Believe me when I say I truly wanted to be able to wait for this to be a sort of "Merry Christmas!" post, but some stuff on the boards of late has forced me to do it now. <sigh>

My partner in this and I are about 75% of the way to being ready to offer new aluminum fascias based on the NewFace design. As I said, we wanted to wait to announce this until we could just suprise everyone with product ready to ship. In fact only one person on the board knew at all what was up. After the recent posts regarding the aluminum stock design fascias, and the possibility of that same individual making NewFace style fascias as well, we had to go public. So here is, at least a sneak peek, so to speak. You'll notice one small difference from the NewFace, though....



Yep. You guessed it; factory buttons. Or should I say FireFox buttons? We felt that it wouldn't be right to put out a new product without considering other available (and working, FireFox ) items. Anyhow, this is a laser cut template we got for checking fit. In the photo it's just sitting in front of the factory fascia. The sharp corners will be more rounded on the final product (mostly from the milling process, but very much for aesthetic reasons as well).

We currently have sample plates of the following finishes from our plater:

Black Brushed
Black Bead-Blasted
Black DM (swirly)

Blue Brushed
Blue Bead-Blasted
Blue DM

Red Brushed
Red Bead-Blasted
Red DM

I don't have the plates here (my partner has them), but depending on what happens I can post pics later. All I can say is that as good as the black brushed looks, the blue brushed is AMAZING.

The fit on the rotary encoder is for the stock knob, to ensure compatability with FireFox's button kit.

So here's the deal...

We're in a fair amount of money to have gotten to where we are now with the fascias, which is fine. But this is a small community, a very limited market. I'm at a point where I have to make a decision, as the next step will require a hefty monetary commitment. If there are going to be multiple people doing the NewFace style designs, we won't persue our line. It just wouldn't be financially viable for me, and in all fairness, regardless of project status, I was not the first to announce plans to offer the product. So if others intend to continue with NewFace style fascias, we'll respectfully, and without emnity, bow out.

Hope nobody takes anything I've said wrong. I think it's great that there's so much interest in these projects lately. I don't have anything against healthy competition, I just can't afford to put out that much money and then end up selling four or five fascias.

If we continue, we should have proper milled (and plated) prototypes to send out to certain individuals for testing and review within 2-3 weeks. (Crosses fingers)

I'll keep an eye on this thread for a day or so to get a feel for opinions before deciding what to do. If anyone has any questions, post or PM me.

Thanks,
Dave