GRollins

I was born not far from Asheville. I can attest that the southern Appalachians can use all the jobs they can get and tech jobs are a pretty good bet. Still, as EricBarker says, in a world where China pays workers a fraction of what American jobs pay and Behringer is nipping at their heels, I'm not sure that Moog is on solid footing. In that neck of the woods (so to speak), the primary job alternative is likely to be logging (beats working at the local Walmart), which pays fairly well but is heavily weather and market dependent. Here in the Carolinas we've had incessant rain for weeks and the skidders and logging trucks can't safely traverse muddy mountainsides in those conditions. A lot of people are going to be dipping into savings to keep food on the table. It used to be that tobacco was a major cash crop--along with a little corn--but those days are long gone. No one wants to farm and tobacco is verboten. The fields that I remember as farms when I was a kid are now stands of pine. There's no mining in the Asheville area. Even Spruce Pine (not far up the road from Asheville) is but a shadow of its former glory back in the 1940s-'70s. (Own a cell phone? The silicon for the chips came from Spruce Pine, NC. The purity of the quartz is unsurpassed.) The problem there is that, while there's demand for the product, economy of scale (e.g. the Pine Mountain Mine, which took over from the Chalk Mountain Mine as king of the hill [ahem]) and automation have decimated the mining work force. Downtown Spruce Pine is a ghost town. An arsonist burned a number of buildings years ago. Today they stand scorched and empty, with trees growing through non-existent roofs. There's been no attempt to rebuild. Heartbreaking. Tourism? Yeah, there's tourism, but that's seasonal, doesn't really pay all that well, and there's a limit as to how many B&Bs and hotel jobs you can justify. And that's overlooking the fact that a lot of people don't much care for "tour-asses" swaggering around town, acting like they own the place. Arts? Yep. There's a lot of music and such. And that pays real well...right guys? It's even worse outside the city. Of all the things to reissue, I'm not sure I'd have chosen the vocoder, but maybe there's more demand for vocoders than I realize. Grey

My name change warning flag is based on the idea that bureaucrats tend to want to put their stamp on a business and one of the more prominent ways that they can flex their new-found powers is to change the name of the business. It will be presented as, say, "reflecting their new business direction" or something like that. Look at press releases for any number of corporations for examples of the verbiage, but honestly there was nothing wrong with the old name. It's just an ego trip for those in power. Another indicator of trouble is dissatisfaction and high turnover in the lower ranks. This often accompanied by sour attitudes. I could make a case for that too, but I'll leave it for now. Grey

Being said forumite, I would like to emphasize that I do not have any specific information that indicates that Moog will be going out of business in the near future. As I've said repeatedly, I don't want them to go out of business--I like their stuff; have four of their products. My speculations have been based (as detailed elsewhere, won't reiterate here) on apparent (okay, glaringly obvious...) disarray at Moog Central in Asheville and some other items, such as the cancellation of Moogfest. No one thing is sufficient to raise alarm on its own, it's the overall pattern that disturbs me. No one wants me to be wrong more than me. In a nutshell, I fear that Moog has been taken over by folks of a bureaucratic mindset. Something to watch for: If Moog changes their company name (even if it's just a minor variation), I'll take it as confirmation that I'm right. It takes time for bureaucrats to destroy a place of business, but one of the signs of a bureaucratic takeover is frantic activity, later seen to have been "too much, too soon," but in the moment it's invariably touted as proof of vibrant, strong leadership, or some such malarkey. We'll reconvene in, say, three years and see if I called it. By then it should be clear whether I'm right or wrong. I'm not saying Moog will be four-paws-up in three years, only that the trend should be obvious. Grey

Your go-to strategy for this sort of thing is to look at historical sales on Reverb and eBay. You don't need to be a member on either site to get to the basics, although Reverb will give members more detail. On eBay, look up the item you want to sell, then scroll down, watching the left side bar. You'll come to a box that says Sold. Tick that. On Reverb, look for Price Guide in the upper right portion of your screen. Note that not all items are tracked. If you're a member on Reverb (free to join), you can get to prices on individual transactions going back for at least a year or two. Just out of curiosity, where are you? I was looking for a CP4 for a while, then gave up for various reasons. Grey

I know it's not always practical to have displays and such, but there comes a time when you really need some way to get at problems that are hidden in deep menus or arcane "tap-this-one-twice-and-that-one-once-then-flip-this-switch-three-times-within-five-seconds" sequences that only serve to prove that someone had a fight with his wife before coming to work the morning that part of the circuit was designed. My Behringer Model Ds show one way to handle the matter decently. The original machines had the stupid, unpredictable (and to be honest, somewhat unreliable) weird sequences. Then, in a stroke of genius, they came out with SynthTool and all you have to do now is hook a computer to your D with a USB cable and the program allows you to set all those difficult things with a mouse on a clearly designed user interface. Much more intuitive and practical. Score one for Behringer. If you can't bring yourself to provide a civilized user experience on the outside of your synth, at least give your customers a way to hook it to a computer to get into your product. Grey

Okay, so he's got a Durawowsler 9000xrz synth in the attic in one of those racks. He decides that he needs it downstairs for a current project because it has a unique sound. How the devil does he move it? Those racks are obviously on wheels, but they'll weigh a couple hundred pounds each, minimum. Does he have a freight elevator? Grey

The Minimoog is, for better or worse (and you know which of those I'd choose), a touchstone. Even people who may not want to own a Mini will have some idea of what one sounds like. In a case like this it provides a corrective lens that cuts through recording gear, YouTube, etc. so that you can say, "Well, if a D sounds like that, then the Matriarch must sound like this..." It allows you to calibrate your ears. Grey

Thanks. That was interesting. The Matriarch almost sounds "scooped in the midrange" compared to the Mini, like a Fender amp compared to an Ampeg (different tone stacks in that case, instead of oscillators, but the sonic result is similar). Or, alternatively, you could say that the Minimoog sounds fatter or thicker. I can see that both would have their uses. I've been trying to rationalize buying an oscilloscope, but failing. There are too many other modules that are higher priority. Grey

If he's said anything I haven't seen it. Grey

Speaking as a bass player, I found their music refreshingly different from the normal thud-thud, I-IV-V grind--something that I personally find pretty damned boring. There are plenty of bass players out there that don't mind that sort of thing. Let 'em have the repetitive blues crap. Give me something that's got more meat on its bones. Grey

My apologies. I haven't been exerting myself. We haven't even gotten past the first page, much less to page 3. I shall redouble my efforts. Actually I've been waiting for the 2600 clone which will supposedly be in production by April or thereabouts. Until it begins slipping too... Grey

My father lost his job when his entire department was replaced by a computer (late '60s...a lot of that going around). There was a time lag, then he found another job and we moved, which was a big upheaval for me after spending nearly all my childhood in one place. The new town actually suited me much better than the old one and I quickly fell in with some neighborhood kids. One fellow had a stereo of his own. It was cheap, but he had complete control of it rather than having to deal with parental control and such. On that P.O.S. stereo I discovered Yes and Jethro Tull, and possibly ELP, although I may have picked up on them after hearing Lucky Man on the radio--it's been a while and the details have blurred a bit. Anyway, this was all in a six month period. Musical horizons opened that I had never even known existed. For Christmas that year I remember getting the Aqualung album. I played that album until the grooves wore through from opposite sides to meet in the middle. Yes and ELP were growing on me, but not as quickly as Jethro Tull. A couple of months later my father died and we moved out almost exactly one year to the day from moving in. Another upheaval, even bigger than the first. The next town was not as friendly at first, but I eventually found a group that I more-or-less fit in with and they were big on Yes. By that time Close To The Edge had come out and...well...that was it. I was committed. I had been playing bass a year or three and was ready for the challenge that Chris Squire represented, simply by his very existence. Along with Squire came the other guys, one of whom was Rick Wakeman. Even though I wasn't playing keys at that time, he and Keith Emerson managed to capture my imagination in a way that no one else had, then...or since. From then on, I began to pay closer attention to keyboards as an integral part of a band, analyzing how they fit into the music. This whole thing of "prog" lumping Yes, Jethro Tull, ELP, Pink Floyd, et. al. into one bag doesn't sit well with me. I can hear enough similarity between Yes and ELP that I can see grouping them together, but Tull? Pink Floyd? I can't see it. Nevertheless, I understand the human tendency to want to categorize things and since I tend to like a lot of the things currently classed as prog, I guess I can live with it. One thing--well, two things--I've never understood is why Iron Butterfly isn't classified as prog. Surely they're at least as closely related to, say, Yes as Tull or Pink Floyd--arguably moreso. The other thing I can't understand is why they've been forgotten. Okay, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida is too long for today's 3-minute radio format, but then Close To The Edge doesn't get played either. I mean, come on, if a radio station can play an instrumental like Frankenstein by Edgar Winter, they damned well ought to be able to justify the air time to try out Iron Butterfly Theme, right? A lot of songs from Ball or Heavy were psychedelia and might not work in today's culture, but some of it was good (proggish) rock. Doug Ingle might not have been the virtuoso that Wakeman and Emerson are/were, but he was better than some who achieved more lasting fame. Oh, well. Yes and ELP prepared me for Weather Report and Return To Forever, who also should be considered prog rock if there was any logic behind this system, but there isn't, so they're called fusion jazz. Okay. Fine. Have it your way. Fusion jazz it is, then. Yes, there was a lot of boring, aimless noodling presented as fusion jazz, but Weather Report and RTF shouldn't be blamed for the groups that couldn't cut it any more than people blame Yes and ELP for bands like Starcastle. Actually, it's been thirty years or more since I've listened to Starcastle so maybe it's time to try again. Maybe they'll be less saccharine-sweet, Yes-pop-wanna-be to my ears after the passage of time. Or maybe not. Won't know until I try. After all, Triumvirate was better than I remembered when I gave them a listen a few months ago. Some good music there, even if they tended to run the good riffs into the ground by repeating them unto death. Grey

Yep. That. Grey

Behringer looks good now, but once they've released clones of all the classic synths, where do they go from there? Yes, they're in a good position to release new gear of their own, but that won't happen at the same breakneck pace. I'm thinking this could be a bubble and that things will trend upwards for another year, maybe two, then drop. You'll have to time this very carefully indeed to make money. Grey

This is one of those cases where my fingers are crossed...I want to be wrong on this. Grey

Aye, but if they'd expected to ship, say, 5k Model Ones by that date then 2k comes up rather short. The 2000 unit figure lacks context; the number in isolation doesn't impress me. It may be a good number or it may be disappointing to the powers that be. Either way, they'll tout it as being good--admitting that sales are coming up short ain't likely to happen. My views on Moog's corporate health and vision for the future aren't based on just my subjective impression of the One--I'm seeing a lot of disparate things that seem to me to paint a worrisome picture. Don't get me wrong, I adore Moog and have four of their products. I want them to be around for the long run, but Bob's gone and they seem to be trending in a different direction. I just hope they know what they're doing. Grey

We each have our own money and can spend it in any way that suits us. I'm nowhere near as confident in the permanence of any PC-based technology as you seem to be. If you think your WAV collection is a good investment, then more power to you. In the long run I believe you'll find that you've built your house on sand, but...it's your money and if it's giving you pleasure in the near term then hopefully you'll feel that it was money well spent. Grey

I've only ever learned new songs by ear. I listen to it until I can hear it in my head, like a tape loop, then I play that. By the time I'm that familiar with a song, I know where the notes go and where there's space to improvise if I feel like it. Grey

I love it. I found an old handwritten note today that answered a question I was facing, so we're in the same boat. Grey

Guitars and basses can be refretted, after which they're essentially as good as new. I don't know how many Stradivarius violins, violas, cellos, etc. have worn out, but the ones I've heard still seem to be working okay. The same can't be said for software. Imagine, if you will, a functional 300 year-old piece of software. Boggles the imagination, it does. Samples are fragile, too. WAV files are subject to the same threat of obsolescence as the software they run on. All it will take is an industry turn towards, say, FLAC, and you're toast. The optimistic response to that is something along the lines of, "But all I have to do is translate the WAV files into FLAC with my handy-jim-dandy ConvertAll app!" But... The whole point of FLAC (and other so-called "lossless" file formats) is that they sound better. You can't make up the deficit in sound quality in a WAV file no matter what you do, and that's setting aside conversion errors that creep in, causing a loss of sound quality when going from one format to another. Meanwhile, my 1960 Fender Precision just keeps trucking...along with all those old 'Burst Les Pauls and early Stratocasters and old Martins and... (My P-bass still has the original frets, by the way...) Grey

I've quit making that promise, except in jest. Grey

Pardon me for being cynical, but it sounds as though they're not selling as many Ones as they projected. Or, to put it more bluntly, they're asking "Where did we go wrong?" just in more oblique terms. Yes, it's normal to leverage a circuit topology into as many new models as the market will bear--that's not my point. My point is the survey itself. That's not normal. When's the last time you saw a survey about how a business should proceed after buying a refrigerator, a clock radio, a [fill in the blank]? Never, or close to it. I can only think of one similar case off the top of my head. If someone's got a product that's selling, they know what they're doing, they know where they're going, and they'll keep selling it, alongside as many variants as possible. As I've said elsewhere, I'm worried about Moog. I love their stuff, but am seeing signs that they've lost their way. Grey

My kids (like everyone else's, I'm sure) want to spend waaaaay too much time online. It's a continual battle to keep them tied to the real world. I spend some time online--obviously, since I'm typing this note--but do not hear the siren call to the extent that others do. The closest I came was when I was the moderator at diyAudio. That was pretty much a 24-hour-a-day thing and like to drove me mad. I had a death in the family and realized that I could not maintain my sanity while attempting to balance the online bullshit (I had several trolls that were particularly problematic) and my real life. I quit. Granted, that wasn't the same sort of addiction that you're talking about; it was an (unpaid) job. Nevertheless it took over my life for a while. Grey

My problem with anything PC-based is that you're one operating system version change away from obsolescence. Then you have to buy a new version to fit Windows XP/7/8/10...29 or whatever (ditto Apple). Show me a piece of software that still works after 10-20 years (and who knows how many operating system versions). A Moog from the '70s may need some maintenance, but so would a PC of equivalent age, only there's no DOS software still operative, know what I mean? And let's not get into trying to find a replacement hard drive for, say, an IBM XT. Oh, wait, current software won't even fit on a 10MB hard drive. And the Moog has resale value. PCs that old aren't good for anything. Hell, PCs over three to five years old aren't worth much. Software resale value? You guessed it. Zilch. I've got a Fender bass that's near as old as I am. It has value. Even a mainframe computer (no PCs back then) wouldn't run current software and has close to zero value except as salvage. I just don't see anything based on a PC as a good investment, long term. Gimme hardware. Grey

I thought you'd be all over the new Behringer Poly D. Cheaper than 4 Model Ds, even though its actually paraphonic. Yeah...about that...I listened to the demos and the sound of it just didn't grab me. Like the Moog One, I wanted to like it, but it just doesn't sound right for some reason. I don't claim to know the circuitry in the Poly D, but it doesn't sound like the Model D--at least in the demos I've listened to. Different oscillators? Different filters? I don't know what's going on. On paper the Poly is tempting. The reality seems to be slightly less enticing, at least to my ears. Grey