Twisted Electrons MEGAfm

it’s the 19th and no news for me, did you have better luck? Thomann site says one week to be available, but I’m starting to think they just don’t know

I ordered one directly from Twisted Electrons back at the end of September and it just shipped this week, arriving next week (I’m in the U.S.). Hopefully that means that a batch is ready and that Thomann should be getting them soon also.

Alex sent out an e-mail a few weeks ago saying that he was overwhelmed with orders after Cuckoo’s video came out (understandable!) and that it was taking him a while to catch up. I told him not to hurry – it will be worth the wait!

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Same boat as you mate.
I’m getting a bit tired of watching the Thomann product page go from “3 weeks” to “1-2 weeks” to “less than a week” and back again.
I’m sure it’ll turn up eventually.

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Actually there is another video, which is much more to my liking

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HD4dUMDWM58

Twisted electrons never replied to my email and it’s ok I understand. What I find incredible is the lack of social presence of some brands. I mean, a tweet saying “Delays expected for MegaFM production” can take few seconds and let the customers feel in care. Curious that tech brands suffer this a lot, videogames being the worst.
edit: now I’m getting mad as Thomann switched again to 2-3 weeks availability. Is this guy at TE even not capable of giving a realistic deadline?

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I assume that Thoman just think that they can get some.
If nobody hears perhaps Twisted electron is a bit in trouble.
It’s rough times.
Perhaps you can cancel your order. Sometimes it’s better to let go instead of anger.

There’s a few on Muff Wigglers still getting theirs shipped out, some appear to have waited a pretty long time. Apparently the Cuckoo video created a massive surge in demand, which TE have been struggling to keep up with. None of this really excuses the lack of communication or uncertainty, but I’m sure they’re doing their best. To be fair to Thomann, they haven’t taken the money from my PayPal yet.

I might give it a couple more weeks…

It’s one guy. He’s usually quite quick to respond to email, and ship items. I think he’s probably just a bit in over his head with this particular product. (especially since he’s said as much) I have no doubt that everyone will get their MEGAfms. It’s a difficult situation to be in, if you don’t have help. When I used to put out runs of DIY PCBs I’d have to fill out sometimes over 100 individual customs forms to ship all over the place, stuff all the envelopes, piss off the post office worker unlucky enough to get me and my stack of envelopes. Inevitably some of the international packages wouldn’t show up on time (sometimes at all) and I’d have to re-ship, all the while trying to keep up with PMs for the people with questions, designing more PCBs, etc. It ended up being WAY too much, and that’s not even dealing with multiple vendors, manufacturers, and making a complete product. I ended up getting burned out, and stopped doing it altogether. (short of sending occasional batches to the DIY shops for a while) Doing this sort of thing as a one-man-show is a lot harder than most people realize, and yes, it is even harder than one would think to keep up on email when you’re running yourself ragged just trying to get things out the door. You just do your best to push through it. I don’t see any signs that Alex isn’t going to keep up shipping. It’s obviously just more demand than he thought, and I’m sure he’s doing his best. I’d cut him a bit of slack.

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Valuable insight. Cheers for explaining. (I recognise you’re not personally involved but a bit of context is helpful)
I’ve not bought one yet but intend to

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I also completely understand as a buyer it’s easy to worry when there are delays. I’m the king of hitting refresh on the FedEx tracking page :smiley:

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And we’re all looking for things to keep us sane under some level of lockdown, i refresh my Fedex tracking number for things far too much… read the manual in between…

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Some anger can be fine, it’s not like TE sells medicines, I’m just speculating.
Now I wonder if Thomann is totally making up the availability dates to keep the orders coming.

contacted TE about this, they replied quickly and after some back-and-forth they offered to switch the unit to another one. after sending it back they confirmed that there was indeed something wrong with the unit and sent me a new one. all went really smoothly so far. fast-forward a month or so, i received the new unit only to find that it’s even more buggy than my first one: some leds are flickering / not lighting up at all and there are even weirder artefacts in the sound. in addition, the build quality is questionable, some screws aren’t all the way in and the midi ports are barely aligned with the holes in the casing.

contacted TE again on November 11th but haven’t heard back yet even after sending two more reminders. getting a bit worried now…

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I don’t like to put down TE or their sales but I feel it’s fine to warn other potential buyers. I certainly agree that build quality is questionable. It is far from Elektron build and quality. I had a number of issues and bugs with the two units (one replacement) I had and had to return it.

me neither, i totally understand how stressful it must be to run this kind of an operation alone, but it’s still no excuse for neglecting customers who have been repeatedly sent malfunctioning units.

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going a little off-topic while I wait for my MegaFM (or cancel the order, I’m thinking about it), I purchased Plogue Chipsynth MD (OPL chip emulation) and mapped all the 4 operators on the Digitakt, so now I have a kind-of-emulation of the MegaFM workflow (and it’s nice). I’m using 4 midi channels, 1 per operator.

I do this too, and I think I always choose the “clean” version of the chips, 12 bit perfect or something like that. The stock settings with the 2612 are very noisy (usually in a good way!) 3438 is a nice middle ground with the genesis 3 DAC. It really is a great plugin if you’re jonesing for that OPN goodness.

Also just wanted to say I appreciate the experiences people are posting here, since I’m still on the fence with the MEGAfm. Maybe it will never be back in stock anyway.

Yeah, I’m giving it two more days, then I’m cancelling. There’s a Cobalt 8M out there winking at me and I can’t hold back much longer.

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I ordered weeks ago. Received an update today from Alex, thankfully.

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It’s because you are very good looking.