Here's a little background on the HT3's.
This design was originally a personal experiment Dennis and I worked on. At the time we began work on it, I was building speakers as a hobby. The HT3's were the speakers I wanted personally. I had no idea we would ever sell any.
It took about a year to find the right woofer and when we did, TC Sounds wanted a minimum order of 50 units. Of course, this design was for my personal use and I had no idea what I'd do with the other 48 woofers. But it was the perfect driver for this application so I went ahead and placed an order.
At that time, I was building speakers in my back yard. This meant that during the winter, I had to shovel snow to get to the saw. And I did all the cutting and routing outdoors - sometimes not fun.
When we finished the design, we posted pictures of the first pair of HT3's and immediately started getting inquiries. People asked if I would be willing to build a pair for them. Of course, I said yes. I based the price on what basically covered the materials with not much to spare. After all, it was a hobby.
But soon, we started getting too many orders and I enlisted the help of my son-in-law. Of course, he didn't work as cheaply as I did. So we had to raise the price so I could pay him for his work.
As time went on, we received more and more orders. It was becoming painfully evident that we couldn't continue to build speakers in my back yard. We needed a shop. This was the point where the hobby started turning into a business.
The shop meant more overhead and we had to increase pricing to cover it. But it also greatly expanded our production capacity, which of course was immediately taken up with even more orders.
That meant more tools. We were burning through routers, sanders and other tools. So we had to increase pricing to cover those as well.
Of course, we continued to improve our methods and processes and gained quite a bit of efficiency in the process.
Early HT3 cabinets were built with butt joints. Now, they are all mitered joints and dado'd braces. So the quality of the cabinets has increased quite a bit.
The same was true for our finishing capabilities. We now use some of the finest finishing materials around. Of course, they are expensive, but well worth it in terms of results.
As Dennis alluded to earlier, we have had three or four generations of the basic crossover design, the last of which was required to incorporate the new AE-built custom 10" woofer. This is a superior driver to the TC driver we started out with.
So today's cabinets are better, the drivers are improved (including the W18) and the crossovers are more refined. That said, there is nothing really sub-standard about the HT3's we built in the early days.
We are constantly looking for ways to improve everything we do. Today, the HT3's sell for quite a bit more than the prices we charged when speaker building was a hobby. Many of the improvements we made did increase our manufacturing costs. But in the end, we feel the HT3's still represent a great value.
The closest retail speaker to the HT3's sells for $20,000 per pair. And we feel strongly that the HT3's are a superior speaker. So as far as we're concerned, they are a bargain even at today's pricing and will continue to be among our most popular designs.
Now, we just have to finish the final work on our new flagship model and we'll take things to an entirely new level. Real soon now...
- Jim
