everyone,
We wanted to share a blog post about our current Ribbons pre-order and how things are going over here.
First off, we plan to start shipping this batch of units in mid October, with oldest orders shipping first. This is on track with the original 8-12 week timeline quoted.
Also just a heads up - the pre-order window will close on October 4th, or earlier if we sell out. As of now we have about 40 slots left. If you want a guarantee that you’ll get a Ribbons this year we recommend placing an order soon.
In the meantime we’re keeping busy! Here is a snapshot of where things are at:
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Electronics stuff — Our local contract manufacturer just finished all of the surface mount electronics for Ribbons. I made this short video that gives you a sneak peek into the whole process if you’re curious. He’s now moving on to soldering all of the through hole components (pots, jacks, footswitch connectors, etc). This is the first time our guy has handled the eletronics from end-to-end, and it’s expensive but a big help. Hopefully we can keep it up for future projects.
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Asssembly — We’ll start getting electronics in house in batches next week, so we’ll move on to placing them in enclosures and adding all of the hardware. This step usually goes pretty fast.
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Testing and QA — I’ve spent this year designing software tools that can test pedals independently. We briefly referred to this as KMART (Kinotone Multiple ARbitraty Tester) but that quickly felt too dorky to say out loud and we renamed it KATS (Kinotone Assisted Testing System). And yes that is a Fallout reference, haha. KATS fully automates our hardware QA and greatly improves the end-of-line processes - nice!
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Firmware — As we’ve mentioned elsewhere these units will ship with a 2.0 firmware update. The most interesting update (I think) is the new MP3 Touch Mode. Another cool update is that you’ll be able to use any of the Touch Modes while your 4-track loops are playing back. Sometimes practical, sometimes a little crazy, but a really fun option. This firmware will be made available to all Ribbons users but I’ll need some time to port it back to the original units. No specific release timeline yet but probably late October or early November. We’ll share more info on the forum once it’s ready.
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Manual Updates — With new firmware comes documentation updates, so we’re also working on revising / updating our paper manual and having it re-printed.
I think that is more or less everything. There’s a lot to do but we’re feeling pretty good!
We’ll leave you with some pictures:
Enclosures arriving
Sid enjoying a fresh box 
A batch of enclosures fully prepped to have the electronics added
I know it doesn’t look too exciting but we’ve prepped all the shipping and production boxes which will make packing units up for shipment so much faster. 
Inspecting PCBs to make sure every trace and connection meets our expectations 
Inspecting PCBs after final SMT assembly
Writing firmware, wrapping up odds and ends for the big 2.0 update 
