Project Update
almost 4 years ago – Mon, May 18, 2020 at 01:09:04 AM

Hello, friends! 

I hope you and your loved ones all remain safe and healthy these days. I want to apologize for the lack of updates recently. We've been working very hard and making progress, but truth is this new normal of juggling between working from home, home-schooling our kids, connecting to a million Zoom calls, doing the dishes -so many dishes...- and trying to remain sane along the way, has been a bit challenging, to say the least. With that said, we are fine, working hard, making progress, and here's what's new:

Guitar production: Things are going well there. Progress is not as fast we'd like, but we are still looking at a (late) June ship date for most of our rewards. We'll have most of the guitars ready in late May, and after freight time to the U.S. and arrival at the warehouse in Mira Loma, California, we should be able to ship around June 25. 

For those of you in Europe, you'll have to wait about a month longer, I'm afraid. But -as promised during the campaign- we'll ship in bulk to a warehouse there so that you can receive your guitars with no customers duties hassle. It will be worth it, so thanks in advance for your patience.   

App: We've made some serious progress here. First of all, we've dramatically improved the tuner and the chord detection engine, and we already published an update to the App Store about a week ago with that. Now when you play chords to unlock songs, it just works! 🤓

In the past days we've also made some very neat progress in the AR feature that will allow you to learn guitar using the selfie camera. Here's a video showing where we are at with that now (video is from last Thursday):

We expect to launch this sometime in June and till then we’ll keep perfecting it, but we are pretty proud and amazed at what we have achieved. We think it’s going to be a revolutionary, magical, way to learn guitar, and YOU made it happen!

By the way, we also expect to have the Android version ready around June.

Loog Fest: If you follow us on Instagram or are in our mailing list, I'm sure you heard about Loog Fest. This is an online festival that we created with the goal to provide quality, inspiring content for families stuck at home during these quarantine times, and a paying gig for artists and educators in these difficult days. You can read more about it here. We are so proud and happy with the Loog Fest... some highlights so far are this interview I did with Darryl Jones (bass player of an up and coming little band called The Rolling Stones and former bass player of... what's his name again? Oh yes: Miles Davis), and this amazing STEAM lesson on the science of music by Melissa Salguero. (2018 Grammy winner for Best Music Educator and top 10 finalist for Global Teacher Prize the world prize 2019. Yes: she is the best.)  

Live Free Online Lessons: We are hosting live group lessons every Saturday via Zoom, in partnership with lessonface.com and we are LOVING it! Some of you have expressed concern that we are doing this before delivering the guitars to you; no worries: we'll keep doing this forever. In fact we'll double down on all these things.

So, that's if for now folks. Apologies again for the lack of updates the past month and I hope you liked this one. 

As always, if you have any questions, please send me a DM. 

Thanks again and kind regards,

Rafa

Surveys Are Coming! Factories Are Back To Work! New Delivery Date.
about 4 years ago – Thu, Mar 12, 2020 at 11:46:59 PM

- Me, last year: OK, this is our fourth Kickstarter campaign, we have everything under control, I'll set a conservative delivery date and we'll be more than fine.

- Coronavirus: hold my beer...

Dear backers,

First of all, and in all seriousness, I hope you and your loved ones are well and safe. And I hope you don’t mind a little humor, to keep spirits up :)

So it’s official: we are delayed. As you are all aware, the virus outbreak is affecting global manufacturing and our production line has also been impacted, unfortunately. Chinese factories usually close during the Lunar New Year, but with the coronavirus situation, the Chinese government extended the break until March. 

The good news is they have now resumed operations and we are now working hard to have the guitars ready in June. The past weeks have been quite stressful and with lots of uncertainty, so the fact that the factories are now working again (although not at full capacity) and that we have a not-so-distant new delivery date is really good news. Also good: the samples that we received from the production line look and sound amazing!!! 

Actually, way better than the samples we used in the Kickstarter video. Here's a quick video: 

And here's another one, showing the Loog Mini Electric:

And we have another good news that I know most of you were eagerly waiting: Surveys are finally coming! We actually sent a few yesterday and we'll send the rest today and tomorrow. Be in the lookout for that email, with subject line: "Response Needed -- Get your reward for LOOG GUITARS: Built-in amp! Augmented Reality! Monsters!". 

As mentioned before, we are using BackerKit for this. Through BackerKit, you'll be able to pick your guitar color, enter your shipping address, and also add straps, carrying bags, stands, and even more guitars. All these items are offered at a backers-only discount, so make sure you take advantage of that! (And for those who pledged for a Loog Mini and now want a Loog Pro instead, you'll be able to update that in BackerKit too.) It should be pretty straight forward, but if you have any questions, let me know. And watch for that email coming later today or tomorrow Friday! Will look like this:

That's it for now, folks! As always, thanks a million for your patience, for your continued support, and for making the new Loog electric guitars with built-in amp a reality.

Cheers!

Rafa

Update
over 4 years ago – Tue, Jan 21, 2020 at 02:20:56 AM

Hello friends! 

I hope 2020 is treating you well. It’s starting out quite nicely for us: after the holiday season madness (it’s by far our busiest time of the year), I was able to unwind a bit AND get some neat progress on your rewards :)

So here’s what’s been going on:

App
We finally published the iOS version of the app on the App Store! You can download it here. As with every early version, there are still things to polish -and we will-, but overall I’m very happy with it. I hope you like it too!

We are now already working on the Android version (the goal is to have it ready by April) and we are still working on the AR feature. The main thing going on there is machine learning: we are feeding the app with thousands of photos of our guitars (just the guitar from various angles, the guitar being used by a kid, by an adult, in good light, bad light, etc,) and teaching the app how to identify the guitar from the background, and in particular the neck and the fretboard, so that it can point you out where to place your fingers to form chords and play songs. It’s a pretty sophisticated technology (at least for us, guitar makers) but we are working with a great team, our friends from Orange Loops, and getting close to the experience we want to offer. Here are a few images of the work behind it:

Guitars
Also moving forward quite nicely! The process -not sure I shared this before- involves two factories, mainly. The same factory that’s been making our electric guitars takes care of all the usual/standard parts (body, neck, bridge, nut, pickup, etc.) and then we have a new manufacturing partner taking care of the printed circuit board and the speaker: basically, the built-in amp. These two factories have to coordinate production and work together. The guitar factory sends the pickup and the white plastic pickguard to the PCB factory, the PCB factory mounts the circuit and all the electronic components there and then sends them back to the guitar factory for final assembly.
 

So, before we move forward with the whole batch (for your reference, we are making 7,000 guitars in this first one), we are making small runs of 20 units to test both the product and the process.

In these test runs we usually catch small issues, design/production flaws and inconsistencies that inevitably occur and are fairly easy to correct. For instance, here’s one: the holes in the pickguard were not aligned with the circuit board... 

Good thing we did 20 units of those and not 7,000 yet! 😅

Anyhow, that's been corrected now and as I write this there's a set of samples flying from China to our office. If everything is well with those samples, we’ll be ready to green light production of the whole batch. We expect that to happen around February 10, when the factories resume work after the Chinese New Year. 

So, all in all, things are going well. There are no major delays and we are still aiming at a (late) April delivery of the guitars.

Surveys
I know a few of you are impatient to fill in the survey, and so are we! With that said, we are really in no rush to send those over yet: this is our fourth campaign and we learned the hard way that sending the survey too much in advance can do more harm that good (people move, change their minds about the color chosen, etc.). Plus, we want to have our complete line of accessories ready so that we can offer those as add-ons there too. Anyway, expect that survey at some point in February.

That’s it for now, folks. Thanks for reading through and for your continued support and patience.

Cheers!
Rafa

Free Shipping Code
over 4 years ago – Sat, Nov 23, 2019 at 04:19:33 PM

Hi all, 

A few of our international backers raised a good point: how can they order accessories through our Black Friday sale next week, and have those shipped with their rewards later on, so that they don’t have double shipping costs? Good question; this is what we’ll do: 

We created the IBACKEDLOOG! promo code for free shipping that you can enter at checkout. By entering that code, you’ll get free shipping (even international orders) and we’ll know that we need to ship that order later when we ship your Kickstarter reward. Makes sense? Hope this works for you. 

For your convenience, here are these links again:

• If you pledged for the Loog Mini Electric reward, you'll find accessories for your model here.
• If you pledged for the Loog Pro Electric reward, you'll find accessories for your model here.
• If you pledged for the Loog Pro VI Electric reward (the 6-string model), you'll have to wait a bit more, as we don't have those accessories ready yet. (Once we have them, we'll offer them to you at a discount, don't worry.)

And remember: enter code IBACKEDLOOG! at checkout for free shipping! 

Cheers!

Rafa
 

App Early Access / Discounted Accessories / Surveys
over 4 years ago – Sat, Nov 23, 2019 at 02:33:19 AM

Hello friends,

I hope this message finds you well. We have a nice little update for you, covering app, accessories and survey. Please read on!

App

I'm happy to say we now have a firm date for the app launch (iOS version): December 19. That's the day it will be live in the App Store. BUT, I'm even happier to say that you backers can download it right now if you want to! :)

It's an almost-final version, and you can access it here. (You will be prompted to download Apple's TestFlight app first, and then you'll be able to access the Loog Guitar app in there. Should be pretty straight forward.)

As I said, this is an almost-final version, so please excuse us if you find a few bugs here and there. (And please let us know your comments and feedback!) Overall, though, I'm really happy and proud of it and I hope you like it too. This past Saturday we had a beautiful testing session with kids; here's a photo: 

It was the first time we conducted a proper testing session, with cameras, 8 different kids of different ages, controlled environment, etc. Super interesting findings that will inform the final version of the app and will hopefully allow us to offer a better experience overall.

(Friendly reminder to Android users: the Android app is happening and on track, but we'll finish it closer to the date when we'll ship the guitars.)

Accessories and add-ons

IMPORTANT: Next Monday, November 25, in our online store, we'll launch our one-and-only yearly sale event. We'll have all our guitars and accessories at 25% off, through that week till Cyber Monday on December 2. So if you are wanting to get an accessory for your Loog, I highly recommend you take advantage of that sale. We have stands, straps, wall hangers, carrying cases, tuners, extra strings and more. Here are a few pictures:

• If you pledged for the Loog Mini Electric reward, you'll find accessories for your model here.
• If you pledged for the Loog Pro Electric reward, you'll find accessories for your model here.
• If you pledged for the Loog Pro VI Electric reward (the 6-string model), you'll have to wait a bit more, as we don't have those accessories ready yet. (Once we have them, we'll offer them to you at a discount, don't worry.)

Surveys

I'll have to push sending the surveys a few more weeks, sorry. My only excuse: this is an incredibly busy time of the year for us, with Black Friday approaching and the holiday season upon us. Production and everything involving the actual finishing of the products is going well and on schedule, but things that are not 100% necessary yet (like getting your shipping addresses and color of choice) we are pushing a bit till the craziness is over. 

Speaking of Black Friday, I hope those celebrating have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I know I'll be thanking you all for making the new Loog electric guitars happen! ☺️

That's it for now, folks. I trully hope you (Apple users) can download the app and enjoy it. Please remember to send in your comments and feedback!

Cheers!

Rafa