I can no longer fake my discontent. I bought it at the launch of the first Kickstarter campaign. I didn’t imagine it would take more than 6 years to get everything I bought, especially seeing the developer’s efforts on new products that wouldn’t exist without the initial help that I and other supporters gave. I feel betrayed. The question is: How long do I have to wait to get mad? 1 year? 3 years? 6 years? 10 … 20? With patient supporters like us, maybe 100 years?
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I just read into this thread… now I feel bad for receiving my Duo X while you guys still waiting for years. This whole thing doesn’t feel right, especially because there are already new hardware generations. I suspect that MOD devices needed more money to work on this pedal so they created the new hardware revisions.
I hope that MOD sorts this out rather quickly. This looks rather damaging for their reputation 
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Hi Guys,
Firstly I want to thank you all for your patience. I see that it has been over a month since I updated you and I appreciate that you guys are okay with good and bad news so I will aim to make more regular updates.
So the point we were at in the last update, we received samples from a new supplier who we are working with for a short while now. They have proved to be able to provide satisfactory parts for us, but in most cases we receive multiple samples from them, generally one or more details need to be adjusted, so we need give feedback and order another sample. There is a bit of back and forth. This can happen 1-5 times before we get a part we are happy with. This is quite normal. This latest sample had many things that needed adjusting. I spent quite some time evaluating the changes we needed to make as well as communicating with the supplier about how to make adjustments on their end. So now we are waiting for yet another sample
The truth is we are a very small engineering team, and the timing of development and production of our product range has managed to organize itself in a way that we are working on 3 products at the same time which all have critical deadlines. So basically our time has been stretched thin.
I started working for MOD in February and have taken over responsibility for most of the mechanical design and production. Despite the fact that the Expression Pedal was conceived years ago, it landed on my desk as a new design, with a new manufacturer. So in a lot of ways it was well behind the Duo X but it’s further along than the Dwarf. I have been working on it in parallel with the other 2 products so they are progressing at a similar rate. The Duo X is more or less out of my hands now, The Expression pedal will arrive next! and then the Dwarf.
The timelines for some of our products have been pushed back for many reasons, obviously the COVID-19 situation is a big one but also some other unexpected production hurdles. It’s hard to say how long it will take to get a sample that we can approve for production since this is the most mechanically complex project we have taken on. I predict it will take a few more months but I hope we can ship before the end of the year. Hopefully earlier if things go well. We are learning and growing and hope to improve on our ability to deliver to you guys, the community who are so patient and supportive. I will continue to make more frequent updates on the progress.
Thanks again and hang in there!
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Thanks a lot for listening James, and for the update - really appreciated. Yes, more regular updates would be great, even if progress is necessarily slow due to the small team, COVID, and other challenges. Spending 30-60 minutes per month updating the community is not going to significantly delay anything, and it would go a long way towards maintaining the community’s trust in MOD!
Not just that, but you would probably receive valuable feedback from us regarding design. This would be much preferable to doing all the design “in a vacuum” and then doing a big one-shot reveal around shipment time - this approach creates a risk of going in the wrong direction and ultimately disappointing your target audience.
I appreciate that building MOD hardware is not an Open Source project, but I think there are still huge benefits from treating it partially like one in some respects. And Open Source projects thrive best when they combine other types of openness, e.g. open design and open community.
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thanks for the update, @James!
we’re all part of this community precisely because we’re interested in information, and in thinking deeply into our gear… so a sense of contact with the process is important.
for myself, the clear interest in ~process~ which the MOD team displays is one of the principle reasons for my wholehearted adoption of the product line… so having at least a little window into development progress demonstrates that mutual interest. i’m less interested in having a particular product at a particular time than i am in seeing how your work is responding, adapting, and ultimately flowing towards something startlingly useful! 
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Hey everyone,
Though there is not a lot to report this time around, I thought I should make another update since I did say I would make these more frequent
Currently we are still waiting on a new sample from the manufacturer although we expect them to have it shipped within the next week or 2. We resolved all the adjustments that needed to be made over a long constructive discussion. We also put together a (mechanically) working prototype for them made with parts from various older suppliers. We shipped this prototype to them to use as a reference. This way they can see how everything fits together and how the pedal interacts so we expect the next sample to be much closer to the final result.
In the meantime, since we are getting closer to production, we’re also working on the procurement of accessories, mainly the new packaging and potentially some custom cables. We’re also looking into options for the “grip” or “tread” to be used on the pedal surface. Since people will probably have different preferences for this, we may go down the route of including a grip with an adhesive back in the box that is not attached so the user has the option to fit it or not. However the decision is not yet final
Let me know if you have any questions,
Hope you’re all doing well!
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Thanks a lot @James, and please don’t worry if you feel these updates are small as they still sound like exciting progress to me! IMHO small and frequent is far better than infrequent, even if they’re things like “we’re still waiting for X” 
And this way you may even get some useful feedback from the community as you iterate.
Like @plutek so rightly pointed out, we’re really interested in the process, not just the end result, and that mutual engagement can only help the continued health and growth of this fantastic community
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Have you received the samples yet?
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Time for another update!
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Guys, for me, i feel like a part of this team. Take any time you need, we believe in you. The most important is that it will Rock!!!
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well yes, I too believe in the team … but there are limits …
update please
Agreed, small regular (e.g. monthly) updates are needed. Even if it’s just “sorry, we haven’t made any progress since the last update because we’ve been busy with the Dwarf launch” that would be fine with me personally, and certainly better than hearing nothing. It’s good to have some degree of continued transparency
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Hey Everyone,
I was going to make an update last week after the samples arrived but I wanted to make a thorough assessment of them first.
I finished this assessment today and sent a detailed feedback document to the supplier but they will not be able to respond yet since they are on holiday until the 8th of October
Basically there were some big improvements over the previous samples but a lot of details which I explicitly specified in my last feedback document and updated technical drawings which were overlooked. There were things like missing standoffs, missing studs, incorrect bend radius and issues with the laser engraving. All of the hole tolerances, however, were almost perfect which is a good sign that they are improving the quality.
The good news for the timeline at least is that from our side, everything is correct. I won’t need to take any time to update drawings or anything so I expect the next sample should take less time and money. Having previously worked at a sheet metal factory, I’m able to diagnose the issues pretty quickly so I have asked them to send images of the tooling being used so we can remedy the issues.
So moving forward we just need to wait for them to return from holiday and get a new sample
I hope you’re all doing well, thanks again for your patience and please feel free to ask any questions you may have
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That sounds awesome - great work and thanks a lot for the update James! 
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Fantastic! Thanks James!
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thnx!
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beauty!
looking forward…
Oups, I dropped by too early for the monthly update 
October…