Sent a bear off to my insanely talented hometown boy @taylorsoundworks who now lives in China. Finally getting around to posting more about it! Here are a couple of pics of final touches and prep for shipping 📦 ✈️.
A couple more due to go out at some point soon just pushing to get some of the rare Elma indicators and caps which has been tricky!
All wrapped up and somewhere to go!
This quick snap was taken a day before Proto1 (Grandpa Bear) was shipped off for some real life studio workflow drills!
After we’ve had a good round or 5 with him, he’ll go visit a dear friend and beast producer/engineer @hutchprod for some extra vibe testing!
Progress on Proto2 (Mama Bear) is going well. A few tweaks to the CUBS circuit and faceplate as well. We also just received our new @grayhill_inc switches from the US as well as new LED buttons which will be an improvement for Mama Bear and her future offspring!
Oh also, one more small tweak made to our custom hand wound input transformer from @beebirdaudio . Please give them a follow if you’re into studio audio bits. They are building some insane stuff. Message my friend Saša for any outboard gear needs, He is an absolute legend.
A little Lo-Fi pic of our funky VU’s!
So happy with these as they aren’t your conventional meters. Instead they indicate a guideline to the amount of compression/limiting happening.
The user manual will explain in more detail but each combination of attack & retreat along with the honey and molt settings, gives such a wide range of gain reduction options and subtle colour/texture differences.
We’re so excited about using this gear more intuitively, wildly or cautiously making sure you’re actually getting what you want out of it! Bypass and hear the difference ✨.
The user manual will have more detail about the actual gain reduction amounts in dB ranges. 🐻
So close now! First prototype Just needs the custom VU meters (any day now!) and some final vigorous testing done. Then we can start doing demos with whoever is interested?
Prototype 2 has already been started with refined circuit board for switches and buttons etc. Also some other juicy tweaks under the hood!
Once we have the second prototype we’ll do our promo shots and demo vids. We’ll get user manual and press packs etc. finalised.
We first have to nerd out to the max to make sure this Bear is actually as cool as we think it is.
We’re looking to do a rad LIMITED EDITION run of 10-20 units to start. They will feature a limited edition plaque and unique faceplate (and some special extras inside the packaging for the limited edition peeps)
Also thinking of including the owners signature or signet on it somewhere. I haven’t passed this idea onto the team @beebirdaudio yet but I’m sure we’ll be able to ✨🙌🏻✨. One thing at a time!
Initial design drawings! Won’t show you some of the early, sketches from myself. Looked like a really bad stick drawing!
This was so fun going back and forth with my friend Saša @beebirdaudio who runs an amazing bespoke audio company in Serbia. Him and I have been talking back and forth for over year now about this :) He is a technical wiz and has been able to accommodate most of my sometimes unrealistic requests! He is a legend and i look forward to many years of solid work with him. 🌈
