Not very surprising. Although I thought it was well known the boards in most synths came from China. It honestly sounds like a very depressing place to work at.
Good that the whole employee owned smokescreen is dissolving. Hopefully the talented engineers will be able to start their own company.
Yeah. Iād have expected most of the PCBs in the cheaper things to be prepopulated.
And, it is a fair question as to what really makes, say, a DFAM worth $700.
Whether or not the DFAM is priced right doesnāt justify cloning it so unabashedly, though, I donāt think.
And the post has a weirdly mixed message - how can āthe Moog people believed inā be real if it was running itself into the ground? Mike had been running things for almost two decades, and labor was on the verge of strike. Which part of Moog were people believing in? The working conditions? The innovation? Theā¦ what?
All that said, being mad about a bean counter who prefers to count beans seems pretty stupid. Itās a business, not a charity.
What else could Moog have done? Theyād stripped QC to the bone but prices remained high - Asheville labor was not cheap, on a global scale. They were still using a fair bit of it.
The inside story Iād really like to see isnāt from the line workers, it is from the design team(s). Why the Moog One, and why not an affordable poly?
The part that bothers me is they outsource to china, then claim itās āhand madeā in the US, then marked everything up. Probably costs them less then 100 to make, then selling for thousands
To be fair, at some point the stuff is going to come from China. If they were getting bare PCBs and assembling them in the US they would be doing it with Chinese parts. So getting the SMD done in China with a contract manufacturer makes a lot of sense, then doing the final assembly of through hole and interface parts in the US, and doing testing in house. I think ideally it can result in a more high quality product. The final assembly, calibration, and testing is the hardest and costliest part of manufacturing, so your supposition of it costing them less than $100 and then selling it for $1000 definitely isnāt true, or else they would be in a better situation as a business.
His YouTube channel is a charity.
https://twitter.com/bennjordan/status/1661454669950926848
Tbh I still donāt grasp why a low wage American would perform better work than a low wage Chinese factory worker? Nb not everyone lives in the US so putting a āmade in the USAā sign on a device might only be relevant for US citizens?
Yeah, I agree, I should have been clearer. I meant specifically that using a contract manufacturer has less visibility into the quality control than in-house assembly, (In china or the US or anywhere) and also there are lots of challenges giving a contract manufacturer very clear instructions as to what is a āgoodā quality passing unit. I work for a US based contract manufacturer, and this is a huge challenge, just getting good enough instructions to be able to provide the customer with exactly what they want. With your own assembly operation you can ostensibly have experts who know how to properly test and calibrate everything. I have not actually worked in that environment so I donāt know how successful that is with relatively low wage local employees under your own roof. But a lot of eurorack modular manufacturing works this way, with the original designer doing the final assembly and testing, and I think in that situation you are more likely to have a better product (without making super in depth testing and assembly documentation) than it being completely assembled by the contract manufactuer.
But setting up an SMD line is super expensive, so for a lot of people it makes sense to use contract manufacturers for the PCB assembly, but then do the final assembly, calibration, and testing in house, rather than use a contract manufacturer.
If they were making so much profit from their products, they wouldnāt have needed to sell the company, and would probably have had the funds to protect themselves from clones. Their labor was not cheap, even at what were low wages for the area. Stock was pretty routinely depleted, it does not appear they could have made more units and simply sold them cheaper given their original structure. Hence the investigations of offshoring before the sale.
Should they have moved operations to elsewhere in the US instead? Any US manufacturing is expensive, whether it is ground up assembly or just final assembly of largely pre-populated components, and moving the design team may have been more difficult.
I find it pretty interesting weāve not yet heard from any line workers at the Music Tribe factory city. Not even canned āitās great here!ā statements.
So the Moogseum in Asheville continues.
It is a 501Ā©(3) non-profit under the Bob Moog Foundation. This is independent of Moog, so continues unaffected by inMusicās stock buyout.
A non-profit is allowed to raise money that is tax-exempt, as long as the profit is used for the chartered educational purposes. These purposes can be pretty wide-ranging under IRS regulation. Money can be raised through what is called Unrelated Business Income, which also can be pretty wide-ranging in source.
So for instance the BMF is right now raffling off a Memorymoog Plus. Synthtopia article.
I think they may be seeing some former ( and present ) employees dropping by.
Pop will eat itself 
This is a funny, sign of the times article.
The Moog ā inMusic offices are moving from the near suburbs of Asheville, to the city center, into a former local newspaper office building and a floor above a vinyl record production company, which is also a bar and cafe and music performance space. This is all reported in the local newspaper that used to occupy that same building until it was bought out by a national newspaper conglomerate.
Not sure if this will work with Moog Recordings Library which i think is in the UK, and also produces vinyl records ā they seem to have been somewhat inactive since 2018. It might make sense.
ADDED : Quite surprised Moog hasnāt been scheduled for Superbooth having just exhibited at a much smaller show Synth East - Norwich. You think it was time to show the Mirror. ( thread )
ADDED LATER : See below, Moog will be there, they just arenāt listed on the Exhibitor list yet.
I thought Moog donāt usually announce their presence at SuperBooth, as theyāre usually one of the āsurpriseā guests?
Thereās usually a few unannounced booths each year for unsurprising surprises(for lack of a better term).
Edit - apparently theyāre already listed
Just to clarify, officially that booth is tba, so Iād guess thatās where inMusic are. Elektron also pop up on the unlisted ālistā too -
There is something wrong with the Superbooth 2024 list, because Moog was omitted from this official list :
https://www.superbooth.com/en/messe-and-exhibitors.html
which skips from MOK to Moon Modular.
Good to see that Moog actually will be there. Will need to be more careful using exhibitor information at the Superbooth website.
Theyāll be there with a next generation Polymoog. (speculation)
You mean the Mirror ?
Thatās standard dude, a lot of companies stay ātbaā as a surprise, if you check the booth list thereās tons of tba booths.
You can find them listed elsewhere on the site with placeholder text, but I get the feeling that isnāt meant to be public information.
Like i said.
Good job finding them elsewhere !
Moog Migrancy abounds.
While all the synths you mentioned might offer more. None of them sound like a Moog.
