I’ve had my eye on the Meeblip Geode for a while now, definitely not a polite synth, but something with a truly unique character.
However, they’ve been out of stock and like hens teeth second hand.
By chance I’ve just spotted that there’s doing a limited edition run in “nightshade” grey. If this is your sort of thing, I suggest grabbing one quickly.
Biggest bonus, apart from the sound, every control is MIDI CC controllable. So it should pair really nicely with Elektron boxes for sequencing.
I may have been slightly over enthusiastic in my purchase directly from Meeblips in Germany. I’ve felt first hand the pain and annoyance of Brexit.
The Geode cost £136 including German VAT at 19%, with £14 for shipping. This was charge despite the order being for dispatch to the UK. Apparently I can reclaim the German VAT but I’m not sure it’s worth the effort for the amount.
The package has been held until I pay UK customs charges. However, it seems I’ve been over charged that. Not sure exactly how they’ve come to the figure, but they’ve worked out something like £29 VAT for an item costing £114.28 (when you take German VAT off), which isn’t right for 20% VAT. They have also charged me Customs Duty, presumably because HMRC think the item is worth more than £135. Then add the Parceforce customs handling fee of £12.
I have a feeling Meeblips have incorrectly filled out the value of the item in the shipping forms which has made the fees higher than they should have been on the UK side. Annoyingly they’ve also reduced the price of the Geode by £1 on their website since I ordered it, making the with German VAT price sit just below the value that Customs Duty is due.
So all in all. I’ve had to pay £194.84.
Hopefully the Geode is still worth that, but yeah, thanks Brexit!
tl;dr I’ve had to pay £44.84 in UK taxes and charges to import the Geode, which is 39% of the value of the device itself.
Geode is a cool synth, couldn’t help myself and snagged one five minutes after they announced the limited edition. Also I have the Meeblip Anode that i got from that crowdfunding effort they did for it after they had the first meeblip out.
i had this little bad boy in heavy nasty use as a unique standalone simple synthvoice for years…
it’s defenitly a perfect companion to any elektron device…alongside with my first ot and adding heavy use of it’s combfilter and bitreduction or filter delay fx it was a monster of a free to twiddlemorph zapper lead synth…
I bought the Geode for the sound and tweakability of all the knobs. Reading the manual I was pleasantly surprised to find such a complete MIDI CC implementation. Looking forward to automating a bunch of stuff from my Digitakt II
