Too_Many_Cars
Active Member
I actually spent a good deal of time at the WAND booth last weekend at SDCC, and I hopefully can clear up a few of the questions/concerns here.
I saw both the prototype and production tooling on the prototypes at Comic Con. The prototype had a bit of tool chatter on the head, and the production model was a smoother extruded look, but both are made from CNCed aluminum. Actually most of the prop other than the crackle body is aluminum, which gives it a nice weight. The Comic Con models on display were hand painted crackle by Nick Robatto because they are still getting the paint perfect at the factory. Instead of the standard crackle finish they are doing a fun variant - they are molding the original crack pattern on Tennant's sonic (minus the couple of little chips he's given it) and are painting on top of that rather than doing all of the crackle by hand, which should mean that you get a much more uniform and interesting finish without a lot of extra hand-work.
Definitely extends, and looks pretty spot on in person. They removed the drill cracking in the acrylic tube from Tennant's prop, and my friend Daniel noticed that one of the ridges on the head profile is slightly different, and the delrin bit on the end is a little wider to fit the USB charging port, but I feel like a terrible Who nerd because I didn't notice either of those details! A fun little piece of engineering trivia is that each of the Tennant sonics is weighed and the electronics tuned for the sub-gram measurements for each particular prop so that the accelerometer measures flicks and taps consistently for each unit.
What hasn't been even mentioned yet is the FX modes that Richard at the WAND company have programmed in the prop. Designed to prevent people from needing to hack in their own electronics like the cottage industry of modified 11 WAND sonics, the new Tennant sonic has their normal FX mode, a "prop" mode which works just like the toy with a bit of extra warbling and character, and a "scanning" mode that made me squee with delight when I saw it demoed on the con floor. With a collection of button presses you activate a mode with a low sonic hum that raises and lowers on random time intervals so you can trick people into thinking you're detecting robotic parts in their head or whatever prank you fancy.
As well as the thirteen functions from the 11th sonic (push/pull/flick/tap/button press), this sonic also appears to respond to extension and retraction as a unique button press. The speaker is set in the shaft so the sound gets louder as the sonic is extended. The sound seemed a bit louder than the 11th sonic, somewhere on par with the toys (maybe a little quieter). The button on the slider is a clear acrylic tube which glows green or red to show you charging status from the USB port.
--Brian
I saw both the prototype and production tooling on the prototypes at Comic Con. The prototype had a bit of tool chatter on the head, and the production model was a smoother extruded look, but both are made from CNCed aluminum. Actually most of the prop other than the crackle body is aluminum, which gives it a nice weight. The Comic Con models on display were hand painted crackle by Nick Robatto because they are still getting the paint perfect at the factory. Instead of the standard crackle finish they are doing a fun variant - they are molding the original crack pattern on Tennant's sonic (minus the couple of little chips he's given it) and are painting on top of that rather than doing all of the crackle by hand, which should mean that you get a much more uniform and interesting finish without a lot of extra hand-work.
Definitely extends, and looks pretty spot on in person. They removed the drill cracking in the acrylic tube from Tennant's prop, and my friend Daniel noticed that one of the ridges on the head profile is slightly different, and the delrin bit on the end is a little wider to fit the USB charging port, but I feel like a terrible Who nerd because I didn't notice either of those details! A fun little piece of engineering trivia is that each of the Tennant sonics is weighed and the electronics tuned for the sub-gram measurements for each particular prop so that the accelerometer measures flicks and taps consistently for each unit.
What hasn't been even mentioned yet is the FX modes that Richard at the WAND company have programmed in the prop. Designed to prevent people from needing to hack in their own electronics like the cottage industry of modified 11 WAND sonics, the new Tennant sonic has their normal FX mode, a "prop" mode which works just like the toy with a bit of extra warbling and character, and a "scanning" mode that made me squee with delight when I saw it demoed on the con floor. With a collection of button presses you activate a mode with a low sonic hum that raises and lowers on random time intervals so you can trick people into thinking you're detecting robotic parts in their head or whatever prank you fancy.
As well as the thirteen functions from the 11th sonic (push/pull/flick/tap/button press), this sonic also appears to respond to extension and retraction as a unique button press. The speaker is set in the shaft so the sound gets louder as the sonic is extended. The sound seemed a bit louder than the 11th sonic, somewhere on par with the toys (maybe a little quieter). The button on the slider is a clear acrylic tube which glows green or red to show you charging status from the USB port.
--Brian
