Verum Audio - Exciting high performance DIY planar

Congrats Garuspik!

I am in . BTW I support the "no options" option.
Just one color to chose among, no fancy penises* on the grill etc.
Same parcel to everybody, call me a communist if you want.

*But who can resist some labial softness of the pads?

 

One of the early birds here. Congrats!

Just absolutely curious, is it possible to finish manufacturing these headphones sooner than the expected 4-5 months with the increased budget? I have zero knowledge about this sort of things, by the way, so feel free to club me in the head with something strong and throbbing if this is a dumb question.

 

He has to fund the injection molding process, which is expensive. That's what the kickstarter is for. Once that's done, he can start building them one by one by hand. So yeah, 4-5 months is probably a minimum!

 

Having seen some wrong turns before in KS and IGG, and not wanting to throw a dark light, but i'm curious if this "overwhelming success" is something purely positive for you @Garuspik.

Edit - will pass this to PM, because is nothing more than curiosity.

 

Kickarter campaign was launched NOT to do it by hand
Sure I'll hire workers to help with assembling.
I've made an assembling manual and bill of materials long ago. After KS campaign I'll order everything needed, rent bigger workshop and... become much less active in the Internet (at least until Verum 1s will reach their new homes).

 

The backers has just received the update:

Color options are available (link)!

No black grill

 

Whoah, that is AWESOME!

You have a LOT of orders right now, and you have a full month left... This ia going to be very very interesting!

How are you going to be doing quality control, considering how fragile planar drivers can be? Make sure you don't pull an Audeze and send out headphones with problems

 

I plan to make shitty multi-channel class D amp from aliexpress kits and stress-test every piece during 24 hours. Cheap and effective imho.

 

I actually really like that!

How do you recommend we power these? Zeos said his proto had trouble with some of his amps, but I can't imagine that would really be an issue with normal amps like the Schiit Magni?

Will you be personally overlooking each and every headphone personally to check that it is perfect before shipping? Will you be encouraging your employees to throw out messed up or broken parts if they accidentally mess up somehow?

I remember a story told to me by a guitar tech that I know. It's a story about the Kramer Guitars factory. They received an order for several hundred custom made guitars from a chain of guitar stores. They were deep into production of them when Kramer himself was walking through the factory floor to inspect the production chain for that batch.

He picked one up, and saw that the side dots on the neck were off-set one fret too high. So the 3rd fret marker was on the 4th fret, 5th fret marker was on the 6th, etc. He went to the rack where finished guitars were sitting, and saw that they all had that problem. These guitars did not have bolt-on necks, so they couldn't simply take them off and make new necks.

He gathered the entire staff on the factory floor, and gave them the guitar. He passed it around, and told everyone to inspect it and see what was wrong. Nobody actually checked the position of the dots, because "why would that even be wrong".

He eventually pointed it out to them. Everyone was horrified, because they knew the guitars were all flawed.

Furious, Kramer took the guitar, went over to a table saw, slamed the guitar fown and cut it right in half through the body, and threw the two halves into the garbage. He then screamed at them:

"YOU DON'T EVER LET SHIT LEAVE THE SHOP!"

 

@Garuspik
with all due respect for your color scheme choices, as a professional artist my recommendation would have been to combine the carbon texture with a silver grill. That would harmonize better for a more technical, modern look.

Would look something like this:

 

Don't want to go into the color rabbit hole but I approve of carbon and silver. Would be my choice but I care more about minimal product variance than colors.

 

Which cables/headphones are compatible to the 2x2,5mm connectors? Since I definitely need 4-PIN XLR I'm curious which other headphone model I could mention for the case I need a Forza custom cable or similar.

 

I really don't know why Zeos speaker amp has problems with Verum. And small thing with size of hockey puck was ok. Maybe he used headphone output of his speaker amp instead of speaker binding posts? That's the only reason I can imagine.
I even run Verum 1 from old Iphone 6 and everything is +- normal. No significant distortion till 95% of volume and rather high spl.

@sacredgates - I see that you're right but I've already made an update and don't want to make an update #2: oh sorry, I've found better color variant. It'll be too unprofessional. And again - you're right, your variant is better.

 

I must say, I had the same reaction immediately.

I appreciate your concern with looking solid and professional. But I would argue that it is more professional to correct a mistake or make a change that will produce a better end product.

It’s just a matter of how it is handled. “After backer feedback we decided....” etc. The KS is still live, people can cancel if they really really want to, but I seriously doubt they would. I’d argue that you will get more sales with the black and silver as an option. If this had come up prior to launch I even would have argued for only two options, Boobinga and Gold plus Carbon and Silver, they make the most sense visually.

I’m saying this as an actual customer also, and if this were to be my primary headphone I’d really not be pleased with the current colour options. As cool as the Boobinga and Gold is it really is an aquired taste, the others don’t work. Carbon and Silver you just can’t go wrong with, and it will appeal to a wider customer base.

EDIT: You could even run a poll on the choices, it may also serve to drive customer engagement and sense of ownership.

 

@Garuspik
Maybe consider @BenjaminBore´s comment. I fully agree with all his observations. (I think this has also to do with a little conflicting tastes in different countries. I have seen odd combinations with gold more often in Russia for example).
For me it is a knock out criterium with the options as they are now.
For international customers, I even dare to predict your sales will go up with the carbon/silver combination + it will become the preferred choice.

 

Ok, lets make in such a way - after KS campaign ends I'll make some sort of poll and users will decide carbon + gold or carbon + silver.

 

The carbon/silver combo is indeed the best color sceheme. Gold looks too tacky for me.

 

@Garuspik
If you decide to go that route I still would add an example image of carbon/silver right away now and state that just one of the two versions will be made depending on poll results.
Would make sense for the Boobinga one too. That one looks better with gold as @BenjaminBore already stated.

From a marketing point of view boobinga/gold and carbon/silver make the most sense imo.

Or if you feel it´s not too hard logistically to take care of four choices, just add the carbon/silver to the list and be done with it.

 

If left until after the campaign is over you will have a much higher risk of disgruntled backers, as they may claim that they were mislead re colour options. @sacredgates suggestions seem reasonable, though I would personally lean toward “less is more”. ie 2 strong choices, rather than 4 with a few visually inconsistant/weaker ones, as it will make a bolder and more consistant impression upon people.

 

@Garuspik
Once again @BenjaminBore nails it imo!