To anyone who does not own this book yet I strongly recommend it. I got it pretty cheap at a used book store locally, but Amazon has a good deal on it as well. Not only does it talk about rollercoaster like performance of Synthesizer manufacturing companies, but also it goes into detail of construction, marketing, and usability aspects that made some instruments rock and others flop. The point from the book that I want to bring out and its something that I can see more day to day is the fact that. Vintage gear is getting more and more expensive because.......There are only so many units still available! Finite number! And people are more knowledgeable about what they have and how rare it is thanks to the Internet.
Take a look at the above clippings from eBay auctions for a Speak and Spell and an SK-1. $70 for a Speak and Spell and $100 for an SK-1!!!!!! Jesus! But you do have to realize that sooner or later all of those SK-1s and S&_s will be gone, because they are modded or trashed. Its a sad and there is nothing that any of us can do about it, except benefit from it, by hoarding all the bendable vintage toys and selling them off for huge amounts when the time comes 5 or 10 years from now.
To anyone who does not own this book yet I strongly recommend it. I got it pretty cheap at a used book store locally, but Amazon has a good deal on it as well. Not only does it talk about rollercoaster like performance of Synthesizer manufacturing companies, but also it goes into detail of construction, marketing, and usability aspects that made some instruments rock and others flop. The point from the book that I want to bring out and its something that I can see more day to day is the fact that. Vintage gear is getting more and more expensive because.......There are only so many units still available! Finite number! And people are more knowledgeable about what they have and how rare it is thanks to the Internet.
Take a look at the above clippings from eBay auctions for a Speak and Spell and an SK-1. $70 for a Speak and Spell and $100 for an SK-1!!!!!! Jesus! But you do have to realize that sooner or later all of those SK-1s and S&_s will be gone, because they are modded or trashed. Its a sad and there is nothing that any of us can do about it, except benefit from it, by hoarding all the bendable vintage toys and selling them off for huge amounts when the time comes 5 or 10 years from now.
7 Comments:
At 1/26/2006 02:23:32 AM, captainmarmalade said…
this reminds me of a dream i had last week. i'll skip all the odd and irrelevant parts of the dream and cut right to the point.
my living room was a booth in the middle of the mall (which i wasn't happy about). my girlfriend was trying to make me go into fye to get her a record (which i also wasn't happy about). so i go into this lame-ass record store to find some 7 inch. i get to the counter to buy it and look on a shelf behind the register to see.... speak & spell reissues in a micro case (like the compact ones). in the mall!! (?) they are being included in this box case that says "now you can circuit bend like the pros!". the phrase made me so angry and i turned around to see all kinds of emo kids walking around with half-assed rushed bent speak & spells making all the same noises. the cashier walks up so i can pay for my record and he's holding one of them with a single (!) toggle on it making a loop. i start talking to him about why it is actually looping and what happens to actually make it do that. he says something like "i don't care i just picked a bend out of the book that came with it." i was so angry when i left the store that i picked up one of those metal trashcans in the middle part of the mall and threw it through the window of the record store. i woke up furious.
anyway, the dream can kinda mirror the unoriginality that's going on with speak & **** series now. but the thought that came right after was "what if they reissued speak & spells for the sole purpose of bending?" there would have to be such a high demand to go through with it. and on top of that, it would kinda ruin the whole idea of having something special and one of a kind if they were mass produced for that purpose. but i'm kinda rambling here. that post just kinda reminded me of that.
-captainmarmalade
At 1/26/2006 03:30:40 AM, Kick_kick said…
it's only because you have shared you slightly-strange-and-a-bit-sad dream that I feel comfortable saying this, but I had a dream the other night where I was trapped in my sidstation... I had to find my way out using the menu system, but I kept going round and round and round...
...my heart goes out to you, you are not alone in your sad-weirdo-electronics dream world.
At 1/26/2006 09:08:37 AM, Anonymous said…
man, when i find a speak it is for 75 cents.. but when i look on ebay they are going for 75 dollars? and at that sometimes the circuit bent speaks are selling for less than unmodded versions.. start fillin out them applications and resumes boys!
At 1/26/2006 12:24:09 PM, Master said…
My god, I hope you guys don't go to sleep with Nicotine patches. Both of those dreams cracked me da hell up. On the reissue note, if anything I think that it would drive the prices up higher, cause they would be actually in Vintage status. Plus the reissues would have to have redesigned circuits because some of the chips I'm sure are not in production anymore. And if they are gonna redesign the innards they may as well put glitches right in there and market them as glitch machines in the first place. Nowadays I really dont even look at the S&Ss on eBay, they all do the same thing pretty much and look the same.
At 1/26/2006 06:38:48 PM, captainmarmalade said…
both of those thoughts crossed my mind about the chips and installing glitches. & ur right about looking at them on ebay. only reason you would buy one on there is if you couldn't find a speak & and needed one quickly for a project (which i actually did do 2 or 3 years ago... only paid like $4 for it).
i got a speak & math for .37 at salvation army last year. ta-da!
-captainmarmalade
At 1/28/2006 11:46:06 AM, Anonymous said…
In europe ? holland it's pretty difficult to find
At 1/30/2006 02:46:07 AM, captainmarmalade said…
nah i'm in the states
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