@James : can you please share the current status with us ?
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We just got an image from the supplier today about the new samples
They will be shipping them to us next week so I will have more information for an update then!
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I’m so disappointed that I don’t even use MOD anymore. When I enthusiastically bought the Kickstarter version with FootSwitch and the expression pedal. I still have to receive the last two, but honestly, it was not worth my having sold all my pedals to get the money to enter that dream. I made a sarcastic comment at the beginning of the year saying that we would not receive the expression pedal this year, unfortunately that will happen. I can hardly wait to receive all the items I bought 6 years ago to put everything up for sale.
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If they’ve received the samples for the expression pedal and they’re ok, then I would expect production to start very soon.
We’re about due for an update anyway.
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Hi everyone,
I know I said they would ship a new sample to us in the last update but the manufacturer sent me some videos as well as an inspection report which made it clear that many of the issues we raised with the last feedback still have not been addressed. Even their own inspection report recognised the issues which they said they would fix in mass production
I asked them not to bother sending us the sample until the issues have been resolved. I’m not comfortable to consider moving to production until I’m confident that the product is of a high enough standard. We want to make sure we make a product we’re proud of and that you guys receive a product that you will enjoy to use for years to come
Meanwhile we are building new relationships with manufacturers all the time and keeping ourselves open to contingency plans if it does not work out. We would rather not have to change plans again but we will do whatever we have to do moving forward.
I too hoped very much that we would be shipping the Expression Pedals out this year before the Dwarf, but we can’t move forward until it’s right so for now we will continue waiting together a little longer.
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thanks, @James – communication is key! 
while it’s really unfortunate that it’s been so difficult to sort things out with this manufacturer, i’m heartened that product quality is foremost in your minds and plans.
keep up the great work… cheers!
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Hi,
I stepped away from the forum for several months because my patience was waning but now I have to say I’m done… please issue me a refund for the expression pedal I paid for as one of the original Kickstarter investors. My Duo hasn’t been used in months, looking at it just makes me regret signing on to this now…
What bothers me just as much is being the only featured artist (Rated Blue) that didn’t get moved from the original web site to the new one… I am neither great nor terrible as an artist, but I took the time and effort to publish a few performance videos highlighting the MOD that were well received here on the forums, I reached out privately about being omitted from the artist page and was assured it would be addressed and it never was… It’s not about the recognition it’s about reciprocity…
I’m all for being patient and understanding but the whole picture here has left me very disappointed. Please contact me to arrange my refund.
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For me it is a bit different, but I understand where you are coming from. It is weird. There are plenty of people who want to buy your stuff and after six years they still can’t. And they only receive news about a product they paid for when asking in groups or make sufficient noise?! Instead, new products are launched I cannot remember anyone asking for in the forums. And don’t get me started on the number of gain plugins! I have no idea what this is about neither and it feels odd.
Having said that, I personally feel, that MOD Devices is a great company with outstanding products. And given that nobody is perfect, perhaps that is what we have to live with? Sorry to hear that you are leaving the ecosystem and best of luck in finding the perfect device for your musical endeavors!
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The feeling is totally understandable. I’d be pretty frustrated too if I was on your side of the deal. Luckily the majority of our backers believed is us when nobody else would so they were very understanding of the whole situation (and we’re very grateful for that).
Unfortunately it’s harder than it looks to explain why there’s so much delay in something so simple! Why we can ship new products but not this one! Why…? There are many reasons but I assure you this: it is not because we don’t care about our backers and this community in general. We care. A lot!
We wouldn’t be here all those years having a direct line of conversation, answering hard questions and trying to survive as a company for so long if we didn’t care about you all. The easiest thing to do would be to throw in the towel and move on. But we chose not to.
@GMaq we couldn’t have asked for more from you. You’ve given us all you got and at some point you have to cut it loose. I’m honestly still happily surprised how graceful you’ve all been towards us given this entire situation. So for that, we’re thankful (maybe Thanksgiving got the best of me!).
For those staying with us, don’t lose hope because the Expression Pedal is coming (eventually).
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“Eventually” being the operative term. “Eventually” can’t be “maybe someday”.
It’s undoubtedly more expensive to get a local supplier, but given the language barrier and covid I don’t see how things could get much worse. It was a simple concept to start with, but there must have been some reason to change the design and functionality to something so radically different. If I read the latest status update correctly, the most recent samples came from (or will be coming from) a local supplier, and getting the new samples is either imminent or has already occurred. If that’s the case, then it should be about ready to go into full production, right? If that is correct, put me down as a beta tester for the first batch!!
If I misunderstood something (not unusual) in the previous status report, please correct me.
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The current supplier for the mechanical parts is the same one which we use for our other products. The difference is that it is a folded aluminium sheet enclosure where our other devices are diecast aluminium. This means that the parts are built by different people in a different factory and they have not been able to produce a sample of sufficient quality yet. I rejected the 3rd sample before they shipped it because I could see from the images they sent that they were not up to scratch. So we are still waiting for the 3rd sample.
I understand the frustration seeing other products progress while the expression pedal stays stagnant but I can tell you they are mutually exclusive. The Dwarf is not delaying the Expression Pedal and neither are the overdrive plugins. The only reason why the expression pedal is delayed currently is because the manufacturers are improving their tooling to make it properly.
I mentioned in one of the earlier updates that this project only landed on my desk at the beginning of the year. All of the design work was finished well before the Duo X production units and the Dwarf. It is taking longer because it is far more mechanically complex. That’s the crux of it. So it needs more iterations of the enclosure parts compared to the Dwarf or Duo X.
The good news is that compared to the Dwarf and Duo X, on the electronic and software side, it is much simpler, so once we get the enclosure right, it won’t be long before we can start producing them
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Hi @GMaq
It is very sad to read your message and even sadder to acknowledge the fact that you’re among our earliest supporters.
As @acunha has already mentioned, we have our customers in 1st place of priority but, with all the difficulties we’ve been going through, even the highest priorities are not always properly fulfilled leading to such broken expectations.
Regarding Rated Blue in the artist’s page, that’s a screw-up I can’t believe I let slip. It was passed on the marketing team but no action was actually taken and I did not keep track of it, so I guess you can personally blame me for that.
Lesson learned. Instead of lamenting I’ll make the effort to avoid similar screw-ups in the future.
I can’t thank enough for the support you gave us since the beginning, as a backer, as a Linux Audio enthusiast and as an artist. Also, I reassure you that even with such difficulties, we are not throwing the towel and we continue to pursue our goals.
I hope we improve to the point that your frustration can be mitigated by better outcomes from our side.
My dearest wishes
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MOD does many things right and people love your products – it certainly seems like it! That might be the reason why the issues at hand (communication, expression pedal, file upload,…) starkly contrast the positive developments. My DUO is working well as is but still I would like to see the company and ecosystem flourish further.
The Dwarf is not delaying the Expression Pedal and neither are the overdrive plugins.
Oh, the selection of overdrive plugins is outright fantastic… I meant to the many volume pedals (tiny gain, MOD gain, … ).
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The reason for the many gain plugins is just that they are easy to do development-wise.
In comparison, synths are much harder, so there tends to be less of them.
Most of the stuff we have right now are open-source plugins ported to the platform, so most are from developers’ own free time and personal interest.
That got us a good first initial batch of plugins, but understandably means most are on the simple side, and lack a bit on the attention to detail. In turn, almost everything is in the store for free as well.
Slowly we are putting resources into professional plugins ourselves. paying attention to stuff like zipper-noise and nice presentation and UX.
We also had the issue of plugin developers being limited by basic parameter support for plugins, which is not a thing anymore with the upcoming v1.10, so hopefully we can see more complex plugins going forward. (at least I really think so, lots of work on the software side so the MOD platform is no longer a limitation)
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Makes sense.
Others will certainly disagree, but for me as a hobbyist polishing is of lesser importance. But to capture the differences in your user base, it would probably make sense to conduct a survey and find out what SW features the participants would prioritize. Doing so would also emphasize that you are “listening to the people” and give you reasons to post stuff on your marketing channels on FB, IG, … just saying.
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Polish is certainly valuable and one of the things I love about MOD in general. Having said that, I also agree that more regular and proactive polling of the community (particularly) on the software side of development would help. At the moment it feels a little closer to the cathedral end of the spectrum than the bazaar end - as far as I know, hardly anyone outside a small core team is contributing, except for perhaps a few professional third-party plugin developers. (Please do correct me if I’m wrong.)
This relates to previous discussions such as Is MOD building products or a platform? and Reverse crowdfunding section for new plugins. I still believe that the MOD community is a fantastic but an underutilised resource which if fully harnessed could help propel both the MOD platform and company to new heights. Setting up the right economic incentives for developers to contribute could be a complete game-changer.
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I have my questions if this is related to MOD, or LV2 in specific.
We already have seen a few developers doing plugins in LV2 just because of MOD, because that is the format we use. The LV2 format allows many cool things, but it is hard to grasp for people not yet used to its concepts.
One of our goals at the moment, where discussion already started, is better tooling for plugin developers.
Because of us having to move quickly (for the small team we are) a few things like the mod-sdk project are not in a good shape right now.
One of the things in v1.10 is the “log” extension of LV2, so a print-like statement can send a message from the plugin side all the way to the browser. This will make debugging of plugins on the platform a LOT easier, no more just guessing what is going on 
With better dev tools, hopefully more will come and be happy on the platform.
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Sounds great!
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@gianfranco , @falkTX
Call me naive, but if you guys already have a lot of (meaning ‘too much’) soft&hardware work on your plate, then why start with the development of even more new things (duoX, dwarf)?
(Dont answer that question, i know the answer, i’m also in soft/hardware development 
)
But just for arguments sake : why not finish what you started and then move on to the next thing…
I totally understand @GMaq’s frustration : my mod is a first-batch baby-blue sn 20160218-1-01-001-0006 box, so i’m in the same boat as GMaq …
However, since i already came this far i think i’m just going to keep bugging you until i get my gift-wrapped packed-with-extra-goodies (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) shiny expression pedal
Grts
Thijs
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My situation is worse, I am also an initial supporter, but as I do not have technical knowledge to be able to call myself a beta tester, I prefer to wait for safer units. In fact, I still haven’t received my footswitch unit, because before it seemed that the development of the expression pedal would end and then I could receive them together. Please contact me to send me the footswitch.