[One of these days I'm going to have to figure out how to blockquote these replies!]

"I definitely don't want to throw a damper on this...

You're not. :O)

It's all in how you look at it. Being a small specialty company, we don't have the income that a larger company has to invest in projects; i.e. net profit from a large inventory base of products.

So I have to look at things from the viewpoint of how many hours of work that I'm actually going to be putting into a project. Unlike other employed folk, I don't always get paid for my labor. It's true that a client who commissions a job will be paying for every hour put into their project.

But when it's a project that I initiate on my own, like the fascia/buttons, I will never get back the labor that I put into the job. It's one of those "circle of life" things. For example, I do models of historical forts. The first one took over 200 hours of research and development. At $35.00 per hour, I _know_ that I'll never see that labor again.

But (again!) I will see sales from that job that will produce enough of a net profit to help keep the company going. It just takes a large adjustment to get use to working "for free" in order to get paid for your labors.

Specialty casting is an expensive route to getting things done, but it has it's place. To have the buttons injection molded (die cast) overseas would reduce the price per kit to a very small amount, but the dies alone will run in the neighborhood of $15,000.00 to $35,000.00! And that's just the "molds" (the "dies")!

The company that produces them will want you to order enough to fill at least one overseas shipping container, like the ones that dumped all of those Nikes and rubber ducks into the ocean. That's a LOT of button sets. Anyone got $40,000.00+ laying around? {grin}

So in comparison, specialty casting is the way to go for this project.

On the 'Net I also have to be careful to quote pricing that reflects what it would cost if someone asked me to do a similar job. If I just told what the materials cost, I might later find myself unable to charge a competitive price on potential jobs ("But back in August 2003, on the Empeg forum you said..."). Hence the quote in my earlier post.

However, several things have reduced that amount by a large margin. One is the loaner fascia and buttons. Because they are in great shape, and need little modification, I will not have to do a lot of sculpting for the masters. And I've been allowed to play with Paul's unit! Whoo-hoo!

It looks very much like Eutronix will be marketing the sets for us, with direct sales through us at trade conventions, via our website, or for the odd special or otherwise weird request. One important note in this regard, we do not sell our own products below the established retail price. The price at our website will be the same as the retail price at Eutronix. But I expect that most sales will be through Stuart's crew because they have the manual. Cool either way.

And speaking of our own website, it's temporarily down and will be back up soon.