At one time, this Spaun multiswitch was one of our hot sellers at Solid Signal. These days we don’t sell nearly as many. Shrewd observers might even note that several other Spaun products have been discontinued and that makes people wonder if the entire market for non-SWM multiswitches has completely dried up. That’s absolutely not true… although the market is a lot smaller than it used to be.
In the 2000s, marine users and others looking for solid, world-class equipment used Spaun multiswitches for the backbone of their systems. The multiswitch in this picture does exactly the same thing as this one for one-tenth the price, but people bought it for Spaun’s reputation as a market leader and quality manufacturer.
Spaun still makes several products for the US satellite market, but they’ve seen their market share erode since the SWM multiswitch became popular. The SWM is a super-reliable product for about one-quarter the price of a comparable Spaun multiswitch, plus it makes it easier to wire the entire premises (or vessel.) DIRECTV’s reliability record with the SWM is equal to Spaun’s, and that has a lot of people asking why they should pay for a more expensive product.
For those who have existing Spaun multiswitches, this may be the time to move to SWM, but if you want to stay with a legacy multiswitch, Spaun is still there and still offering quality products. This may be the time to add an amplifier and polarity locker to your installation, which would then give you the choice of using the much less expensive WB68 multiswitch instead of the Spaun, with about the same quality and reliability. That also gives you an easy upgrade path to a SWM when you are ready to go that way.
Solid Signal has no plans to discontinue Spaun multiswitches or any of the legacy multiswitches we sell, as long as there is a need for them and we can still get them. We don’t want to push you into a technology you’re not ready for… but on the other hand we all agree SWM technology is pretty sweet.
