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The industry has lost several important modular manufacturers in the last year or two, and there's been some talk about why. I obviously don't know all the details of what happened in any company except my own, and at least one of the biggest examples on everybody's mind is pretty clearly an exceptional case, with the founder making a career change for personal reasons not directly related to the general business climate. But I recently heard a claim made that it doesn't matter to the health of the industry whether individuals buy Eurorack modules this year because the "real" problem killing manufacturers is supply-chain disruption. I want to speak against that. READ MORE

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Moving the North Coast Synthesis Web storefront to the new checkout system has been a lot slower and more difficult than I planned or expected. There are still some major issues to resolve. But I have some significant progress, and especially with the Gracious Host release held up waiting for a usable checkout, I can't afford to delay rolling out the parts that do work, even though there's still a critical part missing. READ MORE

On October 26 I tried to log into the administrative interface of this storefront to process an order, and I just got a blank screen. After some research and testing of my own, and a conversation with BigCommerce technical support, it is apparent that they have changed their systems - suddenly, without warning - to be incompatible with my usual Web browser. They will not be changing back, and they offer no solution for me to be able to log onto the system except telling me I ought to switch to a different version of the browser. That is a dealbreaker for my continued use of BigCommerce and I am moving the North Coast Synthesis Ltd. Web storefront off of BigCommerce as soon as I can. READ MORE

I'm looking forward to a little bit of relaxation in December. I won't be going on vacation this year as I usually would, and that means I can fill orders throughout December. However, my local post offices have become unsafely crowded on weekends through a combination of increased demand, closures and reduced hours, failure to enforce safety rules, and the general emergency conditions that prevail in Toronto at the moment. So until further notice, I will only be shipping out orders on weekdays (Monday to Friday). READ MORE

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The Toronto Sound Festival starts tomorrow, November 22, 2019, at "Beverley Halls" (aka the Polish Combatants Association).  I'll be there as a vendor, with demos and sales of all my modules and kits.  There will also be a lot of other interesting stuff, with other vendors, talks and panel discussions, a "synthesizer petting zoo," a DIY workshop, and a big concert.  There'll be a lot of modular there, but the focus is broader, on all aspects of the art of sound. READ MORE

The Tokyo Festival of Modular is coming up this weekend, November 16 and 17, 2019, and North Coast Synthesis is a sponsor.  I won't be attending in person this year but attendees will receive North Coast stickers and cards with an exclusive discount code.  If you're in Japan, this is an event worth visiting. READ MORE

I'll be exhibiting at the Toronto Pedal and Synth Expo on November 9 and 10, 2019.  Drop by to try out North Coast modules in person and pick up a sticker and a discount code. READ MORE

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So, here we are. READ MORE

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We're coming up to the end of the first quarter of 2018, and I'm happy to note that based on the current projection, it looks like the company will actually have a profit this quarter - probably about $10. (Edit: Well, not quite. The quarter ended about $6.50 in the red. Still the best quarter on record, though.) Even if sales continue to increase, it'll still take a long time to pay back the losses of previous quarters, and since I'm living on savings now with no real income since Fall 2016 and the company owes me personally a few tens of thousands of dollars, I'm conscious of needing to keep pushing for more sales at North Coast if I'm to stay in business at all, continue releasing new modules, and keep up activities like this Web log for which I don't actually get paid. よろしくお願いします, as we say in Japanese; I hope for your favour. READ MORE

I saw in my Web hosting logs that someone visited this site and spent a significant amount of time using the site search and guessing URLs in an unsuccessful attempt to discover the RSS feed URL - which was linked on every single page, but at the time only via an icon which I guess they didn't recognize. So I edited the Web design to label it more clearly with words as well as the icon... and in so doing I found that in fact the RSS URL (actually Atom, but they're basically compatible) was wrong, pointing at Shopify's generic Web server instead of my store's. READ MORE