loop manufacturers

[Kim Flint <kflint@chromatic.com>]

At 10:16 PM 10/17/96 -0500, Paul wrote:
>If I was sitting on the fence, and knew that Oberheim was to abandon the
>Echoplex, why would you buy something with as many glitches and you all
>havementioned.  It is clear that with the market share of the Jamman and a
>few knudges, software/hardware updates and development are more possible 
>by
>Lex.
>

Sorry Paul, Lexicon abandoned the Jamman some time ago. I think they still
sell them, but so far as I know, there are no upgrades or Jamman II's on 
the
horizon. Jon Durant has lamented this for some time, and some well known
endorsers have jumped ship as a result. 

Software upgrades are more likely with the Echoplex actually, because
Matthias owns and develops the software, Gibson just licenses it. If
anything, Oberheim's continued existence makes it a bit harder for the
upgrade to happen since some old contract problems need to be resolved
first. Oberheim's demise would mean Matthias would be free to sell it to
whoever he likes. However, Oberheim's demise would mean that the number of
echoplex units on the earth would remain finite for the forseeable future. 

So things don't look rosy in any direction, really.

I want to join Jon Durant's ongoing call to action about this. There is 
very
little support at any manufacturer for looping products. The ones that 
tried
have lost money and gave up quickly. A big part of the reason for this is
that there has never been any coherent community of users to demand
products, or for manufacturers to market their product to. 

Hopefully this list can be the beginnings of such a community. I hope we 
can
discuss and develop the art here, get others interested in listening and
creating loop music, and consequently be better able to encourage
manufacturers to create the sorts of products that are useful to us.

And thanks for kicking the list out of that tedious hardware discussion. I
get bored with that sort of thing too, since I've been doing it for a 
living
for quite some time now. The more abstracted, philosophical discussions are
much more interesting to me. Why we use the tool, what we use it for, 
rather
than the tool itself. There is certainly room for tool discussions here, 
and
it is relevent since looping is a hardware dependant art, but if that's all
we do it gets a bit dull. Personally I would have chosen a more positive
approach to the problem, but your way seems to have worked. 

kim
_______________________________________________________
Kim Flint                       408-752-9284
OEM Engineering                 kflint@chromatic.com
Chromatic Research