Another 40% increase for Initiators incoming

[topshelfpyro]

Welp it just gets better and better LOL. Cobra is increasing the price for quickplug 10' Initiators another 40% after current stock depletes......the cost has gone up almost 200% since 2021 for those! The 15' will be $2 each, and the 10' $1.56 each then by the box. Others have similar increases of 20%+.

What happened to cobras "commitment" to quickplugs costing the same as wire. Lol

[displayfireworks1]

Don't be tempted to purchase ones with shorter wire in an effort to save money. To give you some perspective back in the year 1999 the DaveyFire electric match was close to $1.00 each with 6 foot wire. When DaveyFire pulled out of the market a mass amount of China match and cheap prices came in . Then I heard electric match and fireworks could not be sent in the same container , the cheap supply dried up. Along comes MJG and cracked the code making a non-ATF match. Display companies are using it , now you have all this new phone firing systems . Demand has to be high I suspect. No real competition and add in inflation. If I looked at it correctly that 7 foot one did not go up that significant. I don't recommend anyone purchase less than 6 to 7 feet ones

[topshelfpyro]

No I don't buy anything other than 10'. It's a 20-60% increase across the board from cobra. With quickplugs the 10' is up 40% and the 15' went up 60%. 7' is up 25%.

Plain wire is up 20%+ as well

[BMoore]

Not too surprising as the cost of copper wire has gone through the roof. Having said that, I am starting to regret converting to quickplugs. Looking at the new pricing for 15’ igniters it is now a 30 cent premium per igniter over standard wire to get the quickplugs. That’s a significant cost and I’m not sure the time savings is really worth it. For something that was promised to be “at no additional cost” my wallet is certainly feeling it.

[PyroWalker]

Not too surprising as the cost of copper wire has gone through the roof. Having said that, I am starting to regret converting to quickplugs. Looking at the new pricing for 15’ igniters it is now a 30 cent premium per igniter over standard wire to get the quickplugs. That’s a significant cost and I’m not sure the time savings is really worth it. For something that was promised to be “at no additional cost” my wallet is certainly feeling it.

I recently switched almost all of my 18M's back to onboard cues instead of quickplugs. I may swap back as needed in shows, but the quickplugs are not only more expensive, but I have had to spend a lot of money getting them replaced on the modules. My "help" will rip the plugs out of the mods after a show for clean-up and numerous pins have been damaged during this process. They are super flimsy and break easily. I got tired of replacing them in and swapped back to on board cues. Also, I love that I can use multiple wires from the same cue, which I can't do with quickplugs unless I have breakout boards or slats. It takes a little longer to fuse up a show, but honestly, not worth it for repair costs and loss of flexibility. I am considering buying now to save, but the batches that have been bad and the number of failures make me hesitant.

[KDirk]

I'm glad to have seen this posted. I was informed of the increase Tuesday by a buddy locally who also does pro shows, and advised me to stock up now. The comments above regarding quick plug are of particular interest as I was seriously considering adding some quickplug slats for my Cobra setup for next year.

I have one 18M with QP on board cues and a DB25 for a slat, another with on standard onboard cues. My 36 and 72M modules are configured for slat only. Now I'm wondering if I should forego doing any QP's and stick to spring clips, given the added cost and the apparent ease with which the sockets are damaged. I'd figured QP's would save me setup time next year, but the downsides conveyed here are giving me pause. It's sounding like they are not quite all they were cracked up to be.

[BMoore]

I’ve not had any issues with quickplugs. I do all my own wiring so I’m probably a little more careful with my equipment. They are definitely a time saver. But, I paid to convert my modules under the premise that QP wire would be at no added cost. That was true for a while but then they quietly started charging more and now it’s real dollars. 30 cents per wire to save 5-10 seconds is getting pretty rich.

[KDirk]

@BMoore, yes at 30 cents a cue, it'll start to add up to an amount that could be better used on additional product. Assuming 500 cues (counting individual canister shells, I shot well over 3x that in total last 4th of July, though not all individually triggered by igniters, many were chain fused) that's $150. I could get a decent number of additional shells, or a few nice multishots at wholesale for that money.

I haven't done much with paralleled igniters on a single cue so far, but it was rightly pointed out upthread that QP's make that a tougher task without breakouts or doing manual cutting/splicing work.

I had racks of DR11's specifically setup for individually "poked" shells so they could be timed precisely to go off in time to music, but much of the body of my show was racks with a single fuse run to 12, 18 or 24 cans and triggered by a single cue from the Cobra, where timing wasn't so critical. I used fuse of different durations to speed up the firing sequence of some of these racks. Others had 3 or 4 fuses broken out to 6 or 12 cans, then running to separate cues that could then be fired in tandem to get more "in the sky" in rapid succession. Bottom line, I'm not using igniters at anywhere near a 1:1 ratio per feature, but even then the added cost of QP's is already putting me off the idea.

[rthruska]

Don't be tempted to purchase ones with shorter wire in an effort to save money. To give you some perspective back in the year 1999 the DaveyFire electric match was close to $1.00 each with 6 foot wire. When DaveyFire pulled out of the market a mass amount of China match and cheap prices came in . Then I heard electric match and fireworks could not be sent in the same container , the cheap supply dried up. Along comes MJG and cracked the code making a non-ATF match. Display companies are using it , now you have all this new phone firing systems . Demand has to be high I suspect. No real competition and add in inflation. If I looked at it correctly that 7 foot one did not go up that significant. I don't recommend anyone purchase less than 6 to 7 feet ones

it's fine to go short like 3ft igniters if you know your distance to modules. I use 3ft for my pyrolama and medusa racks because my slat/modules are within a foot of the single shots. Using even 7ft igniters leaves me with a mess of wires and the 3ft igniters keeps everything much cleaner and better organized. Other than that I agree that it's easy to go too short with igniters. Cost increases were across the board with cobra, they sent out an email a couple days ago. I stocked up for the next 3-5 years.

[topshelfpyro]

I don't use cobra to fire so I can't attest to fragile plugs. But my last backyard show was 867 cues which was about $550 in Initiators, that same show now would be $1300 in initiators. They have gone up 200% since I bought 2 cases in 2021.

I bought 3' to use on pyrolamas and craigco racks, I shoot with Firetek so it's a railed system anyway. I hated the 3' match even for that so I now only buy 10', it's not that hard to keep the wires relatively neat.

[displayfireworks1]

I recently switched almost all of my 18M's back to onboard cues instead of quickplugs. I may swap back as needed in shows, but the quickplugs are not only more expensive, but I have had to spend a lot of money getting them replaced on the modules. My "help" will rip the plugs out of the mods after a show for clean-up and numerous pins have been damaged during this process. They are super flimsy and break easily. I got tired of replacing them in and swapped back to on board cues. Also, I love that I can use multiple wires from the same cue, which I can't do with quickplugs unless I have breakout boards or slats. It takes a little longer to fuse up a show, but honestly, not worth it for repair costs and loss of flexibility. I am considering buying now to save, but the batches that have been bad and the number of failures make me hesitant.

When you said your helpers will sometimes break things tearing a show down. Sometimes we don’t always have the most experienced helpers. What I do sometimes is make sure everyone has scissors and tell them just cut the match wires and leave the remining 6 inches or so connected. Then either later that night or the next day at daylight I pull the remining wire off the module connections.

[Salutecake]

Great Idea Dave.

[BMoore]

I've seen plenty of speaker terminals damaged by ripping out the wires as well. Cutting wires instead of removing is a great suggestion. A side benefit is that would not give anyone reason to re-open the module cases and not close them. Very important when your overzealous fire spotters start hosing down everything shaped like a box.

[Birdman]

I have to replace a couple speaker terminals on my mods because of this. Cutting them is a great idea!

[displayfireworks1]

Thanks I am glad a few members think it is a good idea. The other advantage is it gets the attention over to the clean up faster where the real mess is. LOL

[KDirk]

Good tip from Dave, I think I'll do that next year, as I had some younger helpers (nieces and nephews) help with tear down this last 4th, and had to caution them about pulling the initiator wires out of the slats.

[Birdman]

I'm always in a hurry to make sure to clear my racks, any cakes that didn't fire and get my mods out of there. This is after the one year when someone thought it was a good idea to just start hosing the whole area down before I could clear it. Someone almost did it again this year. I'm not 100% sure I'm doing the damage when I clean up. The terminals always look fine when I put my mods away but some of the red/black buttons have broke off connecting wires during subsequent setups. I came to the conclusion that my hasty disconnects during cleanup is the likely cause. So Dave's tip is not only going to make getting mods disconnected faster, but hopefully spare the issues I've had with terminal buttons falling off.

To get back on topic, I was on the fence at one point switching to quick plugs. As my shows grew I started to see the convenience of them. I ultimately didn't switch because I didn't want to limit where I could get my MJG's. Not to mention how it complicates parallel wiring. I have to say I'm very happy with my decision now. I can't say I was predicting steep price increases but I didn't like the idea of limiting where I could get my MJG's from, especially because I can get standard wires quickly from a local supplier (i.e. Bada boom/pyrodirect.com).

[BMoore]

Received an e-mail that Cobra has decided adjust the cost differential between standard wire and quickplugs back down based on customer feedback. Apparently I'm not the only one who felt that a 30c premium per wire was getting to the point of negating the quickplug benefits. I'll call this another example of excellent customer service from Cobra as I'm sure this means they are eating a portion of the manufacturing cost.

[topshelfpyro]

Received an e-mail that Cobra has decided adjust the cost differential between standard wire and quickplugs back down based on customer feedback. Apparently I'm not the only one who felt that a 30c premium per wire was getting to the point of negating the quickplug benefits. I'll call this another example of excellent customer service from Cobra as I'm sure this means they are eating a portion of the manufacturing cost.

Got the same email.......they are not adjusting back to the same price, they are just taking the extra profit they added to the quickplug versions. They are selling the quickplug wires for profit still, just not wxtra profit for the plug.

[BMoore]

Got the same email.......they are not adjusting back to the same price, they are just taking the extra profit they added to the quickplug versions. They are selling the quickplug wires for profit still, just not wxtra profit for the plug.

Correct. As I said, they adjusted the cost differential between standard wire and quickplugs back down. Cost of all igniters is still going up which is understandable. Cost of copper wire in general has skyrocketed.