I have thought about this for a few days, mostly so I didn’t respond reflexively like my last post.
I apologize to you @dreamer, I let my frustration seep into my response, and I rarely allow that to happen here.
I also apologize to everyone else reading. We are all frustrated by something in this situation, my needs/wants aren’t of any great import in comparison to the company survival. I let my frustration get the better of me.
So, I suppose I should give you some context about why MOD is important to me as a user and “artist”.
MOD has done something for me that I haven’t experienced before.
It replaced all of my pedals. Strymon, dreadbox, Walrus, KMA, old blood noise endeavors, etc… and not only did it replace them, it gave me everything else I was curious about learning. For all intents and purposes, it cured a big part of my G.A.S. because all MOD needs is patience and I can do whatever I want.
That was the dwarf alone that did that. You can thank Ziv for his amazing demo. I sold my zoia and bought the dwarf.
It was the encouragement of the MOD team and community members that actually convinced me to continue to create. Not just that, but to share with others. A lot of the shit I make is terrible, or experimental, but the community accepts it. As someone who didn’t touch a musical instrument until Covid lockdowns, that encouragement fostered my desire to give back to you guys.
It was hard as fuck at first, fellas. Scary even. Sharing an expression of yourself with others takes a certain bravery that I didn’t know I had, and I wouldn’t have know without the encouragement received here from people who make stuff I can only listen to.
So I kept on working with it, and I work with it daily now.
It’s all the little things that are slowly building up, a bit of muscle memory with gear, a better understanding of audio itself.
Slowly my recordings got cleaner, hum/noise started vanishing, my mixing/gain staging improved, cable management, new patch ideas, sound design got more complex, my videos started getting higher “production” value, and my little youtube music journal has become more full.
I suppose I consider MOD to be my “origin story” and it wasn’t my intent. You guys let me share myself and accepted it with excitement. Most importantly, this company gave me a reason to keep improving. It jumped from audio, to video as well. Thats 2 skills I didn’t have before I met MOD.
So, thank you all. Every single one of you.
I am not the most knowledgeable, but I will say that almost everything I learned over the last few years was due to using a MOD device. I have tried my best to offer the knowledge I gained over the last few years. I’m actually pretty excited that I’ve caught a couple of bugs in the firmware for you, it makes me feel involved.
It got even better once I got my MDX in hand. That thing lets me turn strange/difficult gear into functional gear. The sheer power it offers is only let down by the lack of I/O. Of course I’m always going to advocate for an MDX2 (which I called revision rather than upgrade) down the road.
That being said, I do completely understand why its just not possible right now. You guys are already wearing too many hats as individuals.
I’m just incredibly apprehensive about the MDX and its future. It’s such a critical aspect of how I interface with audio and my hardware that I am not sure what could replace it. It’s a bit disheartening to hear that my prized pedal is going to lag behind the “budget” option. They weren’t the cheapest combo to buy lol
I, again, apologize for the way that I presented my thoughts earlier. Being frustrated isnt going to help anyone, nor did I think I’d voice a true complaint.
I love my MOD gear. Its terrible to set up, frustrating at times, horrible to work with on a touch screen, can’t control more than 1 device on the same screen, gets noisy, struggles with gain issues, underutilized power, and not enough I/O.
For all of those “Cons” the struggle is worth it, because for every annoyance there are at least 2-10 things it does right. I mean, I was able to turn that otomatone toy into something insane. I showed my buddy that video the other day and you should have seen his reaction lol. Sadly, he isnt a musician lol
In essence, my frustration doesn’t lie with you, or MOD even. It’s frustration I feel because I’m scared that the company that helped me find my identity is struggling. I think we all feel that in some way.
Take care of the Dwarf, so you can take care of the big boy later. All I can really request is that you do your best to keep the feature set comparable between both devices, which @dreamer did bring up.
Outside of that, let me know how to buy one of the expression pedals
Hope all is well with you all, apologies for my less than positive posting, and most importantly:
Thank you MOD team, and the MOD fam.
-Elk