Tungsten V2

Greetings,

As you are all aware we have been running behind on orders for a long time now.  While we are very hesitant to attempt scaling our business or outsourcing production, we have been working on a Tungsten V2 behind the scenes to speed up production and make some modest improvements to the design.  I believe these changes will help us a lot with catching up on orders as well as provide customers with an all-around better product.  However, while I would encourage and appreciate everyone switching to the new design (at no extra cost), we will still offer the existing V1 design for outstanding orders for anyone who wants exactly what they originally ordered.  The downside to the Tungsten V2 changes is that they have increased our costs, on top of cost increases we have eaten over the last year or so.  Therefore, we are going to offer one last drop (August) at the original Tungsten price.  Moving forward, we will offer Tungsten V2 at a higher price of $2199 for double sided and $1699 for single sided.  Outstanding orders will not have to pay any extra to switch to Tungsten V2. Note: the appearance/design is very similar to the original, but we don’t have professional photos to share yet.   

Here is a break down of the chassis changes and driver changes:

Chassis:
1. New jack design built onto a custom PCB - no more soldering required and drivers could be user replaceable. 
2. New custom finish (first in the country for 3d printed parts according to our supplier).  This is a new type of powder coating that provides a more uniform finish while still having scratch resistance as good or better than cerakote in our testing. This change will improve consistency, fit, and finish of the chassis.
3. New cup design to accommodate the new jack PCB system as well as slim down the cup.  Cups can now be removed from yokes if needed by customer.  Larger cable connectors now fit much better (DHC / Norne and Furutech for example). 
4. New headband design to improve the consistency / distribution of clamp force and reduce weight.  Changing cerakote color from Armor black to Graphite black to better match chassis finish. 
5. Tweaked yokes and rod blocks (second set screw removed) as tolerances have been improved.  

Drivers: 
The goal with the drivers was to decrease the reject rate on the gold traces, which saves time and money, as well as improve consistency.  This was made possible by some new gold (still 24K) manufactured such that it has a lower resistance at the same thickness.  The upside is that the new gold allowed us to increase efficiency without reducing sound quality.  The gold is a little thicker than before, but the traces are now narrower and a new adhesive process has allowed for less adhesive, which means the moving mass should now be less.  Because of the reduced mass and the traces being centered over the strongest area of the magnetic field, efficiency has now increased by 20-30% at the same impedance.  I believe there is a subtle sound quality improvement, but will be getting feedback from reviewers soon and will let them speak to the difference.  While my measurements show smoother treble (mostly a significant reduction in the small peaks seen around 8khz and 12khz) we have not had them measured by a 5128 or GRAS system yet, so I will withhold measurements for now.  We hope to get them validated soon. 

We will be sending a follow up email to the orders coming up soon (September through November orders), but if you know for sure which version you prefer, feel free to respond now. We will also be shipping out demo units to reviewers, so more impressions and measurements will be out soon.  The Tungsten V2 page will be live in a few weeks when have professional photos taken.

In the future we will also offer driver upgrades for folks who have V1 units, although we will not be starting that for a few months.

Thank you,

Ryan