Hartmann Neuron????

[Panopticon]

Originally posted by sonic state news:
Lets face it, the Hartmann Neuron and more recently the Neuron VS are two of the more exciting synth products to come on to the market for some time. So it is with concern that we notice the subject of several threads on the forums over at the Hartmann website and more recently, an item appearing October 21st in their German news section. Our grasp of German is pretty poor but with a the aid of Google translation, we can deduce the following:
Hartmann owed monies to a subcontractor. The subcontractor decided to take action into their own hands and (rightly or wrongly, we?ll see) decided to sell their current and substantial stock of Neuron VS units to a German music (http://www.musicstorekoeln.de/) retailer at a cut price (Other retailers were offered the deal but declined ? who says honour is dead?).

Units were going for less than Hartmann?s bottom line resulting in a selling structure collapse, irate retailers and customers too while making it untenable for Hartmann to trade their own goods at a competitive price. The resulting legal shambles is using an awful lot of the small companies resources, to the point of melt-down. Hartmann sell off 50 VS systems to German music retailer Thomann music at the same deal to raise cash to pay for the legal tangle.

So, what are the ramifications for the end user? If the product was bought from this particular batch of stock sold by Music Store in K?ln, Hartmann will not offer technical support of any kind. Unless you purchased your unit from there in the last couple of months, it?s unlikely you will be affected.

However, the future is not clear for Hartmann as this is in the hands of their legal people, but we certainly hope that they can get through this and emerge stronger.

Apparently, Hartmann Neuron has since filed for bankruptcy...unfortunate that accountants so often interfere with art and technology. Seemed like a cool synth, though...

[Tomer=Trance]

Its a very cool synth! my mate bought the VS few months ago and i can confirm that this is very inovative!
(theres always a but...)
its very buggy and tend to crash his sequencer (Steinberg Sx 3.x) and also its a bit tricky to automate.

no idea what the users are going to do now that the company is gone.
too bad they overpriced it & i can understand that because they wanted it to be a high end user market product but look at them now...
i hope they will rise above their financial problems and continue their work.

[Hollowcell]

It's a real pitty to hear of companies going under. Specially when they are making stuff a little different to the norm.

[Juho L]

Originally Posted by Hollowcell

Specially when they are making stuff a little different to the norm.

When you're making "stuff a little different to the norm" you have restricted market and when you restrict the market even more by setting an absurd price tag a bankruptcy is 90% possible when you have only a handful of customers.

[Tomer=Trance]

unsatisfied costumers even adds some more to that 90%
ive been reading tons of bad reviews in forums.

[Hollowcell]

Originally Posted by Juho L

When you're making "stuff a little different to the norm" you have restricted market and when you restrict the market even more by setting an absurd price tag a bankruptcy is 90% possible when you have only a handful of customers.

Good point.

Business is still business I guess.

[Merlot]

Their downfall started when they went VST. Should've stayed hardware and lowered the price tag.

[Tomer=Trance]

I belive they went software because the price tag of the hardware was too high which resulted in very few units sold each month.