And… it was in the spam folder
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thanks, brad. i think that most of us, at least myself, clearly understand that your an honest guy and working as hard as you can to produce the best product you can. i can’t imagine how much work this is for you.
if you want some advice for future projects, it’s under promise, over deliver. if you set realistic expectations with people and then meet or exceed them, people are happy and understand delays. if you set an expectation (e.g. 50 units/day production in early october), then don’t get close despite your hard work, you’re exhausted and your customers are disappointed.
despite being a ks supporter and not having received it yet, i’m still quite looking forward to the kordbot and can’t wait to see what happens to with future updates. i can sympathize with your situation and wish you nothing but success. 
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message me on fb, i’ll look you up.
thanks, i got the email december 28th, so i assume it’s taken care of and the tracking info just hasn’t been sent out yet. if i don’t see anything in a week or two, i’ll send you a fb message. i’m patient.
ok!
I didn’t actually order a kordbot cause I don’t crowdfund but I’ve been watching from a distance, it seems you’re working alone or with a couple of people. how are you going to maintain taking orders once all the crowdfund buyers are out the way? If it’s taken this long how long is it gonna take to get units out to other buyers? Another year? I’m not saying I could do any better, it just seems this isn’t the best way to run a business. how are you going to be able to extend your product line or even maintain sales for one product at this rate? I totally understand it’s hard to get a real product on the shelves and I respect that you’ve pulled it off, but there was a lot of potential for kordbot that’s being capped by production speed. why not expand the workforce?
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both very valid points.
Unfortunately, these are some of the lessons you learn after the fact. I had no incline whatsoever that I was going to sell the amount that I did, and in fact thought that there might be a couple of hundred.
At that time, I could hardly turn round and say, ‘hey you know what, this is far too much, sorry but I’ve changed my mind’
Jb, you are right, but there would also have been zero chance of securing investment from a venture capital firm, for example, based on an idea with absolutely no market validation.
What I have ascertained from this is just that, market validation, which stands me in much better stead, moving forward, for securing capital.
Jukka, as you say, it’s much easier to maintain a steady flow of orders than try to manage a ton of them all at once, as I have been doing.
That said, now i have a 3rd party manufacturing the boards for me, but I am doing all the through hole parts myself, due to the cost involved having them do it. Moving forward, they will be making the whole board, and then further, assembling the whole product, freeing me up to come up with more crazy ideas, all the while, not making the same mistakes or ‘discovering the hurdles’ I have this time around.
It’s def the hardest thing I have ever done, but it has also given me the most valuable education…
Hope that makes sense…
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I admire your dedication, if I were you though id make a potential financial loss and get someone else putting these together. its great that it shows care for your products but its also surely absurdly time consuming to be doing for a commercial product. @Jukka makes an excellent point and its true that the pressure eases down after the initial release of a crowdfunded product with all design and manufacturing completed, but the last thing I personally would want to be doing after releasing a successful product is slowing down sales. the more boxes are out there the more people should want them. also a new product could require a whole new area of R&D, and completely different suppliers/manufacturers for parts etc. your time could be better spent than hand building every single kordbot, even if it means initial financial loss. you should definitely try to use the success of kordbot as validation and try for money to expand. either way congratulations on the product, nice to see you in here communicating. + bear in mind that i’m no businessman, and i’m very aware there are complications and challenges with these things I likely haven’t considered. i’d like to see your company do well.
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My only additional comment will be the same thing I said to another Brad that had a Kickstarter creating the Futursonus Parva by himself.
After months and months of silence followed by ‘working on the next OS release, it’ll be it this weekend’ followed by more silence and no releases –
Communication, even bad news, goes a long long way to keeping everyone informed and calmer. 5 minutes at the end of the week with a Facebook post saying ‘orders xxx to yyy’ were processed and sent out this week would shut up 99% of the comments and negativity
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It seems pretty obvious to me, based on the amount of interest in this thing, that there’s a REALLY significant amount of demand for this device… Surely there’s a “real” music instrument manufacturer that could buy the IP, or do some kind of joint deal (like how Roland worked with Studio Electronics for RE-02, or how they worked with Maleko for their modular system) that could take the load off in terms of production, logistics & support… Doing this alone like he’s doing seems like a sure-fire trip to either insanity or bankruptcy, and after all he’s done, neither seems fair.
I waited almost 2 years on mine, had my fair share of impatient moments, but i have to say it was worth the wait.
From my most recent email:
Hey Guys!
If you are reading this, it means your KordBot is the next build wave of 200 units and will be with you over the course of the next few weeks.
I ordered about 8 months ago on indiegogo and was number 400+
Apparently no more black units availlable. Glad it will be here soon.
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Nice firmware update available:
-
Fixed issue with mem pad chords not playing upon a system load from SD card.
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Added method to trigger MEM pad chords from either external MIDI DIN or MIDI USB.
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Internal pin config changed to allow KordBot MIDI DIN output compatibility with incompatible midi gear
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MIDI softTHRU implemented.
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MIDI IN TRIGGERS
When in a play mode, you press SHIFT and you’ll see F4 is assigned to the MEM Trig setup function.
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Anybody in Berlin with a kordbot who can upgrade my firmware?
Will show appreciation with cookies
sold mine again…
after a month or two…
fortunatly I bought mine used, without the troubles of customs and endless waiting…
The interface was one of the worst I experienced in a long time and I put the hex editing of the Mirage into this verdict…
Together with the manual that does not make it easier to find a function other as by reading from top to bottom it turned out to be a waste of time for me.
Still the idea of the KB is great but somehow got lost in too many menus and weird usage concepts… not to speak from the hangups that happen every now and then…
Another procedure from hell is the initial upgrade process on a mac… Come on… having to install some unix tools in the beginning… that can’t be meant serious… It is ok for me as I am an admin for computers, but the average user does not even understand what he or she is doing …
As I stated in here above somewhere: go, learn some chord progressions…
And no, I was not very happy with the arp functions as well… i could get a basic external sync but it skipped out of sync when I altered some settings like chord length or so…
end of story, it is sold for good, I hope the next owner will have more success with it. May be it is my lack of talent… who knows…
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I eventually received mine.
Cons - Isla Instruments seems to want to use Facebook for any/all interactions. Their forum has not been the primary place for responses/info. I didn’t know a new release was out until a user on FB mentioned the upgrade. Good luck tracking current bug reports and their status on FB.
The rubber buttons are supposed to be velocity sensitive, but actually trying to play notes/chords with controlled velocity is almost useless. Too soft and you get double triggers; too hard and it jumps to max.
Your current setting are not saved when you power off. To make matters worse, when you power on, you have to manually go into a menu to mount the SD card then go back into the menu to load the settings you (hopefully) saved.
The encoders often don’t respond to the first click, especially when changing between modes/screens. They are also very close together and bumping one (and changing its value) when turning another is common.
Currently external sync mostly works. Tempo is followed as long as you’re not doing much with the interface. External Start/Stop commands are not recognized as of the 4.04 release even though I heard it was supposed to be responding to them.
The button pads and encoders were bought to hit a price point for the device. They are clearly not rated for a million presses/clicks like some higher cost parts. The reliance on using the first encoder for a majority of the interaction means it’s going to start wearing out/glitching sooner than the rest. I also believe the knobs have been glued on so user-servicing of a bad encoder may not be possible. It’s conceivable that the knobs are just on really tight, but I haven’t been able to budge them and if I pulled any harder I’m afraid I’d damage the unit.
They (Isla) seem to think a sequencer is a necessary/important feature so they are spending time/resources/screen real estate developing it even though there’s no way you’d want to use the buttons/encoders to program/record/edit sequences.
Pros -
there is some magic captured in this box. Generating chords and chord sequences and arpeggios can result in some beautiful stuff almost effortlessly. I have been using an old Yamaha QY-700 to record the Kordbot output and that has been working fine with the above limitations on the KB responding to start/stop, etc.
The interface does give you ideas and lead you down musically useful paths. For the price, I think it’s a great tool and in fact I’m going to be selling my Pyramid sequencer (if anyone is interested, PM me) because the main use of it has been for entering/playing chords.
I did the upgrade on my Windows 10 box and it worked just fine (once you get the hang of turning the unit upside down and then pressing the small reset button while plugging in the USB cable). No hitches both times I upgraded.
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I agree with your Cons and Pros
I just whish I could get out the pro stuff more intermediate.
I just caught myself this weekend setting up the chord buttons in a different scale as there are lots of them stored in the KB.
It took me too long as I remembered it was something with the most left buttons and another button…
As I started reading the manual, as usual just scanning for the required function I just deciced to dump and sell it…
It was simply eating up my time and creativity and I don’t have very much of both
It is as simple as: if it fits it fits
and for me it doesn’t
Right now there is no alternative and the upcoming theoryboard (if it comes) would take too much of my precious money and desktop space
No step sequencer though 
You don’t want a step sequencer in that box. It is not designed to be a sequencer. No dedicated controls, a single MIDI output, small screen, keys/buttons not the best to handle lots of pounding, currently buggy as far as tempo/sync/external control.
I know Brad and Bill probably feel otherwise and did put it as a stretch goal, but I’d suggest you’d be better off using Kordbot with you DAW or a dedicated hw sequencer. If the sequencer comes out in a future OS update, it’ll probably be fine for a scratchpad type thing, but then users will start asking for every feature under the sun to be incorporated (I’ve already seen requests for Euclidean patterns, polyrhythm/polymeter, Aux events like the Cirklon and more). Given there’s a single developer, something will have to take a back seat and with so many other areas for improvement, I’m afraid the sequencer section will dominate his time and effort.
I’m selling my Pyramid sequencer and as a standalone bit of hardware (that does Euclidean, polyrhythms, chords, and more) and I’d recommend that in a heartbeat over most other machines with built-in sequencers. Trying to stuff that kind of functionality into the KB is not going to happen.
I’d love to be proven wrong, but given they can’t change the actual KB hardware interface at this point, I think it’s never going to compete with other units as a sequencer.
As a chord/idea/arpeggiator generator, it’s the best thing I’ve ever had the pleasure to own and I hope they continue to refine and update those aspects of it.
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