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Comment by rumori | Hacker News Reader

He had the option to just build synths that were inspired by the originals, but he copied literally everything, circuits, trade dress, name. Behringer is a parasite company, once you do anything innovative they come and copy it cheaper and people buy it for that single reason.

It’s cool we have cheap synths, when they actually do something original I’m all for it, but trademarking the Oberheim name and mocking journalists is distasteful. I know a lot of small makers and I cannot name a single person respecting Uli.

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Roland, Korg & Yamaha had the ball in their court for years. Uli saw an opportunity and took it.

Korg has also been re-releasing old designs, notably the ARP 2600 & Odyssey.

When I built my xoxbox the demand for 303s was insanely high and Roland could have done what behringer did.

I’ve always had to pin this on a cultural blind spot in the Japanese psyche, where it comes to new and novel improving technologies. Having actually understood there was a demand for the 303, Roland then spent 30 years re-implementing it using all manner of digital techniques and improved bells and whistles (and LEDs) while managing to miss the target every single time in capturing what made the 303 unique and special, which was the quirks and response of its transistorised circuitry and brain-damaged sequencer. 40+ years later they still can’t seem to understand which is why it had to finally be re-implemented by all the XoXbox cloners and Uli.

The original 303 & 606 are pretty crappy plastic machines. The 606 didn’t explode in value in the same way.

Ok well I respect him for his no-f*ks-given approach to putting the instruments into the hands of musicians.

Like when Mono/Poly owners were crying that he’d cloned the Mono/Poly and made it cost £400 not £4000 - this should be a cause for buying two more, not a cause for complaining. That synth is absolutely genius and it’s a similarly genius move to pump out countless more of them at a price people can afford, which all the original makers seem unable or unwilling to do. There’s innovation all over Behringer’s synths if you go looking for it, just of a different type to the innovation found in designing the originals.

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