Do you think new gear is less reliable?

The Lounge Other Gear
#1

Maybe I’ve just been unlucky, but in the past few years I’m noticing I have had more faulty new gear than previously, probably the last five to seven years.

I reckon I have had 15 items either develop faults within a short period or be of questionable quality from receiving them brand new.

In the previous 25 years of gear buying probably had about 7 items with faults.

Most of the newer gear with problems has been Teenage Engineering, but by no means all of it. Most of the faults have been hardware related but a couple have been firmware issues.

Dunno, seems like gear isn’t as well made anymore as it had been? Anyone had similar experience, or the opposite?

#2

I haven’t owned enough gear to be a useful sample, but this wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. It’s a competitive market, and in general very few things are built to last anymore. With a few notable examples of course… Soma stuff is particularly tank-like

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#3

i’d say its a product of the world we live in today, we constantly expect more and better which creates an endless cycle of companies trying to keep up with demand whilst holding a smaller market share from the over saturation. new adopters are the new beta testers and by the time its out of beta they need to be releasing the next product to stay relevant. this means many things that could be great end up okay and many things that should have started out okay start out fucked

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#4

Out of interest, were these new or second hand?

I remember a conversation about how sturdy old units are (old 808s, Junos etc), but part of that is the survivorship bias - the units we have left are the sturdy ones and the ones that broke were landfilled decades ago. Dunno if that applies to your experience tho.

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#5

Hardware wise I’ve had a few things break on me

Software / firmware wise I’ve had more issues though synths are mostly more complex.

Most recent purchases had midi problems which is understandable as it’s only about 20 to 30 year old tech. Takes a while to figure it out I guess.

However I may think things were better years ago as there was no internet to warn of os errors , I just got on with it.

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#6

In 30 years of buying equipment (all new) the only gear I’ve ever bought that was faulty was Elektron gear. 1 OT and 1 DT.

Also i don’t support/buy Kickstarter projects.

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#7

A mix of both, probably 30% second hand, and most of that nearly new. All the vintage Roland stuff I had never had much problems aside from minor things like tactile switches needing replacing or the odd dodgy connector, but these were easy fixes and the gear was at that time well over a decade old.

I don’t mind doing repairs, it is kind of part and parcel of maintaining a synth setup I think, due to the nature of their complexity compared to say other tools.

A lot of modern gear seems more difficult to maintain and repair I think, especially SMD stuff or where proprietary parts are used, a lot of older gear used off the shelf parts, although obviously not all parts and not all gear.

Roland, Yamaha and Korg all seem to carry spare parts for quite a while after production ceased, at least in my experience, not sure if this is still the case but as recently as a few years back it was.

Personally I tend to like to keep gear for a long time if I enjoy using it, but I have to say some newer gear doesn’t fill me with confidence that it will last as long as I’d like.

#8

Unfortunately, that’s been my experience as well, though it was a minor issue and I could have ignored it but it would have bothered the hell out of me. Sent it in like two weeks ago and am still waiting to get it back.

I will say that they feel more solid than most of the other pieces I’ve had. My old Alpha Juno still works, but it’s made of plastic and I’m not sure how long the case itself will hold up. We’ll see.

I think this is absolutely true. I was able to Frankenstein two broken ESQ1s into a working one and it was generally pretty easy, and after busting out some older gear I had in storage, I needed to clean them up a bit and that just took an hour or two and they work like new now.

Repairability doesn’t really seem drastically different, though to be fair the newest thing I’ve opened up has probably been a Machinedrum, but also being willing to do the repairs goes a long way towards maintaining gear.

#9

I think it’s partly a symptom of the ‘firmware age’ we live in, where some problems can be fixed post go-live with a download so product development and QA isn’t as robust as it used to be. Back in the day you had to physically recall anything with a significant fault in order to fix it, resulting in cost back to the manufacturer and lost revenue. This seems to have become the new normal with computers becoming ubiquitous, just think about the amount of dodgy OSs are released only to be fixed a few days later with an update. Of course another aspect is our consumer society, where the concept of make do and mend is discouraged so it’s often cheaper to just buy again, although not always the case with synths.

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#10

Yeah that is a good point re firmware fixes, most older gear had to have an eprom replacement to do a firmware update, now there are multiple easy methods to do the same via a download - I wonder if this does influence designers, knowing that they can fix any issues after deployment, so they don’t need to try so hard to get everything 100%?

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#11

I usually compare this to old cars. I don’t know if any of you have had the joy to own one or even see the owners manual of one of them. Example. I have a 1953 Chevy Bel-Air. I got in 2006. I was 17 at the time. This thing was built like a tank. The owners manual was massive. This thing told you how to do everything. I mean everything. Like how to patch a tire, how to patch a hole in your radiator, how to bend out a dent, how to fix your engine, your transmission, etc. I mean this thing told you how to service your own car down to every detail with diagrams and was very well articulated. Straight Macgyver type stuff. It was amazing. Look at todays cars. A plastic mold that wraps around. If you damage any part no matter how small the usual option is to replace the entire one piece mold. It’s crazy. And the manuals aren’t going to tell you anything except return to the dealership vs the older ones.

Also. I compare it to the old Akai MPC’s and other gear of that era. For me mainly the MPC 2000xl. I got one in late 2000’s. I had no experience with soldering or electronics in general. Those old machines were built like tanks. You could fix tact switches or fuses. I have an EPROM OS 1.2 that I boot on the motherboard for people needing to upgrade without having to do it through floppy or zip for a cf card reader. Super easy. I’ve learned to solder and have done things I never thought capable of when it comes to electronics.
Looking at todays new gear I just don’t see the accessibility for one to learn what I did. I’ve ripped apart the new MPC’s and honestly it sucks. Everything is plastic. The plastic peg legs that hold the unit together are a joke. A lot of people don’t realize is when they come from the factory and they put the screws in the bottom metal plate connecting to those plastic pegs, a lot of the plastic pegs end up with stress on the plastic, making them either loose, have white stretch marks where eventually they will just break and/or be already broken. You won’t know until you take off the metal plate and the plastic pegs come with the plate. Which there’s no need to do with the newer ones. But the fact that its that cheaply made and eventually will have to be looked at is a bummer. Will the Live take 10-20 years of pad pounding? The fact that you can fix the older ones easily is amazing.

The only way will only know if this newer gear will make it is in 20 years if you’re still using these or if they have bitten the dust due to build quality. The 2000xl is 20 years old and is everywhere still being banged on. Again I say the 2000xl because I have had one for 9 or 10 years now. But there’s other older gear that’s just as rock solid as the day it was released ( also saying that even back in the day nothing was released bug free, one could say the firmware was more polished because it wasn’t the firmware update protocol we see today).
I honeslty don’t think we will get that with the new gear in plastic cases being made.

Probably why I pre ordered the SP 2400. It’s built to last. I always said to myself since I was too young with no money to buy a brand new 2000xl. If something ever was built to the old standard I would get it. To me with the SP 2400 it’s like seeing a classic come to life in regards to build quality.

If this was off topic sorry everyone.

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#12

I’m sure the mentality is after everything has been through QA on the manufacturer’s end and they know most of the issues can happen.

  1. They may have found an issue in testing that’s hard to recreate so selling the product and finding out how the bug happens in real world scenarios is more useful.

  2. There’s other issues they know they need to fix but need to know how to prioritize. Let it out in the market and see how many support tickets and customer complaints you get. If it’s a lot then move the priority up. If it’s a few complaints then it goes in the backlog.

I try not to be an early adopter for this reason but sometimes I like opening boxes after a hard day at work. For most products that get a release it’s probably better to wait a year later then be the beta tester that reports bugs to support.

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#13

…of course.

when all this started to become an industry, all products where made for some few professionals…
to produce music…when people still spent money on records…not recording gear…
since this industry has grown into everbody can produce music also just for the fun of it, which started to happen in the mid 90ies, built and thought qualities started to drop…
and up to day, we’re living at the peak of third industrial revolution…crossing the border to the 4th…
not many brands left, who can afford to produce equipment only for professional use and long endurance…
while every brand is to be expected to drop new gear within each single year nowadays…
product life cycles were never that short before…
and almost everybody can drop the next “big thing” now by calling china to produce it quickly…
the more, the cheaper…
time was never that much expensive as it is right now…
while mass production was never that cheap…

and everything that is produced in a rush and in masses, has built in failures of some kind or the other…no way around it…just a few exceptions…
biggest reason for higher priced gear, when we’re talking elektron here…is the simple fact, it’s made in sweden…and even here…the more units u have to produce, the less time u got to double check, double think…etc…

it’s a good thing, that everybody can make music of it’s own these days…
but it’s also a downward spiral…in global rush mode…full on…

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#14

I fully agree. I just got two duds.
I won’t get into it again.

I attirubute it to not just cutting corners to save money, but over werking staff. I have always believed “werk less, werk better”
I’ve been pushing that for the last 20 years.
In any given week at werk we would put in 40-70 hours of time, depending. But you only get around 10-15 hours of actual werk done.
People are just burned out.

I believe a 4 day werk week, 10-5 would generate more and better results. One day for meetings, 3 heads down, unless serious issues arise.

Happy people equals better werk/results.

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#15

…fully agreed in reverse…
but that would lead to higher prices…which leads to not everbody can afford it…which leads to a shrinking industry…which leads to…no…impossible thought…malfunction…system error… everything has to keep on growing…right?..even if…nothing grows forever…
no…fullstop…that’s my copyright…i wrote that song ten years ago…

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#16

I dunno, I have vintage gear develop little faults all the time that I have to fix. Every few weekends I’m opening something up. Just had an Ibanez DM1100 fail on me last week, opened it up to find a blown cap and a trace that will need repaired. Scratchy pots and sliders, microswitches that stop registering, batteries that die and leak, all the classic standard repairs and faults. I think most components are actually much more reliable these days, pots and sliders are definitely very high quality and reliable in the modern era.

I think the old gear just seems so reliable because the working ones have remained working over so many years, but who knows how many others of the same model bit the dust or needed repaired?

#17

…that’s wearing out…
of course stuff needs to be replaced or need to be taken care of from time to time…after years and years of successful use and abuse of it…

we’re talking about brand new stuff that can’t keep promises…right from the start…stuff that is falling apart or successfully resist to work properly within a few month…or was never thought to any end…

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#18

from what i can remember.
hardware issues -
waldorf microcQ rack - bought 2nd hand - faulty on arrival
rokit g6 - bought 2nd hand - faulty after a while
roland sh01A - bought new - faulty on arrival though very quickly replaced.
octatrack - bought 2nd hand - 1 button stopped working , i fixed it.
bass station2 - bought 2nd hand - one of the numbers on the LCD doesn’t work.
i
ve bought a lot over the last 20 years so i don’t think its too bad.

the oldest gear i have is my bass station1 keyboard , bought new when they came out… still fine though i havent used it for probably 15/20 years.

newest item - td-3 , hardware seems ok , firmware needs updating.

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#19

That’s part of what I’m saying of course, we have no idea what the rates of failure or DOA were on the original hardware back in the day just as we don’t really know what the rates of failure are on any given piece of gear you buy new today. It’s all just speculative based on individual experience, which is not particularly useful in demonstrating or proving anything at all. It’s statistically unlikely, but it’s possible that an individual might buy 10 pieces of hardware from different manufacturers in a row that all arrive DOA, and be led to the conclusion that all new hardware is sold broken.

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#20

I dunno. If you are getting 25 hours of productivity for 30 hours of staff time, vs, 10 of productivity for 55 hours of staff time…you lose more just in office operation cost right out the gate.

Adding: oops, sorry man. Your response kinda lined up with mine, but wasn’t :slight_smile:

Sorry.

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