March (sorta) Update

I no longer can keep track of time. The calendar says April but what happened to March?

New guitar updates

I think part of the reason I’ve lost track of time is that we’ve been keeping our heads down and cranking out revisions to the design of our new guitar (more here: OFMG Guitar).

While I’m still not ready to share too many details, the guitar is coming along nicely and we’re working on building pre-production prototypes now, so I expect it will go into production later this Spring/early Summer and we’ll make an “official” announcement soon.
I’m not trying to be secretive — I just need to concentrate for now on the engineering and get things to the point where I can publish more information and be confident that we are going to be able to produce this product on schedule and in cost-effective manner.

The biggest issue we have to deal with now is tariffs. No matter what your politics are you have to recognize that the current chaos of on again/off again tariffs makes it impossible for businesses to plan and know what something is going to cost tomorrow, much less next month. We’ve spent many years developing relationships with suppliers around the world and can’t just pivot overnight. It’s unfortunate that we’re having to spend so much time on this — it’s a distraction from our core business and is only costing us time and money (which are both in short supply these days). Let’s hope it gets resolved soon.

Clone Hero

I know I’m late to the party, but if you haven’t tried Clone Hero recently I recommend giving it a try! I first tried it years ago and it’s come a long way since then. We’re using it for testing our new guitar and it’s been a lot of fun.
I know there are other rhythm games out there (YARG is one I keep hearing about), and it’s cool to see that even if we don’t get a Rock Band 5, the future of our hobby is more exciting than it has been in a long time and it’s in OUR hands!

Discord Server

We’ve set up a Discord server for gathering feedback on our new guitar and it’s been a great resource that has already impacted the design of the guitar.
We’re also setting up channels for discussing the Strum Fix and Fret Fix — it will be a great place for asking questions, making suggestions etc… and I expect it to “go live” and be open for sign ups next week. I’ll make an announcement here once it’s ready.

Take care everyone!
-Scott P (owner, Byte Arts)