2019, Chapter 13:
Tonight, Chickenpowder and Cocaine!
Or, Introducing Sol.
A few days ago, a friend in Tokyo posted this amazing example of fashion English (and French, I suppose, as well).
I think it accurately summarizes how I feel about introducing Sol: off-base, surreal, but highly entertained.
Because I wasn’t ready to do this. Not now. Not after so many disappointments. I mean, the last few months have really felt like a death march. We’d get in a new platter—and it would look like ass. We’d get in another new platter—and it wouldn’t run to spec. We’d get in small parts that looked like they were finished by blind badgers. We’d get in other small parts that would be out of round, or crooked, or inverted (?!) or some other incomprehensible level of screwed up. And this would happen pretty much every week, so the hits…they just kept on coming.
And here’s the really funny part: almost none of these parts were super critical. The bearing housing? No problem? The bearing? Cool. The tonearm pivot? No problem.
But without those small, not-super-critical parts, we didn’t have a turntable.
And I think it was the small drip, drip, drip of disappointment after disappointment that got me to the point where
I never really thought we’d ship a turntable.
Like,
ever.
And so when the guys came to me last week and said, “We have platters,” I figured there’d be caveat. Like “We have platters, but they look crappy.” Or “We have platters, but they are mis-centered.” Or something like that.
When I discovered they actually meant, “We have platters, and those platters are the last part we need, and we can ship,” my mind just went into bizarro mode. I just didn’t believe it. It couldn’t be possible.
Hell, I hadn’t written the chapter!
Hell, I hadn’t written the press release!
But I didn’t really go into full chickenpowder and cocaine mode until they also added, “And we’ve built 20 Sols.”
I blinked a couple of times and said something really intelligent, like, “What?”
They said, “We built 20 Sols.”
“As in, done?”
They nodded. “As in, done and in boxes.”
Everything went kinda hazy and gray for a bit, like the last time I gave blood and had a couple of beers. Or like when someone calmly tells you they got abducted by aliens, then shows you the one they shot in the back of their truck. Or when you meet Elvis in the men’s restroom.
Holyschiit holyschiit holyschiit. That actually meant
we could ship Sols.
And so here I am this week, catching up. Because you know what? If we can ship Sols, we’re gonna do it!
A Salute to the Guys
The turntable is Mike Moffat’s baby. He’s the one who conceived it, he’s the guy who found the dude (Conrad Hoffman) who did the design heavy lifting, and he’s the guy who shepherded it through to the last year or so, when we both got too busy. For a refresher about how Sol came about, re-read the “Here Comes the Sol” chapter from earlier this year.
That’s when we handed over the mess to Tony, who, if you remember some even earlier chapters, was our second employee at Schiit. He’s long been a great tech, but handing over Sol for him to manage is one of the best things we’ve done. He took it to the end zone, so to speak, working with our vendors to finally fix all the last tiny issues on the product. He also set up the production space (see pics below—yep, it’s modest, but I find it comfortingly reminiscent of the garage era of Schiit—a small, raw new area that will hopefully grow), did all the prototype assembly, built the first few dozen tonearms, and also did the setup video. In short, we couldn’t have done it without Tony.
Tony now has his own minion, Elvis (no, not that one), one of the newest members of our staff. Elvis is doing great work getting us organized for Sol production, and already the production area is one of the best structured in the shop. And Elvis is busy training others to help with Sol production, even as Tony is out at RMAF.
Aside: I won’t be at RMAF. Still too much to do. Don’t weep for me, I like doing this stuff!
And I’d be remiss not to mention Tyler, who runs the HR and accounting side here, and who was also instrumental in helping the vendors understand, ahem, what we meant by “consumer quality,” and in helping Tony get the final parts hammered down. And Alex, the long-suffering director of operations, who worked with Tyler, Tony, and myself to make sure things happened.
In short, Sol took a lot of people a lot of time to get right…but it is finally right, and we’re going to start shipping…
…slowly and cautiously.
Slow and Paranoid
As I mentioned in the last chapter, Sol is the most mechanically complex product we’ve ever made. This means that, even after building 50 or so of these (with shockingly few glitches), even after measuring a couple, even after all of that, we’re gonna go slow at this. Lots of testing, lots of proving, lots of paranoia. Like Bifrost 2, but x10.
Which is good, because we’ll have a better shot at shipping you a mechanically ideal product. So far, things have worked very well, and the critical tolerance parts are all well within tolerance. But we’re continuing to measure and test, to make sure Sol is really, really good.
The old hands know what this means. “It means you’re gonna go into backorder,” they say.
Well, hopefully not, but we are not promising our usual 1-3 day shipping time on Sol. We’ve backed it off to 5-7 days. Hopefully it won’t go longer. Hopefully there won’t be a backorder. But we’ll see.
Because we’d all rather ship 100 good Sols than 1000 bad ones.
Why You Don’t Want a Sol, AKA “The Video”
When I realized we could ship Sol this week, I also realized several other things. I covered my lack of wordage above. But, most importantly, we also didn’t have a setup video. Tony had said he would do one, but he was also doing a bunch of the heavy lifting for RMAF. And he was leaving for RMAF on Tuesday! Argh.
Could we put together a video in time?
Yes, with the help of a friend and videographer we’ve worked with in the past. Tony and I came in on Monday, and while he and Brian were shooting video, I did the final shots for the owner’s manual. Kinda fun, actually, like old times at the agency.
The result is a 25-minute-long video that goes through all the setup and adjustment on Sol.
All the setup. All the adjustment.
As in, this isn’t a “take it out of the box and play records,” kinda thing. This is a turntable where literally every part is adjustable. VTA? Yep. Cartridge angle? Sure. Cueing height? Yep. Platter height? Yep. Motor pulley height? Yep. Arm cup height? Youbetcha. Anti-skate? Absolutely.
Plus: you have to buy your own cartridge.
And more plus: we expect you to have a phono preamp. Or buy one.
This kinda crazy high-level-of-owner-interaction experience is alien, if the only turntable you’ve ever used is a typical entry-level table. So if you’re not into doing an hour or so of tweaking, Sol probably isn’t for you.
The payoff for all this insanity? Lots better performance.
Sol follows the patters of uber-high-end turntables: no MDF or acrylic in sight, no standard cartridge, literally everything adjustable. You can dial in Sol’s performance to an insane degree, to extract amazing performance from even very expensive cartridges. But again, we get it: not everyone wants to go through the trouble.
So, here’s a suggestion: when you’re doing your morning workout, put on the Sol video. See if it looks reasonable. If it does, you’re a good candidate for Sol. If not, there’s a ton of other options out there.
If you do go for it, you’ll have a turntable that's really, really
yours. You’ll also have a turntable you can easily swap arms on—affordable arms, so if you want to have a cartridge specifically for mono and one for stereo, no problem. Or if you want to have a dozen, that’s cool too. Though a bit weird. But hey, so is owning a turntable in (nearly) 2020.
Future Spin
Mike and I have talked about tons of crazy stuff for the future, from pre-set-up arms with various cartridges, bases and dust covers to AC motor controllers to different options for the platter casting to active suspension systems, but all that is a bit beyond the pale. I can’t really think about that right now. It’s like worrying about whether gray aliens are real and if they are actually making alien-human hybrids.
So yeah. There may be more. But for now, we’re going to go with what we have: a basic turntable, at a fair price, that you can order an extra arm for, or add a Mani to, that we’ll build slowly and carefully to make sure they’re the best they can be…
…and then we’ll see what happens tomorrow.
In the meantime, let us know what you think!
I may consider one once I get some kind of plexiglass box built.
