As I recall from slavish following of this thread, the cabinets are made in China because they could not secure a domestic supplier capable of meeting spec. Final assembly is in the USA.
If they’re made in China that’ll lead to a spate of fakes. Why didn’t PS Audio learn from the mistake of letting their cables be made in china?!
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Hi Baldy, I know that you did not mean to discriminate “Walmart shoppers” as you make the point clear that you simply need a very high income to afford speakers that cost a lot of money. Which is a fact.
But:
Me and the family liked shopping at Walmart, we liked certain products Walmart offers for attractive prices.
What struck me most though:
I did support the Christmas bell ringing to raise funds for the Salvation Army in front of a Walmart once.
I was impressed to see that those, driving the oldest and most worn down cars, seemed to donate the most. I bet the Salvation Army was very grateful for the amount of money raised at hose Walmart doors.
Therefore I respect the Walmart Shoppers who seem to master the art to feed an entire family with an annual gros income that is (far) less than the net cost of the FR30 and yet they have money to spare for others who are in need.
Merry Christmas to everyone.
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Nothing derogatory intended but the simple fact is that the usual Walmart shopper is not looking for high end stereo equipment.
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My pleasure. We struggled over the series name for quite some time. Used all the exotic Greek words, then went through a list of superlatives, then over the top obvious words and to our surprise, all those were either taken or goofy.
I was amazed at how many speakers there are in the world. Really amazed.
In the end, we decided the statement we wanted to make was as below, something ownable that we felt good about and aspen is it!
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Probably a good thing you didn’t pick “Omicron.”
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Or “ISIS” - how unlucky did that turn out for Rega with that component name choice for their flagship CD player before it became a household name? Surprisingly, they kept the name and still have it on their website - just bad luck probably, likely no searches would have turned up that potential conflict at the time. Lots of pitfalls to navigate and luck involved too with names
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Yeah, lots of examples out there. How about the diet product AIDS? We could go on…
Now that’s funny. I don’t care how you spell it. 
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Well, there simply is no US domestics supply of most loudspeakers parts. Eminence and Misco still make woofers domestically but are often sourcing the bulk of the components from China or making cosmetically simpler pro/MI/commercial speakers.
Rare earth magnet pricing is getting so high that some US mines are opening back up but finding US foundries that make large forgings of low carbon steel parts isn’t really possible or competitive in the slightest in these quantities. I know a car audio guy machining bar and plate stock for exotic woofers and eminence still stamps their own top plates from US steel for some models but nothing like we’re doing.
Wilson primarily uses SB Acoustics in indonesia and Sinar Baja (the SB) is part of PT indoyoke and makes a lot of steel woofer parts and they started a pretty decent cabinet factory there as a well.
The factory that we’re using for the cabinets makes product for TAD (including the model 1), B&W, Monitor Audio, Sonus Faber and others and are a trusted partner. They are one of relatively few options worldwide with the level of quality and willingness to do difficult/boutique projects like this. If there was a domestic option even remotely similar, we would be considering it but that simply doesn’t exist.
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And there is Dodge Aspen . . .
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Complaining about the cost of the FR30? Best to check out this series before you comment here! 
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Indeed there are always bigger fish.
Oh, no. Consumers will be confusing the new speakers with a 1970s compact car.
Nuts.
As I have observed in the past, it is difficult to come up with a word which has not already been trademarked, etc. for some purpose.
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I’d forgotten about that car. I once worked with a guy who owned one, and at the office Christmas lunch the boss asked him, in all innocence, “how’s your Aspen running?” I just about did a spit take in front of the whole group.
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Fo-shizzle.
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The Fo-shizzle FR50. I like it.
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I had been struggling with putting two of them in our livingroom. I was just about to whip out Autocad and design an addition to the side of the house.
Whew! Saved by the Elk!!!
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Was going to say things don’t look bad, but I’m late to the party. So am glad is all cleaned up. 