@mark The new Schlockwood 205 is supposed to be about $300, so your only talking a $100 difference. I don't know if tarrifs would affect it. But yeah, the Culbert is cheaper.
I received my Culbert today. The first thing that struck me is that's it larger than I thought it would be - I mean it's not big, but for some reason I thought it would be about the same size as a Sstran, don't know why I thought that. The second thing that struck me is that it has unbalanced outputs.. which I knew already, and I don't think that's a real issue and I already have the adapter needed on hand, but still it's a slight turn off, imo. But that's alright.
I haven't tried it yet.
@richpowers The Hammond off the shelf case that the original Schlockwood was in is like $15 dollars and a company purchasing hundreds of them at wholesale wouldn't add a prohibitive amount to the cost of the new Schlockwood. Just a board with a front panel and the rest an unfinished product open circuit board and subject to damage as you handle it seems to not make sense.
This is what the original Schlockwood comes in. An off the shelf Hammond project case and the price you see is the Canadian price here. Maybe $8 or $9 USD. That's retail cost. Wholesale cost to a manufacturer may be 1 or 2 dollars it would add to the price of the Schlockwood.
https://shop.sayal.com/products/nabk-3533-1?_pos=78&_sid=3a9e2f363&_ss=r
... Just a board with a front panel and the rest an unfinished product open circuit board and subject to damage as you handle it seems to not make sense.
I thought that pretty peculiar too, but I think what's going on there is that he's switching gears there, catering to larger stations with the rack-mounted $600 unit (model 300), while still trying to provide a budget option for the hobbiest at $300 (model 205), by making it as bare bones as possible but maintaining the capability of the original but considerably less expensive than the original model 200, - That's my speculation of why he's offering it that way, but I agree it seems a rather strange way to market it - but I'm guessing that's why he's doing that way