As the third quarter comes to a close I realize I haven't posted in a while so let me fix that while I'm thinking about it.
It's certainly no secret that much of my creative energy is focused now on developing and maintaining the growing number of products for the larger company (UST); but Signal Art is still a part of my day and is near and dear to me.
Warm mic mods:
Antonio and I are both close to being effectively 'caught up' aside from about 2 units in his workshop queue and about 4 special projects in mine. So we are as close to being effectively caught up as the company has ever been. If there were ever a time where you wanted to send in your Warm mics for modification/upgrade but didn't want to deal with the wait time, now is the time. Traditionally, things start to really heat up again toward end of year, so you'd be smart to set up an upgrade now if you have been waiting for the opportune time. That time is now. Usually things get so busy toward end of year that we are playing catch up for the first half of the next year. We expect things to be a little slower this time around; but not by too much... So now is the golden opportunity.
We are planning to develop the mod for the WA-8000 in December and to start offering that mod in 2025. That will be the last of the mic mods we offer, as I focus now on new product development and Antonio carries the torch for all of my comprehensive upgrades that we offer. We are getting one unit in December to fully dissect, and going into it without knowing much about what they did. We know it has the right tube, basically, so we won't be changing that. If it needs a new capsule, it will get it. If it needs a new board, it will get it. If it needs a new transformer, it will get it. Obviously it will get all new semiconductor components and wiring and re-construction and cleanup as we always tend to do. We hope to make it the best mod yet, as it will be the last one we develop, I think.
New Signal Art products:
Despite the promotion we did at the time, I still occasionally get emails asking where to find the Signal Art SAE ReAmp and AngReAmp, with people seemingly unaware of where they went. For those who still don't know, the SAE Direct Box and SAE ReAmp and SAE AngReAmp became the United Studio Technologies Vintage Direct and RePlay Box, respectively. We were unable to keep up with the demands of building these things out one at a time in the garage, and wanted to focus on just the handcrafted mic builds. With United, we were able to make these things not only look nicer but be more robust and rugged and reliable than ever before. Please pick one up if you haven't yet, and have been looking for the old SAE versions. The UST versions are every bit as good, and dare I say much better, in fact! I was very conscious during this transition of experiencing my own version of the 'Klon Centaur' effect where people would still be scouring the internet for the old handmade version. There is no need, by design. the UST version is actually BETTER! I am giving you my word on this, so please don't be 'that guy' who has to find the one that I drilled out by hand in my garage. LOL Although, I know some people are still going to be 'that guy', and, begrudgringly, I do 'get it'. LOL
As some know, my heart has been set on making the M49 the next SAE product I release. That is still in the works; but has been pushed back probably and realistically to 2026 although I do plan to start doing test units in 2025. Some issues with the mic I do offer (U47/U48) kind of needed to be addressed first, in order to guarantee that I can still produce that mic.
My beloved Western Electric 408a pentode tube (that I need a perfect pair of to produce my 47/48) has become harder and harder, and more expensive, to procure. As many know, I go through as many as 10 of these tubes just to get one perfect pair that I consider microphone grade. This process has just gotten harder, more expensive, and more time consuming as these tubes go up in price, come up in age, and go down in yield/quality in terms of what is left on the market.
I don't plan to discontinue that version of the mic anytime soon; I plan to continue to struggle on with it for the foreseeable future; but it has gotten a lot harder. I basically no longer ship the mic with a spare set of tubes due to how hard it is to get the perfect pairs of tubes. I more or less ship them with one perfect pair installed and basically a 'IOU' for one set if they ever need one. The need to move to another NOS tube is evident, and thus I've been hard at work trying to develop my own version of the mic based on the NOS EF800 and EF802 tube. This is the tube most often used by other boutique makers such as Wunder, Heiserman, Stam, Golden Age, and many others. While I always personally preferred the 'dual tube' solution as the closest to the original design and also as the 'road less traveled' in terms of design; I can see the writing on the wall at this point. We are working on making our own take on the EF800 circuit that will be our own spin on it and that we feel will hold up in every way to the one we currently have. I am excited to hopefully soon be showing off this design in new photos and making this option available on our website hopefully by the end of the year. I'm really excited that we will soon have 2 'tube amplifier' choices in the drop down menu just as we have 2 capsule choices.
Once that is done, we will be full speed ahead into developing our take on the legendary M49. As always, thanks for reading and being part of the SAE family!
Chad
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