sundownz

Black Friday was an authorized sale -- where we also offered a discount to dealers as well. That was fine -- all dealers could participate.

No, they are not authorized to sell below MAP -- the only exception are items they have bought out that we no longer offer (eg: SA-8 v1.5, SAZ-1000D, E8 v.2, old NeoPro v.1). Very often they will buy out what remains of old products and close it out at a discount. If there is a discrepancy more than likely they haven't updated all of their listings to 2014 pricing on all fronts -- where is the discrepancy on a current model product that you are referring to ?

Any shop that works hard to actually MOVE our product and keeps a fair amount in stock to take advantage of discounted / free shipping will make PLENTY of margin. Not to mention the new 2014 tiered pricing which offers incentives to dealers who are able to sell more volume. Obviously you can't sit one unit on the shelf, have people walk in, point at it and get 100% mark-up.

People choose to be ignorant on certain subjects. It is annoying.

For a 500-watt driver there is really no reason to use beyond ~14 awg wire other than cosmetics. 16 awg wire also works perfectly well for woofers in this power range... resistance is only 4.016 ohm for 1000 feet; so say you have 10 feet 0.04 ohms additional resistance. At the current levels we are looking at for a 500-watt speaker it's negligable.

This was all prototype discussion and estimates; final spec are what is listed on the site.

Second round of prototypes are done at the factory; I have a 3rd round in the works as well for testing comparison purposes :

Some pictures from the factory -- they won't ship out until after CNY but I will post a pre-order once we confirm they are on the way

Probably, yes. It's one of the strongest stamped frames I've had my hands on / is not expensive and it works great for the clearances I want.

All online stores should be updated any time now -- all local dealers have been e-mailed new price sheets as well. If you are a dealer and haven't received it yet let us know as dealer costs are also revised for 2014! The "Team" woofer will likely receive a name change before launch; but we are still debating what it will be -- we concluded that "Team" is too confusing since other people will be able to buy it. Many products that did change changed very little except for big amps and the NeoPro line. I did some massive number crunching to make sure all pricing was on point and mathematically / economically sound for us, dealers, and distributors. Some additional fine tuning may come during 2014 -- and do expect new products, revised products, etc to be added as the year proceeds

Had a fun and productive trip

Once we get it running again not sure The camshaft position sensor is out again -- so it won't start.

I'll be headed out at 3:30 AM to start my CES / west coast trip. See you guys on the 14th when I get back. All of the rest of the crew will be at work until Tuesday evening; when a few of the other guys will join me from then for the rest of the week. They will be back on the 12th. Some of the crew will be at the shop the entire time, of course, we will not be closed completely.

Unfortunately I simply cannot sell them for less; I use a formula equal to my cost * a percentage to come up with all of my pricing. I calculated this with no tooling or R&D put into the cost either -- so I am simply making less on the first batch to cover those costs. I had to use the most expensive factory we deal with to get these made to work the way I want as well.

Third revision prototype is in : ** Free air test ** ** Test Bench test in-box **

Indeed. The Z v.3 motor is 30mm wider with thicker steel -- the X has a taller magnet stack for the additional excursion, though. Unfortunately i dont know enough about car audio to ask intelligent questions, but maybe you can interpret what im asking. How is motor ability (force?) Measured? And what is the difference between the z v.3 and the x If you are simply after force -- BL^2/RE -- in which the Z v.3 is a good bit more powerful than the X motor.

Indeed. The Z v.3 motor is 30mm wider with thicker steel -- the X has a taller magnet stack for the additional excursion, though.

It should be early February -- but I am holding a pre-order until I am more certain.

We have not had any complaints on our shirts in the past -- all of our newer designs are printed on a t-shirt printing machine "direct to print" rather than silk screened (https://www.facebook.com/facelessclothing). The standard Sundown Logo shirts have a vinyl pressed on here at our shop by Derrick -- which we have also done for many years. We have used the same brand for years as well -- we all wear them daily to work and they hold up nicely. Can you specify which type you have ?

Nice pics

We have been working on the surround glue issue since we discovered it : 1) It is intermittent -- so not all woofers are affected and those that are not uniformly affected. More than likely if your woofer is fine after a few hours of play you will not run into any issues at all. You do not need to take it out and mess with it and potentially cause damage. 2) As soon as we discovered there was any issue all woofers were tested more thoroughly for any such issues with the gaskets being removed and workers checking for adhesion; any that did not adhere completely from the factory were carefully re-glued by our staff at this point. Most of these were successful as our glue is superior to the factory glue (not an issue on anything else we've made, though). 3) Some of the early units that we re-glued resurfaced again with the adhesion issue after shipping to customers. We met with adhesives engineers at this point as we have always used the same glues and procedures with no problems -- we discovered that the new surrounds had "mold release" compound on the glue surface area of the surround but at varying levels of concentration (eg: the workers apply it and then make 10-20 surrounds, then re-apply, so the first one has the most compound on it) making it intermittent and thus very hard for us to track down and acutely diagnose -- this is not something we have seen before on our other surrounds but after then bringing this up with the surround manufacturer AND a few industry insiders that we know we discovered this was necessary due to how large the surrounds are so they didn't stick in the mold during mass / fast production. This is also something the surround manufacturer failed to mention to us OR our build house ahead of time AND something not present on prototypes and samples -- as small volume sample runs allowed time for the workers to slowly remove the surrounds from the molds thus not requiring a release agent. Any units we have re-glued and/or built in house since we discovered all this have followed procedures recommended by the adhesives engineer to prep the surfaces; so far all of the units treated this way adhere just as well as all prior surrounds. For anyone attempting a DIY fix simply remove as much of the old adhesive as possible in the detached area, clean both surfaces with rubbing alcohol and/or acetone applied to a cloth, allow full dry time, and re-glue with E6000 adhesive (closest thing to our adhesive readily available). 4) As a result any additional factory made drivers coming into stock that we already had started production on will have the surround BOLTED to the frame in addition to glued. Furthermore; around 60-75% of all Z v.4 and X series will be assembled here at our facility by the end of 1Q 2014 as well... and 100% by the end of 2Q 2014. In order to ensure that we do not have any similar problems in the future we are building an assembly line system for this; as we have traditionally "hand crafted" one by one all of our big drivers. Obviously this is not possible on higher volume lines like the X and Z v.4 so we'll be doing mass production here in NC on those lines coming up in 2014. We, of course, realize this has been frustrating to some customers -- it's just as frustrating to us due to the intermittent nature of the problem; at several points along the way we thought we had it fixed. As with any "all new" product that launches at high volume some snags are possible. As a manufacturer all that we can do at this point is to fix any problematic drivers for our customers -- which we have gladly done for anyone who contacted us with this problem and will continue to do so AT NO COST. There are some people who have chosen to refuse service and would rather blast us on the internet. I suppose that is their choice to do so -- but we would prefer to simply take care of any customers affected. If your woofer is damaged in any other way as a RESULT of the surround glue problem we will completely re-build the driver or replace it for you. We have also offered customers the option of trying a DIY fix if they choose to do so to avoid down-time -- we will also COVER the DIY fix if it is unsuccessful and the issue resurfaces. I also took the time to make this post to let everyone know we know about it and have been working tirelessly to improve our processes using this as a learning tool -- as well as doing whatever we can to take care of any affected customers. We appreciate everyone that has taken up their issue directly with us and allowed us to fix it for them. The internet is a great tool but often times people choose to use it to viciously attack one another, products, and companies rather than to have their problem actually solved.

Third prototype is done -- specs coming in between the first two prototypes. The box model graph is essentially identical to the original. Hopefully I have reached the perfect balance of mechanical durability and response -- should have it after new year some time in my hands Gray is the first prototype I published spec on which was a bit too soft. Yellow is the 2nd prototype that was way too stiff. Green is the 3rd prototype that I hope achieves the best balance.

Our Holiday Schedule is as follows : We are open December 23rd -- We are CLOSED December 24th through 27th. We are OPEN Dec 30th through 31st. We are CLOSED January 1st then back to normal January 2nd. Hope everyone has a safe and happy Holiday season from all the team here at Sundown Audio !

Did some heavier abuse testing yesterday. Ended up breaking the solder joint from the tinsel lead wires to voice coil lead at the neck joint on one side -- but did not actually break the neck joint or thermal the coil. Had it up around 550-700 watts clamped at the point of my testing before that failure occurred. These samples have tied-on leads and actually the "floating" leads would have prevented this type of failure as it was a result of excessive forward stroke tugging the tied lead out of the hole it passed through -- and of course I was doing 550-700 free air on a 300-watt rated driver anyway so I can't say I am disappointing Either way I have some Rev.2 prototypes in the works to address the high Qts and a few other minor things I want to improve. I have been spending alot of time as well making sure I can still offer them for the $60-70 range or VERY close to it

Yes they are legit. We have very few online dealers -- all of the ones listed on our web-site are legit. If they are not on our list then be wary.