I’m still trying to figure out how selling off gear is some kind of protest, they already got your money ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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Well put 
But I get the feeling not all people are buying these instruments for the same reasons 
For myself, the investment that I pay for with ANY musical instrument is the higher quality of musical life that I (hopefully) gain from owning that instrument.
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Buying synths has become fashionable, just ask SURVIVE
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What, realistically, are the options to keep existing customers happy as you suggest? They boil down to two things.
1) Tell people significantly in advance (let’s say 9-12 months…) that you are planning to release an updated product
Advantages:
- Everyone gets to make a fully informed purchasing decision, some people opt not to purchase MKi
- Demand for MKi reduces, driving prices down on both the new and used markets and some purchasers get a bargain
Disadvantages / Risks
- Elektron instantly cut their income during the crucial R&D product development period, this puts costs up (through increased risk when borrowing money), jeopardises livelihoods, and thereby increases pressure to get products on shelves by a certain date, rather than when product is ready
- Disappointment of existing users / recent purchasers gets pushed back to an earlier point, people who bought a MKi the day before the MKii unit was announced are still disappointed even though you’ve given them 9-12 months notice instead of 3
- Distributors and stores start to see buying large inventories of Elektron stock as a high risk, given that Elektron ship units then simultaneously devalue them and reduce demand for them for extended periods of time
- Sellers on the used market have to accept lower prices as demand has been reduced
2) Do not release an updated product
Advantages:
- No one ever feels upgrade envy
Disadvantages / Risks
- We never get improved versions of the products
- Elektron makes less money, less scope for R&D for cool new products (which may be MKi of something genuinely new, rather than MKii of something old but still fun)
Now it’s up to you how you weight those advantages and disadvantages, but personally I feel companies have a right to continue profiting from their innovative designs, and I’ve no problem them bringing out incrementally improving versions for as long as they wish. Just like, for example, guitar manufacturers have been doing for decades.
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The investment you made is t time and enjoyment to use the machines to make music on. Not financial, not your emotional catering by the manufacturer of the products.
Again my mk1s still rule, the OP just proved how much of a precious snowflake he thinks he is. Nothing achieved other than a tinny bit of noise online.
No one at elektron is loosing any sleep over it I am sure.
Not money concerns just that I wish they would make new machines instead of small cosmetic upgrades which makes the last product lose value.
I don’t plan on selling my gear anytime soon and I do like the form factor of the MKI over the MKII as well.
I’m not complaining really. It is what it is and I love my Elektron boxes.
I certainly didn’t buy the gear to make money… I bought the gear to make music and that’s what I do with it.
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Lol! Right!
Have the used prices for MK1 machines really dropped that much since the announcement?
AFAIK it’s not a significant drop. So if you bought the machines brand new, the money you would lose by selling now is pretty much the same as if the MK2s had never been announced.
If losing money on your investment is such a big concern, then why not buy used in the first place?
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Right?!
I got my OT for $800, A4 for $900, bought my AR new from Elektron.
I wasn’t “investing” though.
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Investment was probably the wrong term to use.
Basically what I was saying was that the shit costs a lot of money and that it would be cool if they just released new products rather than repainting the old ones.
No matter what, at the end of the day, you’d hope that someday if you lose interest or end up not needing these boxes that you could get some money back out of them.
I’ve changed my mind.
I’ll never buy a laptop again.
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In my opinion, if you are not making money from your music then right from the second you buy that gear you have to be aware that you will most likely never get back what you paid in strict financial terms.
On the other hand, If you can’t quantify the joy of using the equipment to create something that makes you happy and apply it to something like $ spent per hour of fun vs the price you paid for the equipment then you are doing something fundamentally wrong. And that applies to every aspect of life btw. Again, In my opinion of course.
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Not that I really care, I luckily sold my A4 long time ago when the resale price was still good and for the same reasons that the MKII update addresses. So i have no horse in this race.
But one thing that the fanboys here love to ignore is that there wasn’t any technical advancement in the last 4 years that would have prevented Elektron to release an A4 with the MKII features right in the first place (which is the big difference to new laptops and phones). So there’s only two explanations for that: Either Elektron didn’t really know what they were doing the first time around, or it was a calculated move to make an MKII later on in order to sell the same thing twice. It was probably a mixture of both but I find both explanations troubling.
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You can though? The baseline should be the second-hand price. I bought my first OT around 3 years ago for around £800 used. Traded around because I wanted to try the other boxes in the trinity, ended up with another OT, now used prices are sitting at around £750 even after the MK2 has been announced. Obviously this varies depending on the age and condition of the machine, but a couple hundred quid for ‘renting’ a high-end machine for a few years is more than reasonable IMO.
And if you still feel hard done by, just think of all the people who sold 909s and Jupiters for peanuts at the height of the digital craze in the 80s!
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I don’t feel bad in any way.
It’s how Elektron works and I am fine with that.
I just was stating that I may need to consider the idea that everything will be MKII’d when buying new Elektron gear.
But you guys all solved it for me, I’ll buy used if I need anything else.
Thanks everyone.
I bought my A4 a couple of months ago. It still sounds the same as it did before the mkII’s were announced. It still functions the same as it did before the mkII’s were announced. I’m still using the hell out of it.
I’m glad that Elektron is updating their machines.
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the only thing I agree on is the Overbridge/unfinished product complaint… I wish this was more the exception than the rule - I have an Analog Heat, that supposedly runs on OSX 10.8 or higher -I’m on 10.9.5 and it’s been impossible to make it work.
I’m interested in the Digitakt, and one of the selling points for me is beeing able to record multi-track with OB - considering it’s an extra expense, I would expect it to work properly - or get some kind of confirmation that the extra cost is beeing dedicated to making OB work smoothly across all (suposedly) supported platforms.
…or you could consider the non-tinfoil-hat option that it came down to features vs target price point. Several years on production costs are probably down enough for then to add some minor features they dropped the first time around without the machines becoming too pricey.
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To sum it all… seems like you never needed it in the first place…
So you should thank Elektron for making you realize that 
I wouldn’t say “they didn’t really know what they were doing”. More likely they were guessing as to what features the users would want. The best way to find out is to put your best guess, something reasonable, out there and get feedback. Take that feedback and incorporate it into a new model. As far as I know, that’s how most companies evolve their products. Sometimes it’s more revolution (large changes), and sometimes it’s minor tweaks (like individual outs and ‘fatter’ bass response on the A4MKII).
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