This creepy post and a couple others have created a flurry of controversy on Avalon's thread:
I'm not imposing anything. A demonstration will come by a customer very soon, if you wish to wait until then, go ahead; but you then run into the risk of not making into batch #2, and where if I don't open orders now, I run into the issue not able to order parts before CNY, which has a pretty long lead time.
It seems there'll be no demos, no 3rd party reviews, not even any tracking numbers to confirm product shipment prior to batch #2 opening(...and presumably selling out).
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137534.720 *frown*
...to put things in perspective we have cleaned the market of some certain parts like resistors and capacitors. We have to order directly from factories now, mountain of work to do.
I'm not sure this makes sense. There is so much oversupply in this market I doubt they could "clean the market" if they built a million units.
A month.
To "put things in perspective" there is still a supply of vaccum tubes from the 20s available for guitar players and their amps. They're a little expensive but they are there. ex. tubeworld.com which states "Our inventory consists mainly of tubes manufactured from the 1920's until the 1980's by the best manufacturers and name brands." If they're saying they are short on resistors and capacitors I think something is not right.