Announced at the 2007 Frankfurter Messe, John Bowen announced that the first production is now planned for late September 2008, with delivery shortly thereafter. Pre-orders for the second series of production are available now.
Normal pre-order deposit conditions now continue, with $1000/800 EUR as the initial deposit, and the final price now being $3599/2400 EUR (due to the euro vs dollar exchange).
Deposits are for the second build of 50 units, and these probably won’t begin to ship until November at the earliest. Once all the Solaris pre-orders are filled, the PayPal button will be removed, and I will post a notice. After all direct sales pre-orders are fulfilled, the Solaris will go into the dealer network, with the suggested retail price being $4499 in North America and 2999 EUR + VAT elsewhere.
But how does it sound?
John has now published sound samples of the Solaris at the website. In his own words:
“I have noted the requests for sound examples in the Forums, and I’ve got quite a bit of programming to get to the point that I have sounds representative of those requests! But rest assured, I will get to them (and the Solaris is quite able to produce them). What I’d like to start with are much simpler sounds, and I’ve done 3 quick examples to show some very specific things. No effects were used, it’s just a direct feed from the stereo analogue outputs.”