An Answer to RE's price hikes:

[bigger_george 2]

Business is more of an art than a science so there are possible ways the customers could react. It could go either way, change in dealer/pricing structures is a risk (although calculated) to any company. It has done well for many companies in the past so most ideas are going to be based off of historical evidence, but the possibility of failure is still there (due to things such as improper marketing, overestimating of brand recognition, etc.).

Regardless, I believe this is a huge step for RE and USAmps and they have most likely taken account of these risks. In my opinion, this is a huge step to becoming a bigger, more profitable company.

Personally I am not a fan of the pricing either. But it is a jump to make em grow and as long as I can find it at a good deal or substitutes, I am happy with it

[Eldorado 0]

I think my run on sentences are worse than his.

[flakko 1]

the 50mm xmax will be a HUGE selling point for the dealers....memer, thier focus isnt for the DIYers as much anymore, but more on the general public that dont know crap about the t/s. when the customers see that sub hump 2.5" one way (sorry my metric conversions suck ) they gonna fall in love with it.

[Eldorado 0]

its 55

wait till the punks find out they will need $2000 worth of amp(s) to power it

[ANeonRider 3]

flakko... 50mm = just shy of 2"

[flakko 1]

^^^^ thank yous foreigners come in handy afterall

stoopid americans, always gotta be different.

[DevilDriver 28]

^^^^ thank yous foreigners come in handy afterall

stoopid americans, always gotta be different.

it's ~1.97"

in=cm/2.54

in=5cm/2.54

in=1.9685"

never understood the point of the imperial measurement system or SAE. metric is one of the only ones that really makes sense imo.

howdy neon, you are not too far away from me.

[Eldorado 0]

1.968"

according to my widget

[Aaron Clinton 2,372]

I think my run on sentences are worse than his.  But I should have bought a truck load of RE8s when I had a chance, oh well.  The business they lost in me will be more than made up for in one or two rip offs err I mean sales.

sorry, which other subs have 50+ mm of xmax?

people are getting way too caught up on the direct pricing. you go to a dealer (dealer's can ship you know) and get pricing that is very close to what the direct pricing was previously. these changes support the dealer network rather than kill it like they were doing before.

because people on here consider themselves part of the "internet DIY" crowd, RE is automatically losing a lot of sales? if you are foolish enough to think that internet DIY people who change their favourite sub everyweek are an important niche in a company's success, then i would be most excited at the prospect of some of you starting a business.

This was gone about all wrong, it alienated the customer base that put them where they are, even with a new dealer network, the only people who are going to know what RE products are the above mentioned customers, people who are going to walk into a dealer and see a company that they have never heard of with very high prices are not going to buy them.

it worked for JL Audio, didn't it? worked for macintosh, audison, brax, tru, dls, etc....

get real man. take your energy and use it in a business course or something.

First XMAX is not everything, there are so many other factors in a sub that effect its performance, but in this case even in my improved financial state, I cannot sanely pay anywhere near that much for a sub.

Second, since I know of no dealers near me, lets see how this will work out, dealer pays one price, they pay to have it shipped to them, they add the mark up, sell it to me, add the shipping, wait a minute it is still much higher than before, and in my case since there is no "local" dealer why do I need to support someone elses local dealer buy paying a large mark up for a sub that does not justify that price? (run on sentence again)

3rd, do me a favor do not come to my forum and call me a fool, the internet DIY crowd has long had a very strong RE following and there is the weekly poser sub of the week change, but non has ever had the constant die hard following of RE, more so than even RF and Kicker that I have seen, and I am highly active all over the car audio world online.

4th, in my many years in and around car audio and home audio never was there this massive internet following for macintosh, audison, brax, tru, dls, that even approaches 1/3 the level of RE, RE has a large line up and is spread out over a large group of different type of buyers.

Macintosh, audison, brax, tru, dls are pretty much all high end low volume $$$ equipment, which means they cannot have any where near the following of RE. JL audio on the other hand, well hype promotion and a few decent products have kept them in the forefront.

5th, do not insult me about taking a business course, at this moment I am in the middle of my second masters, this one is in Operations Research, meaning I am taking Statistics and Risk Management at this very moment, so I might have a clue.

Lastly, do not come on a board unknown and attack the admin, NOT SMART, I had managed a car audio shop for 2 years while working on my undergrad, and from my experience if I was still there and not online reading and watching the industry everyday, I would not take an order from RE (pretty much unknown outside the online DIY crowd and SPL world) if they came calling to see about setting me up as a dealer unless they gave it to me at a very large discount and written promise that I will be able to move X amount of product with incentive.

Do me a favor think before you speak,

(sorry for the run sentences at the moment I dont car about punctuation)

[Eldorado 0]

look what you dun did

got demin all angrily

[Aaron Clinton 2,372]

The point is that everyone knows why they are doing this. But who is everyone? They are the loyal customer base that has supported them all along the way. I feel this could have been gone about in a better manner. I am not angry about the fact that they are going to a dealer network. I am just not happy as the way it has gone, if you have a devoted customer base you do everything to keep them. I wish there was some sort of announcement that the prices direct were going to skyrocket a few weeks before it actually happened. Not just oh crap someone just called to order a sub that has not changed and it almost doubled in price. OH well, what does it matter what I think anyway.

More power to Mike (SS), Nick (SI), and Nick (IA).

[DevilDriver 28]

it was not meant as an attack, but does being an admin on an internet forum mean that much to you? it doesn't to me, but you sure seem to like mentioning it.

i will grant you that there could have been a smoother transition, but it is not either of our businesses and obviously the USAmps majority stock holders have done well so far; there is no reason to assume that their business model will continue to work well with a dealer network rather than a direct pricing based company.

i think you may be confused about the dealer network. the MSRP for a 12XXX is $1600. do you know how much people are paying for them at a dealer? anywhere from $550-$800. most are falling right in the $650 range, which is almost exactly the same price that they were when direct pricing was available. furthermore, shipping could potentially be much less expensive than getting it shipped from Las Vegas, which is important when it's an 80lb sub. but yet you still want to call them "ripoffs".

i agree, xmax is not everything; in fact, i have stated this several times on several other forums. but the question remains: how many other subs do you know of that have an xmax of 55mm? i am no fan of them at all; i consider low efficiency, high inductance, and high moving mass are NOT worthy tradeoffs for more linear excursion. but it is still a very rare product.

honestly, as a staff member on several other forums, the first thing i try to stress is to not pull the holier than thou when people join my forum. listing "credentials" in an effort to belittle someone whose own credentials you know nothing about is not what i would consider a good way to welcome anyone to your website regardless of who it is.

i would guess by your response that my reply will end up getting me banned, which is not really my goal. i am only here to discuss audio. take that as you will.

Edited May 6, 2006 by Punk0Rama

[Tirefryr 1,742]

This was gone about all wrong, it alienated the customer base that put them where they are, even with a new dealer network, the only people who are going to know what RE products are the above mentioned customers, people who are going to walk into a dealer and see a company that they have never heard of with very high prices are not going to buy them.

it worked for JL Audio, didn't it? worked for macintosh, audison, brax, tru, dls, etc....

get real man. take your energy and use it in a business course or something.

If you didn't mean to start any shit, you should've reworded your reply in a more appealing fashion.

[Tirefryr 1,742]

it was not meant as an attack, but does being an admin on an internet forum mean that much to you?  it doesn't to me, but you sure seem to like mentioning it.

i will grant you that there could have been a smoother transition, but it is not either of our businesses and obviously the USAmps majority stock holders have done well so far; there is no reason to assume that their business model will continue to work well with a dealer network rather than a direct pricing based company.

i think you may be confused about the dealer network.  the MSRP for a 12XXX is $1600.  do you know how much people are paying for them at a dealer?  anywhere from $550-$800.  most are falling right in the $650 range, which is almost exactly the same price that they were when direct pricing was available.  furthermore, shipping could potentially be much less expensive than getting it shipped from Las Vegas, which is important when it's an 80lb sub.  but yet you still want to call them "ripoffs".

i agree, xmax is not everything; in fact, i have stated this several times on several other forums.  but the question remains: how many other subs do you know of that have an xmax of 55mm?  i am no fan of them at all; i consider low efficiency, high inductance, and high moving mass are NOT worthy tradeoffs for more linear excursion.  but it is still a very rare product.

honestly, as a staff member on several other forums, the first thing i try to stress is to not pull the holier than thou when people join my forum.  listing "credentials" in an effort to belittle someone whose own credentials you know nothing about is not what i would consider a good way to welcome anyone to your website regardless of who it is.

i would guess by your response that my reply will end up getting me banned, which is not really my goal.  i am only here to discuss audio.  take that as you will.

Again, this has already been covered.

This is going nowhere and there's really no more input that can be gathered.

[Aaron Clinton 2,372]

it was not meant as an attack, but does being an admin on an internet forum mean that much to you?  it doesn't to me, but you sure seem to like mentioning it.

i will grant you that there could have been a smoother transition, but it is not either of our businesses and obviously the USAmps majority stock holders have done well so far; there is no reason to assume that their business model will continue to work well with a dealer network rather than a direct pricing based company.

i think you may be confused about the dealer network.  the MSRP for a 12XXX is $1600.  do you know how much people are paying for them at a dealer?  anywhere from $550-$800.  most are falling right in the $650 range, which is almost exactly the same price that they were when direct pricing was available.  furthermore, shipping could potentially be much less expensive than getting it shipped from Las Vegas, which is important when it's an 80lb sub.  but yet you still want to call them "ripoffs".

i agree, xmax is not everything; in fact, i have stated this several times on several other forums.  but the question remains: how many other subs do you know of that have an xmax of 55mm?  i am no fan of them at all; i consider low efficiency, high inductance, and high moving mass are NOT worthy tradeoffs for more linear excursion.  but it is still a very rare product.

honestly, as a staff member on several other forums, the first thing i try to stress is to not pull the holier than thou when people join my forum.  listing "credentials" in an effort to belittle someone whose own credentials you know nothing about is not what i would consider a good way to welcome anyone to your website regardless of who it is.

i would guess by your response that my reply will end up getting me banned, which is not really my goal.  i am only here to discuss audio.  take that as you will.

In after lock.

Did I not say I ran a shop, so why would I not know what the process is? My issue is that there is such a small dealer network in place and there is no listing of who is a dealer and where they are. Since there is no dealer near me I am not going to be paying that claimed price it will be much higher due to mark up and shipping costs.

The RE move has nothing to do with US Amps. Only the owner of US Amps bought RE not US Amps the company. RE was going to do this regardless of the buy out or not.

As for being the admin on here, let me see..... This board was on the verge of falling into the abyss of dead boards like many other audio and other boards I have been a part of. I spent countless hours bring it back up to where it is now. So many of those hours I could have spent more time with my girlfriend / friends / family / working out / etc. Meaning I did not have to do it but because the website meant something to people and it is a place they can come to without flaming and without the spammers to just talk audio and bs with friends. If I did not step up and rebuild the forum and drag all these people over here, this site would not be here right now, period. So I take it personally when people come onto this board and approach me like I am some n00b schmuck on the board I spent too much of my life keeping it up when I could have been doing better things with my life.

I am far from pulling any holier than thou routine, you spoke and insulted before you knew anything about me, and for that I flat out explained why. It is basic protocol that once you join a forum it is bad practice to insult or talk down to someone, espically the person to works hard on his free time to keep this place running. If someone has the nerve to do that to me I am going to bluntly tell them other wise. In no way was my defense belitteling towards you. You are the one to came on and attacked me and questioned me with out knowing jack squat. As for a warm welcome, no forum on the planet welcomes people as friendly as we do, PERIOD. Do not expect someone to be friendly towards you once you insult or putdown the person. If you want a warm welcome do like everyone else does. Say hello in the Newbie welcome section and say your name and why your here.

I personally want as many members here as possible, we charge no fees from any member or company here, so all the work done is on my free time with preetty much no reward. I am not going to ban you, I have never done that for constructive posts. I know your intentions are good, you just went about them in the wrong way. More audio nuts here the better. Just show a little more respect the next time you jump on a new board with your first few posts. If say Steve or Dave or Diddle or Jim or who ever that I have known for a long time sends a little zinger my way, I know it is in fun or something of the sort, but a new member who has less than 10 posts does that I take it quite different.

Anyway, welcome to SSA, stick around I will unlock this thread because I know it is still a hot topic

[ANeonRider 3]

Hey Neil...

Nice to see another guy from Saskie on here. I'm not alone!! I know the guy that interviewed you at Best Buy very well

Anyways, good to see someone on here with some knowledge in their melon

And Denim... might as well change my SN to Diddle