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Fender Buys PreSonus


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I have no perspective on whether this is good or not. It'll be interesting to see what Gus thinks of all this.
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Craig's post is encouraging, considering his former employer.

 

Well, only in the sense that Fender might put money into the acquisition to grow it. Fender doesn't have an ecosystem, and they get one with PreSonus for writing a check. Or maybe it's just a "strip & flip" for Fender's parent company...time will tell.

 

Hopefully Fender already knows that the pro audio world is different from guitars, and that part of PreSonus's success is due to its culture. Fender's expansion into portable PAs and in-ear monitors didn't exactly fly high. Maybe part of the "merger," as Fender calls it, is to have people who know that world in-house.

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I still hate what they did to Genz Benz.

 

They also bought Sunn, Tacoma, SWR, Ovation, and Hamer...not much happened with those, either. Eventually Ovation was sold to DW as part of a more complex deal, and then GEWA acquired Ovation from DW. So at least Ovation guitars are still around.

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We have to remember that "Fender" isn't Fender, it's just a name. That said, the new Fender guitars that I've played were really well made and nicely set up.

 

But...

 

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/company-insights/091516/top-5-companies-owned-fender.asp

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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Craig's post is encouraging, considering his former employer.

 

Well, only in the sense that Fender might put money into the acquisition to grow it.

 

Anything that goes "differently compared to Gibson's acquisitions" is an improvement by itself. :)

 

There is that :)

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So, we saw not too long ago that Fender felt they had hit maximum guitar sales. The party was over, no growth. They launched an online guitar learning program. And now they"ve pulled a Gibson and are spending some of their money. The difference is, besides not just buying stuff to let it wither and die (cough cough), Presonus has scratched out a piece of a big market for themselves in mixers, interfaces, and a DAW. It"s not easy to claw away sales from Yamaha, countless interface makers, Avid, etc. So maybe they see potential for Presonus to go big with Fender investment. I guess we"ll see.

 

It"s a shame they don"t still have Rhodes. They could be selling Mk8"s starting at $9,450. wink Actually with a factory somewhere, they could scale up and maybe sell them at $3500.

 

Or they could make use of the Chroma Polaris name and get back into synths.

Yamaha CP88, Casio PX-560

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I appreciated GovernorSilver's link to the Corp site.

 

This link suggests that they can be pretty agile:

https://www.hawaiibusiness.com/2018-ceo-mark-fukunaga/

 

This link might illustrate some of the differences between the ways they think about businesses and the way that Gibson did. (not naming names, but, you know...)

 

The usual way that we think about MI and Pro Audio businesses is what does this mean for the parts of the US retail and distribution system like GC, etc. I think that this is a much longer range strategy that engages the Pacific Basin.

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The usual way that we think about MI and Pro Audio businesses is what does this mean for the parts of the US retail and distribution system like GC, etc. I think that this is a much longer range strategy that engages the Pacific Basin.

 

Cool and encouraging link...and I think you have a good point about the Pacific Basin. A company like PreSonus probably wouldn't have the resources to make an aggressive move into a market they might have really tapped into yet, but if they had those resources, they'd have a pretty good shot at gaining traction.

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So, we saw not too long ago that Fender felt they had hit maximum guitar sales. The party was over, no growth.

 

Not entirely true.

 

The last thing we found was that new buyers spend four times as much on lessons as they do on equipment.

 

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/petercarbonara/2018/03/28/for-fender-guitars-the-future-is-digital-and-female/?sh=1fa48d884a37

 

So FenderPlay - their lesson platform - has become a nice moneymaker for them.

 

They also do a good job of marketing towards young customers, including girls.

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A discussion about Presonus is rather timely for me. As I try to get my home studio back together I'm hoping I can get the original big 'ole SL16.4.2 working with my newer MBP's; a new one running 11.6 I bought earlier this year and a 2017 model with 10.14.6 I also bought earlier this year to replace a stolen 2015 model. Both of these have thunderbolt 3 ports only but I have the necessary adapters to convert over to firewire (thunderbolt 2 - 3 & thunderbolt 2 - firewire).

I still have an older 2010 17" MBP that I was using when I originally bought that mixer/interface but these things have been on the back burner for a number of years and the StudioLive unit got very little use due to extenuating circumstances.

 

So anyway I've recently visited the Presonus website where I still have an account although I hadn't logged in for perhaps a few years. It still shows my registered products however, a couple of which I wasn't even aware of. Where it gets weird is that I can't seem to get to the forums from my account page there. I recently was able to add to a relevant forum discussion there but now can't seem to get back there, strange.

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The forum is basically a separate entity from the PreSonus user site. There may be security reasons for that, I don't know.

 

One aspect I really like about the way PreSonus handles a person's account is that nothing ever goes away, and from time to time, cool things get added (especially if you're part of Sphere). Some people have complained loudly in the forum about how PreSonus "won't let you roll back a Studio One update, which sucks because now my XYZ synthesizer is behaving strangely and I can't live without it." At that point someone has to tell them that every version of Studio One they've ever owned is downloadable from their account.

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The forum is basically a separate entity from the PreSonus user site. There may be security reasons for that, I don't know.

 

One aspect I really like about the way PreSonus handles a person's account is that nothing ever goes away, and from time to time, cool things get added (especially if you're part of Sphere). Some people have complained loudly in the forum about how PreSonus "won't let you roll back a Studio One update, which sucks because now my XYZ synthesizer is behaving strangely and I can't live without it." At that point someone has to tell them that every version of Studio One they've ever owned is downloadable from their account.

 

I got back to the forums and from what I was reading I got the impression I could still use the 16.4.2 as an interface on my 10.14.6 machine but that was the end of the line for it, OS11 is a no go. If true that's actually fairly impressive, I believe I've had the 16.4.2 since 2013 so that's a long lifespan in Mac years.

 

So I was just curious about the Studio One program, it appears version 5 is the current with Professional as the top dog and two or three lesser editions. My unit came with Studio One 2 Artist which I can apparently still download. Oddly enough they don't offer me any upgrade options from my account page. I somehow got to the Presonus main page where I could look at their software and poked around looking at the options but then when I go back to my account it seems I'm stuck in there and can't break back out. I'm probably doing something wrong, overall the website seems reasonably well laid out but I can't get from one part of it to another; main products page, my account area and the forums are all apparently separate ecospheres.

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The forum is basically a separate entity from the PreSonus user site. There may be security reasons for that, I don't know.

 

One aspect I really like about the way PreSonus handles a person's account is that nothing ever goes away, and from time to time, cool things get added (especially if you're part of Sphere). Some people have complained loudly in the forum about how PreSonus "won't let you roll back a Studio One update, which sucks because now my XYZ synthesizer is behaving strangely and I can't live without it." At that point someone has to tell them that every version of Studio One they've ever owned is downloadable from their account.

 

I got back to the forums and from what I was reading I got the impression I could still use the 16.4.2 as an interface on my 10.14.6 machine but that was the end of the line for it, OS11 is a no go. If true that's actually fairly impressive, I believe I've had the 16.4.2 since 2013 so that's a long lifespan in Mac years.

 

So I was just curious about the Studio One program, it appears version 5 is the current with Professional as the top dog and two or three lesser editions. My unit came with Studio One 2 Artist which I can apparently still download. Oddly enough they don't offer me any upgrade options from my account page. I somehow got to the Presonus main page where I could look at their software and poked around looking at the options but then when I go back to my account it seems I'm stuck in there and can't break back out. I'm probably doing something wrong, overall the website seems reasonably well laid out but I can't get from one part of it to another; main products page, my account area and the forums are all apparently separate ecospheres.

 

Contact their support, Presonus has nice people working for it. I think Catalina is the end of the line for 32 bit programs. In the past I had some problems with installers that were 32 bit even though the program was 64 bit.

You can go back a version to Mojave if that is the case. The Firewire to Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 should work. I have both adapters but I used my 2014 Mac Book Pro recently to transfer data from a couple of OLD Firewire 400 drives to newer USB 3 drives. That was just Firewire to Thunderbolt 2. I have a Presonus Quantum Thunderbolt 2 interface and it works fine with my new Mac Mini running Thunderbolt 3 with an adapter. It's nice that they haven't just bailed on Firewire, that used to be my connectivity too.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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Contact their support, Presonus has nice people working for it.

 

In all honesty I'm mostly just curious. I don't plan to do any deep dives or jump ship from what I already have. I've only been revisiting because I still have the StudioLive 16.4.2 unit and am wondering how much good use I may still be able to get out of it. My main DAW continues to be DP, mostly because of its great live performance functionality. I had Logic 10 put on my newest MBP and haven't even looked at that yet. I have two MOTU 828x interfaces that will work with any of the software I already have. Between our upcoming live gig, getting my studio room ready and a bunch of upcoming travel plans I just won't have time to get too distracted with the Presonus stuff for the foreseeable future.

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Contact their support, Presonus has nice people working for it.

 

In all honesty I'm mostly just curious. I don't plan to do any deep dives or jump ship from what I already have. I've only been revisiting because I still have the StudioLive 16.4.2 unit and am wondering how much good use I may still be able to get out of it. My main DAW continues to be DP, mostly because of its great live performance functionality. I had Logic 10 put on my newest MBP and haven't even looked at that yet. I have two MOTU 828x interfaces that will work with any of the software I already have. Between our upcoming live gig, getting my studio room ready and a bunch of upcoming travel plans I just won't have time to get too distracted with the Presonus stuff for the foreseeable future.

 

Got it, I've found my "happy place" with software/hardware and am going back to the music myself. The rest of it is just candy.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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