From gabru@comsec.net Thu Nov 10 09:06:08 2011
Subject:Re: Nord 3rd party drawbars

Hi Jason,

I have no doubt that the Clonetrol is a quality unit. It's the form factor that put everyone off. If you couple the
cost (which I am sure id reasonable for what you have in it, then you really have a wide range of drawbar organs
with their own internal drawbars to choose from. You remember the reaction when the pictured were published
of the Clonetrol. I think you would have been better off exploring the market with a rendering to gather feedback
before going in to production. I have worked as a design engineer and this is just my opinion. I hope you sell lots of
then and the customers are happy. As far as the price goes if you can't make money on it than it's a hobby and not a
business so I hope you do well and make a decent profit in the process! :)

Best Regards,

Gary

From: CloneWheel@yahoogroups.com [mailto:CloneWheel@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Jason Stanfield
Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2011 8:41 AM
To: CloneWheel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [CWSG] Re: Nord 3rd party drawbars

--- In CloneWheel@yahoogroups.com, Gary Brumm > wrote:
>
> The Clonetrol was almost universally rejected by everyone who was it as too big,
> and too expensive for just a drawbar controller.

Forgive the intrusion, but I'm compelled to respond to this sentiment (not to you personally, Gary).

The only way to make any dual-manual drawbar controller smaller than the Clontrol is to (A) remove bass drawbar controls, (B) remove its native programmability, and (C) make the physical drawbars individually smaller or (D) make them *not* drawbars (mixer faders, knobs, sliders, etc.).

If such a thing was made, organists would decry it as completely unusable because it didn't give them the tactile control they want, failed to incorporate key features, and required them to use a PC before connecting it to their rigs (i.e. not "plug & play"). In essence, the Control would be the target of worse criticisms it attempted to assuage.

[And - ironically - making those alterations would only make it *more* expensive, as custom tooling would need to be developed for the mini-drawbars, and Win/Mac software written (and updated frequently) so it can be programmed at all.]

Look at any full-featured clone that has drawbars and measure the space the drawbars take up. Now figure out how and where you'll put the controls needed to make it natively and universally programmable. You'll quickly realize there's simply no way to make it smaller.

Further, given the compact nature of the clones in discussion, the Clontrol added to them *still* doesn't amount to the size and weight of most fully-featured organ clones.

As for the Clontrol's price, it's as low as we can make it while retaining a *very* small profit margin over production, shipping, tariffs, taxes, and other minimal overhead. We don't have a robotic assembly line or third-world sweatshops; Ventura is a brand of a small, family-owned company with finite resources but a very high standard of quality. Ventura products simply cannot be manufactured cheaper without severely compromising quality and efficacy.

Jason Stanfield

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