MOD is at a crossroads - and needs your input

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#323

go full-business, as your product only has competiton from Zoia/Empress only, really.
I’m a Fractal Audio AxeFx3 User, coming to mind your product could be my future unit instead (while the AxeFx3 costs 4, 5 times more and is only capable of being used by one instrument in mono, really).

But please manage to have an open platform for sandboxing Modules, as of which like Cycling74.com is nested into Ableton…!

My biggest wishes on a new unit would be:
More ins and outs (so the unit also can be inserted into bigger ecosystems).
Some good soft-bypass.
Possibly a new DuoX aside from your now-product.

#324

How about both? Let the free software community handle the bulk of the software side of things while forming a Social Purpose Corporation to build and sell the hardware.

If not an SPC, perhaps a B Corp, or co-operative and see if you can team up with Zythian and Synthstrom. I suppose an SPC could be run alongside a larger retail co-op that represents multiple companies. It depends on how everyone wants to play together and be represented.

The afforement entities are in other parts of the world. Synthstrom is in New Zealand and Zynthian is in Spain. So, a Turtle Island (USA) corp would be more of an official “licensee”, other contenient manufacturer for their products. Which would be cool, I think. Preferably with our own take on those items. I see Zythian is using Mod-UI.

note:
I nearly forgot to mention Passinwind! They make open source preamps and some other stuff.

Maybe even reach out to the guy behind AV Linux and the teams behind Ubuntu Studio and Fedora Jam.

It’d really be something to get all the music related free software groups to unify under a non-profit and help each other out a bit more. Parallel to that, the hardware makers could get together to sell a full suite of products that run the software.

Personally, I’d go in on forming a SPC. I’ve wanted to start a First Nations musical instrument making company similar to Native Audio is for pedals but, mainly with guitars, basses, and touchstyle (i.e. Chapman Stick) instruments and accessories. I realize you’re non-Native but, that’s okay. lol.

I was planning on waiting a few more years before seriously seeking anyone else to embark on this venture with. It should definitely wait until 2026 before filling any paperwork, for tax reasons.

Some of the reasons I’d like to do this are

  1. I don’t have a 1:1 copy of any of my basses or guitars and I want to modify the nuts off of them. This would be probably the best way to build my own “Signature Collection”.
  2. Many tribes are historically known to have good woodworkers and craftspeople. I want to continue that and raise NDNs up with me. It’s something that can be done at home or a workshop could be set up on nearly any rez. It’d be dope to have people all across Turtle Island building for us. Especially with rent these days, if we could eliminate spending thousands a month on a warehouse to create this stuff…
  3. Simply to share our cultures
  4. I want to work for myself and diversify my income between this, a clothing/et. al. company, music studio, and social network – the latter will definitely cost money and not be profitable for a long time but it goes hand-in-hand with the other things and is a primary focus
  5. I think the most realistic way to do this is to team up with a number of other people and jumpstart off already existing products and projects.
  6. my day job pays alright and I don’t have a house or demonspawn to hemmorage my bank account.

https://diy.passinwind.com/
https://www.talkbass.com/wiki/pw3b-lpf-open-source-musical-instrument-preamp/

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#325

Fantastic ideas!

Just my observation as someone who has taken a step back (age, relocation, no gigs… boo-hoo it sucks to be me) - I see the original kickstarter project as having served a purpose way beyond just getting the hardware out the door. I’ve considered selling my dwarf and footswitch extension just because of inactivity, but it’s been so useful and so incredibly flexible for me in the past that I’ve decided to set up a separate (physical) board just to experiment.

Not being a hardware person I can only speak in generalities about the hardware, but it seems to me that the hardest part has been done - the physical product has been produced and is being used in “real life” situations (gigs) and it’s being sold in retail outlets. At the same time the software development community is thriving. Granted - some extreme combinations of plugins are maxxing out the dwarf’s cpu but I think that’s to be expected. As they used to say in the early PC days - “Grove giveth and Gates taketh away.”

I love the idea of an SPC. I’m not a business person and have no desire to learn the intricacies of business entities, but I’d love to see something like this get off the ground and thrive. Tapping the resources of underserved communities, producing something useful that generates revenue and then channeling it back into that community would - I believe - create a feedback loop that would greatly benefit everyone involved - from the producers to the consumers.

I could ramble on but I’ll leave it here for now.

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