So if I was one of the unlucky ones that joined the waitlist a few months ago in February 2020, I most likely won't be getting an invite until Feb 2021?
I'm only going to look at the Headphone version because that's the one that matters going forward.
Currently it's been around a year wait time because it took around a year for them to start shipping. But you need to remember, it was a 1 year wait time because it took them a year to start shipping. And they only got through the first DAY of waitlisters yesterday.
We know it took them from the 13th to the 28th to get through 1 day of the waitlist. That's 15 days. If you assume that's how long every day will take, then it'll take them
15 years to get through 1 year of the waitlist.
This is obviously not realistic, but it's one of the problems with drawing a linear conclusion from non-linear data. The number of orders per day is not even every day, it varies. And the speed they get through the list also varies depending on how many people order vs decide not to. Assuming both are linear (the same every day forever), gives us our 15 year estimate which is obviously wrong.
Estimating it'll also always take a year from the time you waitlisted because it's been ~10-12 months for non-HP units and ~12-13 months for headphones units is the exact same mistake. It was a year for the people at the start of the list because it was a year before the started shipping headphone units. But although it's less obviously wrong, this is still wrong to assume that relationship will continue linearly.
Making some educated guesses about the shape of a preorder list, the largest rate of people signing up to the list will be at the start when everyone who was paying attention to the end of the AX8 and getting excited for a Axe FX III generation floor unit sign up. And everyone tells everyone that a new product has just been announced with a waitlist and people sign up. After that the signups will be less frequent: People who decide to buy one later, people who only found out about fractal later, people who missed the first announcements, etc. This is why people think the list will speed up.
That, and because the 15 year estimate is obviously wrong so it
has to speed up.
Also, we've already seen it happen with the non-HP version. April 23rd took almost 2 months for the non-HP list, but in the month that followed they made it to mid-June.
So no, barring some major unforeseen circumstances, you won't be waiting until February 2021 for your unit.
but I also passed as I really do want the integrated headphone amplifier and output.