Happy 2019, Optigoners!
We’re happy to announce that the PANOPTIGON – the new Optigan/Orchestron disc-playing hardware developed by our associate Robert Becker & his company Quilter Labs – will finally be available in an initial limited quantity production run of 25 units for US customers in 2019. (The initial run are not approved for Europe due to additional requirements that will be addressed on the next build.) Click on the thumbnails above to see the official flyer and photos of one of the first production units. We don’t have a release date yet, but it will be in the coming months. An official demo video will be ready soon, but in the meantime you can view a demo of the prototype unit from last year:
Quilter Labs will be showing the first two production units at NAMM this year, so if you’re attending, be sure to stop by their booth – number 4144 Hall D.
We’d like to encourage all of you to purchase the Panoptigon from this site (optigan.com) when it does become available. The Panoptigon was developed with Pea acting in an informal advisory role, but optigan.com will only be a dealer, rather than a partner, which means the only way we earn any cut is via sales commissions. In other words, if you hear about it from us, and decide to buy it based on our involvement/endorsement, but end up buying it direct from the factory, we will receive no commission. Either way, the price, delivery time, and service will be the same. MAP for the Panoptigon is $3999.
To this end, we will be offering an informal pre-sale for folks who are keen to reserve one of the initial batch of 25 units that will be offered for sale (14 of the initial run are already spoken for as of this posting date). Please send us an email if you’re interested in placing a pre-order, and we’ll get the ordering details to you as soon as we’re ready.
Along with the public launch of the Panoptigon, our entire back-catalog of discs will become more readily available on demand, so no more waiting around for bulk order deals as we’ve had to do in the past. The Panoptigon will play all vintage Optigan/Orchestron discs as well, but we’re also likely to remaster the vintage Optigan disc titles in order to add the strobe patterns that unlock additional features for discs that have them.
OK! That about covers it for now. See you at NAMM!