FWIW I got a reply (e-mail) from Echobox in a couple of hours today.
I asked if it was still the case that our Explorers would be shipping in the next few days:
"Thank you for reaching out. We are looking to resume shipping this week, and are very excited
"
This does at least help me feel slightly less like I've backed the Marie Celeste.
As for Kickstarter being better than Indiegogo as regards investor risk, I will never back another Kickstarter since they utterly failed to investigate or take ANY action on the Aequus headphone scam that I and 80 others backed.
K.S. has ZERO interest in pursuing 'C J Hughes' or returning our investment despite 'C.J.' taking the money and running.
Kickstarter is NOT a safe place to invest.
Even if the Explorer turns out to be everything we hope it will be, it will likely be the last crowd-funder I ever back.
And before anyone says 'but you should know the risks of crowd funding', the Explorer certainly seemed a low risk solid design with some serious ground work already completed when the IGG campaign started.
I even got to handle and hear a couple at the first London Can-Jam way back in August 2015!
I was led to believe even then that only minor tweaks were required before launch!
Also enthusiasm was high for the finders too.
I've been listening to music on my cell phone since then (we don't all have the spare funds to simply give up waiting for the Explorer and buy an alternative) and REALLY look forward to decent sound on the go.
I am REALLY tired of the sound from my cell'