Hi @james.
All those bad news are very sad.
I was very surprised by mode devices insolvency as I didn’t suspect it at all.
I think it was a mistake not to communicate on the business difficuties.
But I like to believe in miracles. It has happened in the past when I was a Creamware audio devices customer. This company rose from the ashes, so it is possible and I hope it will happen with Mod Device as it is for me the best devices I have found until now.
That said, I have a quick question for the mod devices team:
I have already send an email to @jon but maybe your email server is not down.
3 or 4 months ago I have send a Mod Devices that should have been repared. It has a bluetooth issue and maybe a issue with input 1.
But given the circumstances I don’t think it has been repared. Also I would like to recover it in the state since it is functional. I bear the delivery costs since the company is insolvent. How to do?
Thanks.
Hello everyone, very sad news. As a tier 3 waiter and long time supporter( I had a duo) I feel sad, not upset because I don’t think anyone is guilty and this is just a bad scenario for everyone, probably way worst for the mod team than for me so you all have my understanding and support, I hope the reboot will be successful. Any chance to have news about the online portal?I was thinking about buying a dwarf, as I have custom case with the mod footswich waiting for it, but I need to be able to access the plugin on the portal, any workaround for that?
To your point, it is probably true that until fairly recently there were no direct / public statements about the financial status of the company. However, the team has communicated all along about their difficulties with supply chain disruptions and significant cost increases for materials and production. When a startup is having to pay employee salaries and operating costs month after month without shipping any units, isn’t it apparent that the company is in deep trouble? In my experience, it’s not uncommon for (Western? Capitalist?) companies to keep a positive spin on even the most dire of situations until the end. Our ship hit the iceberg around the time everyone figured out Covid would be more than a few week ordeal. Everything beyond that has been the MOD team madly bailing out water while trying to keep their smiles on. I was surprised this announcement didn’t come sooner and clearly the team exhausted all possibilities to delay it (deferred salaries, donated labor, investor channels).
Recently in the forums for a popular modeller manufacturer, a staff member confirmed that supply chain issues had affected their production and this may have in turn affected some of their 3rd party resellers. No one has been immune to these problems, but BigAudioCorp can make it through several rough quarters with layoffs, clever accounting, and re-focusing on other channels. Startups don’t have those options.
Julien, sorry if I didn’t answer. I guess you followed up in the support ticket, but I didn’t received a notification. With little time I didn’t really go through these older tickets. I will check it there and get back to you asap. Sorry.
EDIT: I just checked it. You wrote on Friday, so most likely already after the last time I checked the support requests.
I’ve done extensive A/B tests between the Dwarf and my Line6 HX Stomp Box, and decided to stay with the Dwarf. One can nitpick about a plugin/effect here and there, but eventually the isn’t much difference in sound quality. I’d say (as others have said in the forums) the warm/Rat-type distortion is better elsewhere, and the Line6 acoustic guitar IR’s are certainly better for my piezo pickups. That’s about it.
Where the Dwarf absolutely outperforms is the number of plugins one can run in a single patch, and the flexibility in assigning footswitches and knobs (on 7 levels). I’m running everything on a single patch, while on the Line6 I’m doing too many weird dances between 8 or even 9 different patches.
If I now could create my own plugins and upload them, that would be awesome!
My heart goes out to the Mod Team and especially @gianfranco. I have backed a ton of projects on Kickstarter and was an original backer for the Duo, which I still use to this day. The Mod Duo was one of the very best investments I’ve ever made on Kickstarter and I truly hope there’s a way forward.
I recently decided to change up my pedalboard, but when I connected, I was sad to see the store not available. Truly a sad day for me, but just wanted to say thank you to the team for all of the great years of support. I’m a Tier 3 backer of the Dwarf as well, and while I’m sad I probably won’t get my unit, I’m still happy to have contributed to the company.
Good luck to all of you and please let us know if we can help.
I come here every day, often more than twice, hoping to read good news…or any news at all.
I’m very curious and at this point, curiousity is the strongest feeling, next to hope for a new chance, a focussed plan and a commited crew.
@gianfranco@James@jon and all of the others, when could we --expect-- news? upcoming week, month, months… ? You might manage some expectations with that kind of info ^^
while we are waiting for further information from @gianfranco and @friedsilence about the status of the reboot, I have one question:
If I were to buy a Dwarf from Thomann today, what (in terms of software) would it contain out of the box? Would it have all free plugins bundled and is just missing the commercial ones? Would it have a (somewhat) recent firmware or have some really old version?
So would it really be useful without being able to connect to the plugin store and/or firmware download site?
Hi @jetztgradnet
The Dwarf would be usable out of the box with quite a lot of plugins already installed, but not all.
If it comes with an old firmware you could update it easily with the files shared in this forum, and soon enough it seams we’ll get back access to the store or (thanks to Open Source of the ModOS) we’ll share the plugins we all have already in our ModDevices.
Not really old firmware for sure. Most likely the 1.10 at least - we are in the 1.11 officially and 1.12 release candidate.
Regarding the free plugins, no, it will not have all free plugins. Yet it would have a fairly good part of them and the “go-to” ones. Anyway, not ideal for sure, but hopefully soon enough there will be a solution to put the cloud back in the air (maybe with a zeppelin or so…allow me the smooth joke ) soon enough.
One question that I have (and I feel should remain here in this topic, so not to pollute the other one) is: what exactly are the assets the insolvency agency is in charge of selling? Both material and immaterial.
Just so the community has some idea of what to, potentially, expect when these end up being auctioned off to third parties.
(I assume these vary between office equipment, the cloud infrastructure code, product designs, HMI device firmwares, already purchased product components, electronics, cases etc. but there are likely things that we don’t even think of as “assets” that still end up in this sale)
) soon enough.