I’ve recently seen some new information, watched some newish YT videos, and re-watched some old ones regarding Modal’s 002. I’ve always appreciated that synth, but could never justify paying the price in view of what was and is available for about half that cost. There’s not much info here about the 002, but I wonder what insights people might have as to why the Modal 002 cost twice as much as any other flagship synth? I mean, it’s great and all, but only on a par with other lovely things that have been available over the past few years. The Quantum is also in that stratospheric price range, but in that case I do see something radically different going on synth-wise, so I wouldn’t know how to compare its cost of production to other flagships. The 002, though, looks more in line with other offerings, so I’m curious what pushed its price much higher? Was it simply the domestic labor costs within the UK as opposed to an assembly line in Asia? This isn’t a price-resentment thing, I’m just curious about how manufacturing processes, labor costs, and other stuff I know nothing about might have impacted this synth’s so much as to price it well out of the range of other flagships.
Well,pretty much everything on it is bespoke. Every synth is hand built, in Bristol England, by a very small company.
Small companies cant make their margin off of volume of sales, cant get the cheapest parts price by buying in mega bulk, because they dont make many synths.
The other side of that is, you get what you pay for, youre getting a work of art… to quote the song, “it cost that much cos it took me fucking hours”
bespoke is sucha good software, i have a ton of fun with it. it free
It does make sense to me that doing it all in-house drives the cost way up, and that you’re then paying for a much higher standard of quality control. You see the same thing with those Swedish-built Mellotrons and Black Corporation stuff, but those have more boutique-esque functionality—and are still available to purchase, by the way. The mystery to me, then, is that the Modal 008 fits more neatly in the category of flagship polysynth, so I wonder what prevented Modal from getting it done on an assembly line at pretty much the same quality, but with much cheaper labor? I don’t begrudge Brits making a good living assembling stuff, just wondering why Modal didn’t or couldn’t do like their competition and farm out the labor to get the retail price more in line. I mean, where does Sequential have their assembly done?
Give Paula Maddox a call and ask her?
Though I dont think she’s part of Modal any more.
They probably didnt outsource for one simple reason, they didnt want to. And thats totally fine.
Does any of it matter?
If you want to understand pricing structures of synths, then it matters. Otherwise, why waste time responding to the question?