loop product viability (was: Orvilles to replace EDPs?)

[erwill@suitandtieguy.com]

Quoting Mark Sottilaro <sine@zerocrossing.net>:
> I have no idea who you talked to in 96, but the EDP was never that 
> cheap.  I remember looking into it around 93 and it was in the 

Elmore Music in Peoria IL. when i went back when i finally had the money 
together Dave Plunk (the senior salesman and former bandmate of mine; he 
wasn't 
messing with me or anything) told me that the price had gone up and that 
he was 
pissed that gibson was "yanking me around on this" (his words).

> market.  Notice the demise of the Repeater.  Cheap?  Sure.  Really cool 

the demise of the repeater had much more to do with it's _ridiculous_ 
marketing 
and technological comprimises. they wanted to sell it to DJs. the only 
people 
who wanted to buy it were musicians. they dragged their ass getting it out 
the 
door because they spent _way_too_much_time_ trying to make it do totally 
pointless things like Loop Point Assist, realtime CFCard storage, and a 
totally 
STUPID resample implementation. 

the work they put on making Resample work the way it does so pisses me off 
it's 
not even funny ... it should have been a simple placing of the FX Loop in 
the 
feedback path. their desire to make sure that you couldn't get too crazy 
with 
Resample must have cost them at least a few weeks of dev time.

if they had ditched LPA, put more memory on the motherboard, used CFC only 
for 
loop storage, and threw their marketing energy towards musicians purely 
(instead of DJs) then they'd still be in business and i'd be using a pair 
of 
Repeaters now. and not having these huge headaches about where i'm going 
to go 
next.

> I think most of us love our little secret 
> looping devices and techniques and this tiny community we've built.

looping will inevitably become a commodity performance technique just like 
sequencing or drum machines. there is no stopping it. musicians who don't 
have 
the budget or social connections for large bands have a tendancy to love 
looping once they've been introduced to it.

i've seen the number of loopers in my hometown grow significantly over the 
past 
8 years. like going into the coffee shop (where i got chastised by the 
owner 
for playing "weird" music in his establishment, even though I FILLED HIS 
PLACE 
and everyone was buying drinks) and seeing a local jazz guitarist with a 
Boomerang. my new drummer mentioned offhand he had a Boomerang for 
practising 
guitar. the indie rock bands that have Headrushes. this isn't even 
counting the 
people who don't leave their basement or read LD.

HEY GIBSON!! keeping the decade-old technology inside the EDP alive at the 
cost 
of moving more units (by continuing to raise the price and barrier to 
entry) 
will definitely not keep the number of loopers from growing. they'll just 
not 
be buying EDPs.

sincerely,
lost repeat customer.

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