From bruce@ashbysolutions.com Thu Oct 27 09:56:43 2005
Subject:Re: A Yamaha Clonewheel???

Hi Rick,

>> From what I understand, Yamaha & Korg are part of the same
>corporation, which may explain this. And while their product lines
>overlap, their actual sound does not. By nature, if a Hammond clone
>was to come out, it would overlap with the CX3.
>
>You're right Tony, Yamaha owns Korg and has for a long time.

I think officially, Yamaha owns a ~30% interest in Korg, not the whole company. However, that might be sufficient for them to feel that they are covering the clone market adequately. If you're only going to sell a few thousand units of a product, and a sister company already has an entry into the market, maybe you leave well enough alone.

Or they might simply look at the combined CX-3 and BX-3 sales, round them off to the nearest 10 million units, and decide that it's not worth their trouble to up the ante. ;-)

That's the problem with niche markets: it's hard to get the big companies interested, even though they might have the resources to do a great job. For every guy like Allan who bemoan's the lack of nine drawbars in the S90ES, there are probably 100 who are more than satisfied with being in the ballpark of the sound of a B-3. They can set up a 88 8800 000 sound, and use one slider to add in the 1' or 1-1/3' drawbar now and then. I saw a guy in a little bar in Singapore who was ripping up the keyboard with his blues organ solos -- on some sort of PSR- or Casio keyboard! From a purist's point of view, his "Hammond" sounded no closer to a real B-3 than my old U-220 sounded to a Yamaha Concert Grand, but if you need to travel light and you only play 2-3 songs a night on organ, can you justify the cost of a dedicated clone?

Regards,

-BW

--
Bruce Wahler
Design Consultant
Ashby Solutions™ http://consult.ashbysolutions.com
978.386.7389 voice/fax
bruce@ashbysolutions.com

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