The $150 Orbit Turntable from U-Turn Audio

ahh , thank you for that Info !
well 3 more days if anyone wanted one , i'm still on the Fence myself .

 

Well it's now down to the Last 24 hours , I decided to buy in for one of the $250 tables , looks like they are Gonna break the $200,000 mark !! Nice to see so much interest in Turntables

 

Help an old guy out here.. If one wants to but one of these turntables, they need to "pledge" $150 dollars to the campaign? And then these three kids make you a turntable and send it to you?

 

Not bad; they made nearly 4x the goal, at $233,940.

You could have, but the Kickstarter is now closed. At some point, they may open up and list a price for production. You should sign up for news via their web site.

The idea around Kickstarter is that many interested people can fund a project; what happens after then is up to the project starter.

 

Wow, $233,000 nice little score. I hope the tables turn out fine for those who contributed.

 

I guess there are two ways to look at it - $233K is a nice chunk to start a business with...providing that delivery can be made on the product as far as upscaling the business model goes...

or...

$233K isn't much if you have three people devoting three years of their lives to it and still have to deliver a costly product, especially if additional employees have to be hired and manufacturing space obtained.

Certainly give them credit for doing it!

 

Yeh , it was nice to see them Raise that much $$$ & see so many people interested in a Turntable , it will be fun to see how they are come May .
From what they are saying there will indeed be sales starting in the summer as they want to be able to ship overseas as well as people were asking if they would do international shipping .

 

Well that's the way it is supposed to work.

http://www.polygon.com/gaming/2012/...ckstarter-funders-can-expect-when-they-pledge

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...raises-worries-about-platform-should-it.shtml


As I correctly pointed out on AudioKarma, U-Turn is under no legal obligation to ever ship a single turntable. The price, to me, seems ridiculously low and they will likely wind up losing money on every table produced. They simply didn't realize how expensive it is to launch a product and operate a manufacturing business. This is not a well thought out solid business model (which is why they couldn't get more conventional funding) and I am dubious anyone will ever receive the product. I hope I am wrong but I think these guys will be facing bankruptcy within months.

 

Agreed. I think people are acting foolishly on kickstarter. Way too easy to pledge to something that looks "cool" and hit a "pay" button. My ten year old son showed me a game being funded on Kickstarter. $750,000 pledged. All this company has to show is ten computer animated videos of block characters running around. Something any smart guys with a copy of Maya or Lightwave could pump out. So these guys make ten 30-second videos, then raise three quarters of a million to launch their game. Who knows if there's any infrastructure/hardware in place? My guess is when people get scammed out of a million dollars, Kickstarter is going to get hit hard in the court of public opinion and either have to show the committment to legally protect backers or rethink its model.

Just suss out the "in case we fail" undercurrent in U-Turn Audio's kickstarter pitch:

We have comprehensive plans to scale up, but taking our project from prototype to production is a formidable task. We will need to set up a full-scale manufacturing facility and install equipment, including a CNC router. And then the real challenge begins. We have built numerous prototypes and pre-production units, but have never built the Orbit at quantity. Full-scale production will require a huge amount of time, effort, trial, and error. We know the product inside and out, and the Orbit has been designed for simple manufacture and assembly; nevertheless, we are likely to confront production challenges throughout our first full run. Then there is the task of packing, storing, and shipping our units. We have done our best to prepare for logistic challenges, having already secured fulfillment space and begun work with a packaging company to ensure successful delivery of your Orbit.
We face all the common risks and challenges associated with manufacturing a physical product. Since we are working with contract manufacturers and third-party suppliers, we are at risk of dealing with production delays as well as quality control issues and unexpected costs. We have performed due diligence to minimize these risks - carefully analyzing component and materials costs, factoring a generous flex budget into our goal, and having backup suppliers on call in case something goes wrong. Since U-Turn Audio is a startup with limited financial resources, the scope of these risks is larger.

 

That's pretty misleading...THOSE TWO LINKS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH U-TURN. You should have made that clear in your post.

 

I haven't heard anything recently about the turntables. I know they reached their kick starter goal back in January.

Sent from my AT300 using Tapatalk HD

 

delivery may 2013

 

seems this keeps getting pushed back indefinitely.

 

Heresy! Bring out the pitchforks!

I personally find the idea of investing, um donating, to fund a start-up company without any potential ROI to be ludicrous. This is a business, not a public service. If the loan officers in a bank won't give them financing, why should I?

 

July, it looks like. But I'm sure they're close. All those plinths on the pallets are reassuring. THey just had to hire four people to do assembly. I guess it was coming along too slowly. I'm really curious about how the unipivot arm sounds. We'll see, I guess.

 

Yeh , they claim that all will be out by the end of August , I got my Email for my shipping address ....

 

They were answering public Questions today ...

http://www.reddit.com/r/vinyl/comments/1htg1a/back_in_january_we_crowdfunded_a_turntable_now_we/

 

The company is pretty active on instagram with pics of the building process and other things.

 

You are comparing apples and oranges. Banks require security when they make a loan (your house for example). These three kids have nothing they can offer for security so forget about banks, that is apples to oranges. To make it apples to apples think of people who before the days of the internet use to go to friends and family (or worse to loan sharks) to fund wild ideas they had when they could not get a bank loan. If the idea failed (as wild ideas usually do) then a few people lost a lot of money because the risk was spread over only a few backers. In the Kickstart model the idea is a lot of people take just a little part of the risk. If the idea fails then all the people are out whatever they felt comfortable giving. This is much closer to an apples to apples comparison.

What I do not understand is why some people get worked up about this? I think this is the second thread we have had on this U Turn project in which some folks here got very upset over these guys being able to raise money this way. No one has held a gun to anyone's head and said they must give to this project. If you do not want to give it is no big deal, it does not make you a bad person or anything like that. But, if someone else wants to give $5, $25, $150 or whatever, what do you care, it is not your money?

I could be wrong about this being the second thread on the U Turn TT.

 

OK, fair enough.

Anyway, I wish the people behind U-Turn the greatest success and hope that their product meets the expectations of their backers.

 

Anyone have theirs yet?

 

Got ours, and we'll have a full review in issue #59. Its actually pretty good. We were all surprised at the final product. Going to sell it if anyone wants one, PM me.

 

Very nice. I can't wait to hear your review.

 

Interested to hear comments on the product, as well as build quality. When you see many projects get funding on Kickstarter it wil be good to see how "The Orbit" turns out. $150 isn't that much for a turntable when today spending a little more can score you a really nice vintage table.

 

What's all the fuss about vinyl?