I've got a theory about internet forum traffic that seems to pretty accurately track with past activities in this and other forums. In most cases, the people who actually register accounts and post with them in online forums are either doing so due to a problem or question ("it's broken!" or "how do I hook this monster up?") or because they are interested in taking part in the forum's typical discussions. There are exceptions, of course, such as people who take a moment to register an account and post a "thank you" remark upon receiving a new toy, but basically my best SWAG has always put the percentage of buyers who register and take part in a manufacturer's forum to be around 5%. That number would probably be even lower if the product in question is something like a power amp, where user questions are less likely. The RR2150 attracted a huge amount of attention when it was reviewed by Stereophile, and I think there were a number of people who bought one based on that review but who probably didn't even visit the saloon once. Many who did visit the saloon didn't seem inclined to register accounts (there were a lot more "guest" users viewing the site in the weeks after that issue of Stereophile hit shelves than is normally the case). Bottom line: for every forum member who has an RR2150, it's entirely possible that there are more than twenty RR2150 owners who either haven't registered in the forum or never even came to the forum. It's a SWAG, but it matches well with some threads we've had for product launches like the 950 and 990 - when the number of people posting in the forum who had the units numbered only a few dozen even after weeks or months, in spite of the fact that the units were still backordered.

As for the price increase... Well, as you mentioned, the price increase appears to be related to the change in manufacturing - different facility, presumably different production costs for certain aspects of the process, and so forth - and it's likely that the extra $50 is partly due to the rather tumultuous ride that some raw material costs had been on this year (copper's come back down some, but it's still significantly higher than in the past, and steel's been a fairly confusing mess for a couple years now). As you say, it's still a pretty good value - and while we're all doing a certain amount of reading between the lines, the fairly drastic decision to relocate production suggests that Outlaw was forced to make some serious adjustments to get the production volume they needed.