I have examined them all very closely and would never use them even if they were given to me for free. As the film industry has plunged into a race for the cheapest stuff in the world - we now see a LOT of total POS knock-off LEMO compatible connectors.
In terms of cable assembly cost, they do (in general) cost more to terminate than other options. The cost is more than most others and the performance is appropriately higher.
In an environment where performance and durability are a larger concern than cost - LEMO and Fischer win. Very durable high-performance - low contact resistance excellent mating life-cycle Look/feel great high-density great for small places. The design is targeted toward a solution rather than a price. They are expensive because they are high-quality in every regard. I manufacture equipment for the film industry and have been using Lemo for decades - purchased TONS of them from the 2pin ($17/ea) to the hybrid fiber optic ($250/ea). The main reason is the long supply chain on a very specialized market, including the fact that very few really pay the list price. Others have pointed out the real reasons why these connectors are expensive. Producing 10000 molded plastic parts is everyday stuff and not expensive at all, and if you can stockpile and sell those over two years, that would work out 400 parts per month - again, not millions. After the first 1000 parts, the rest are very inexpensive. When I have asked for quotations for custom plastic parts, sizes and complexity comparable to a typical connector, I have seen that point between using machined parts and custom extruded parts (including mold machining and other setup) is at about 1000 parts $5 each or about 5000 USD. Sure, a few million a month might drop the price to a few cents, but starting costs actually are in the range of about 3000-10000 USD, and that would require a few hundreds produced a month, not a few million, to get the prices down to a few $. Tooling for custom plastic parts is not that expensive at all. This is off by several orders of magnitude, and a common web forum myth about plastic parts. Also, don't forget that nobody in this game pays list price.
#LEMO CONNECTOR PLUS#
$35 or so for the connectors plus wire, times three or four to the factory gate, plus 100% for the distribution chain, $250 looks about right to me for a low volume accessory at list.
Rather like that battery pack for the Nagra that everyone on youtube got bent out of shape about (But that nobody actually in the industry was surprised, or bothered by), this is just pricing the way this market expects (The custom variant is a little annoying however). Also, frankly in the broadcast market they are pretty much the go to connector for low voltage, so everyone is familiar (4 Pin XLR is the other option, but there are rather too many variant wiring schemes for that, maybe 4 pin highrose but that is mainly a field recordist thing). Lemo as opposed to something cheap (and the Lemo connectors are good) pays for itself very, very quickly the first time someone steps on one and it survives, hell probably avoiding loosing ONE take pays for that cable. Still do to a certain extent, but another way to look at this stuff, is that if you are using a Red on a job, you are probably on the sort of production where costs are running many thousands a day.
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