It’s probably been discussed already, but I could not find it.
Looking at the used prices of, say, the Machinedrum and the Monomachine… It seems that there are still a lot of people willing to pay big sums for those. So, why have they been discontinued? It doesn’t seem to make sense for a company to discontinue such popular pieces of gear.
There must be a reason though. I’m curious, what do you people think?
I think our perception of them being popular doesn’t match their actual popularity.
While the MM and MD are coveted and appreciated by a few, the larger crowd on which business people make decisions, don’t much like them. An hour or so in our local music store always reminds me how small our world is, compared to the total crowd practicing music in all genres.
I think that sales figures drop off quite steeply after a product has been on the market for a few years, then suddenly when the item is no longer available people who were considering getting one create a demand again, which causes used prices to rise.
If Electron were still selling Machinedrums and Monomachines, no-one would give a fuck about Machinedrums and Monomachines.
If you design a custom hardware, you need supply for mass production.
Perhaps if you would have to change essential parts of your product the development process from start downto mass production could eat up all you gained.
Sometimes pieces arent anymore available to build your product.
I often wonder why companies don’t Open Source their defunct product lines. They most think there is some value to protecting their current product line by keeping the IP for their old products.
A handful of people now might only be attracted to their rareness. But generally I’d disagree there… two really special instruments, and just as musically useful as ever
Electronic parts availability. New EU rules for consumer goods. The product doesn’t sell enough.
I didn’t specify it but my question was not only about Elektron gear.
Like, the Tanzbär seems to be very pricey on the used market.
I don’t think I know a single person who even knows what elektron is irl (except my partner). Literally bumped into one guy I knew years ago on here one time purely by chance. Other than that nobody. I know tons of musicians too. making stupid expensive noises is a very niche hobby
I would assume that for some electronic devices, the chips run out of production and it’s not worth to redesign the machine.
Yes, this is my experience, too. In my work, I meet a lot of professional musicians and audio engineers (professional as in it’s their line of work) and they just don’t know about this stuff. As far as hardware goes, they’re into a lot of pedals, mixing and mastering stuff - my SSL gear and Chase Bliss pedals, they’re very familiar with - but they have no idea what an Octatrack is or what an Analog Rytm is capable of.
One engineer I work really close with, bought my Analog Heat MKI. He didn’t know about Elektron nor about the Heat, but man does he love it 
But it does seem, the closer you get to musicians who do this for a living and require a certain volume of output to earn their pay, the less it seems they’re into hardware for creating the music, though I’d say that for processing, mixing and mastering, studios seem plentiful with hardware still.
Yeah this mirrors my experience exactly
Aside from the question of why is just that the companies are moving forward with new ideas. Not many instruments/music gear really become something as ubiquitous as a gibson les paul, or a strat. Elektron progressed with the OT and the Analog 4, and now the Digitone.
Those devices aren’t that popular, very niche. Sure someone will always buy them but these days it’s short lived as far as major continual sales. A lot of money goes into rehashing production of something that probably used a lot of outdated parts, not that it would be to hard to update but the OT really supersedes the MD.
Sure the MD has the dedicated machines for drum sounds, but it’s not like the OT can’t shape the same basic tone into a million different things it self, irregardless if it’s a dedicated digital drum synth in your mind or not it’s still as capable of recreating anything the MD does even with less LFO’s parameter locking is the same thing and resampling allows you to modulate it over and over.
The monomahine is cool but I think more hype. The DN may be lesser than the monomachine feature wise, I’m not sure but still not much difference is there as to what they do. Yeah, filter, overall character, may be different but is the MNM really worth the gut wrenching price, only you can decide that one. What I just saw, nah, no way for a digital synth, OT does so much more over that thing any day.
More on that point, whenever I’ve brought along a kit or two just for show, it’s become apparent that whatever I think I can do with my Blackbox or Octatrack or whatever, they go “Okaaay …” and look at their Ableton session.
It’s really not about what these boxes and their equivalents can do, but how they do it. And most of us don’t do this for a living and we can afford the romantic notion of working close to the hardware for a more true and honest experience.
But that relevance quickly drops when you’re producing two tracks per week for whoever’s paying you to do so.
Truth is the Monomachine and Machinedrum weren’t that popular. They were ‘outdated’ in terms of sequencing, and really really out of fashion in the mid 2010s (digital, yuck!).
Manufacturers usually dont discontinue products that are profitable. Sometimes a piece of gear is popular, but becomes much more expensive to produce, like with the original OP-1.
I think it depends a bit, but it does sound like you are more talking about production artists where yeah they have a client, but when it comes to musicians artists plenty of them in the electronic scene are focused on how to make there music more live and the raw process also becomes more important. It’s a bit like comparing an artist working at Pixar doing digital paintings to an oil painter and what they buy and care about to get to the end product.
Absolutely
Very good point. Totally agree.
I don’t agree that the MM and MD are “popular”.
Both instruments were discontinued in 2016 because their sales had slowed to a trickle and it wasn’t worth Elektron continuing to source old parts for small batches and to keep stocks for repairs in the future. The last batches sold quickly because of the suddenly perceived scarcity of a discontinued instrument.
There has been some renewed interest in both because of the passing of SOPHIE and the unofficial firmware updates for the MD. I don’t know whether secondhand units actually sell at the higher prices that they have been listed for, but the high asking price is more to do with the scarcity of units for sale than a widespread demand for them.
A few collectors and superfans may be willing to pay high prices now but there will never be sufficient demand for Elektron or a cloner to start producing them again.