New speakers unveiled from Clayton Shaw - Caladan

He is making plenty of money. He would not sell it, if he were not.

4 woofs.....$700, 2 tweeters $150, 6 caps $80, 4 inductors...$50.....4 binding posts $200, wire $100, 6 footers $300. All prices above retail....wholesale 50% less so = $800 max. Two pieces of wood machined....$200.....four brackets.....$150.....shipping boxes $200....so $1500 max plus his labor. He can assemble one pair easily in a day and pack and ship it. The speaker is super simple. The baffles are all cut on a cnc machine and then he just finishes them 20 at a time with paint or varnish. The wire already comes twisted together. He just runs it in the channels the cnc machine makes. He can assmeble 5 pairs at once....if he has enough tables. Not bad.....maybe? $1500 a day more than cost parts.....working 6 days a week that is $468K a year over parts.......That is NOT a loss leader!!!!!!!! Of course, he has expenses and a partner and it costs a few thousand $ to go to the show. I know what it cost to run a business. However, when the business is small like his.....you can make seriously good money if you have steady business. This is what he is counting on.....and he is getting a very powerful promo from Ron.  Free advertising is best!

The above costs are what I know about the speaker from seeing the review and knowing what those parts costs. This is just a quesstimate (the actual cost of parts and labor may be much more).

Selling direct has many advantages. The speaker is very smart.....he is very smart. I am sure he will sell a ton as this is a massively great speaker for the money.

However, you have probably seen my post about making your own bi-amped fully eqed time aligned fully dipole speaker for the same money that uses the same woofs but uses 4 planars from 400hz on up.......mucho better....but you have to build it.......and if you bi-amped using 2 modded GaN 1 digital amps.....OMG!

The way I see it, I don’t think the term is meant to denigrate, but compliment. At least in this case. It’s pretty obvious that Clayton is not making bank selling these speakers at that price. I would imagine this is an introductory offer that has a limited time span. 
 

Again, just my guess.

Ozzy62,

How do you see it? What are your calculations of money in the speaker? Must be way different than mine. I have been in the high end audio business since the late 70s.

From what I see, he is making good money selling them at that price point. Look at the picture on Clayton’s site of him soldering the speaker. That thing is super simple and light. The speakers from Spatial (Clayton’s old company) are way heavier and thicker (3 inches thick of exotic baffle material), have way heavier stands, have way, way more parts and more expensive parts. That is why they are more money. He probably has less people to split the money with now that he is on his own. I don’t see him raising the price. He is going to crank them out.....just like the Mofi $3600 retail bookshelf speaker. The Mofi has ordinary jacks, wire and lots of ordinary Chinese xover parts. The Caladan has way better sounding binding posts, wire and xover parts. The Caladan also goes lower in the bass and is more efficient. Because it is open baffle and you can get to everything super easy.....you could bi-amp the speaker real easy to make it sound even better. The Caladan is also way simpler and easier to manufacture.......and can be done here in the US of A.......and the Caladan is going to sound way better. Some people need/want box speakers. Me, I love me an open baffle speaker. No box.....no box sound.

This looks like the tweeter he is using:

https://www.parts-express.com/Dayton-Audio-RST28F-4-1-1-8-Reference-Series-Fabric-Dome-Tweeter-4-Ohm-275-141?quantity=1

So, what’s your point here cause I don’t see one.  A guy with more speaker design “bonafides” than you’ll ever know in your lifetime puts out what looks to be a potentially very high value product and you have to crawl outta your hole and call it a “loss leader” with no evidence to support such other than being a woodworker???  Gimme a break. 
 

@soix I think my point is pretty clear and I stated it was just my opinion. Second point was to see how long it would take for someone who disagreed with me to start hurling disparaging personal insults. Didn’t take long did it?? 😂

The way I see it, I don’t think the term is meant to denigrate, but compliment. At least in this case. It’s pretty obvious that Clayton is not making bank selling these speakers at that price. I would imagine this is an introductory offer that has a limited time span. 
 

Again, just my guess.
 

@ozzy62 That’s quite a bit better assessment of my post. Not meant to denigrate or compliment, just calling it as I see it.

Carry on folks, it’s time for me to crawl back into my sawdust laden hole!

@ricevs 

I was an early adopter of the X3. I paid 7500.00 and that was before the big price increase. Although they were very good speakers, ultimately they weren’t for me so I moved on.  Now that speaker is where I can see a good sized profit being made. I’d guess he might have had 3000.00 (tops) in parts.