Digital Igloo (Eric Klein, YGG)

It must infuriate Kemper to see TH-U or STL sell the products they do - but to me it seems like the sort of thing that’s gone on for years (like Marshall making their own take of a Bassman).

It's like that since milleniums and that's just the way things go. And while that might come across as somewhat cynical, it's not, it's just realistic.
When someone invited the wheel (and yes, I am aware that it likely wasn't a singular event, but you get the idea), other people wanted wheels as well. You couldn't come across and sell them a rectangular thing instead. And once cars were invented, it made little sense to breed horses for transportation duties any longer.

Every bit the same is obviously as well true in guitar amp land. Once someone comes up with a popular thing, you'll have to follow suit, especially in case you're doing stuff for the masses.

If you're building modelers, you gotta deliver as authentic as possible versions of at least some amount of amps. Without, say, a Fender, a Marshall, a Vox and a modern highgain amp you wouldn't selll anything. And by now, this is not where people stop, you also have to add all sorts of other amps. If you don't, you're out. Fwiw, this perfectly explains the rather little popularity of Boss' GT units. They're most excellent in pretty much all other aspects, absolutely on par with everything else, but people want moooaar toaaannz, something Boss doesn't deliver. Might as well be the less than shiny IR support, but basically, that's absolutely the same thing - people expect proper IR support, so you likely also wouldn't sell a modeler without IR support anymore (interestingly enough, I see that to possibly chance at least a bit as long as companies offer their own "masked IR" cabsims, such aswhat we've gotten with the HX 3.5 upate).

There's a whole bunch of other "celebrity" gear that people seem to want rather urgently. Just to name a Digitech Drop or FreqOut alike pedal. Or shimmer reverbs. Don't add them and you're not going to survive among the top end players.

And the very same now seems to be true for cloning. It's just market demand.

Now, there's obviously the moral and legal aspects. The latter only exist because humans care very little about the former. And once the latter can be navigated around (or when a patent expires), you gotta deliver. And in case you don't want (or can't), you'd rather have a bunch of other USPs, could be it affordability or some other things (such as the amount of well modeled amps in FAS products).

Having said that, I expect some sort of cloning to be a part of pretty much each and every modeler, maybe just as in being able to load NAM patches (which, btw, is fantastic as it seems to be quite like an open format). They could become sort of the new IRs. People might not want this functionality as urgently as other things, but in case you're given the choice between a modeler offering cloning (or loading NAM files) and an otherwise comparable one without that functionality, it's pretty obvious what you'll go for.

Fwiw, personally, I don't care much, I'd rather see improvements in terms of usability (this is where each and every modeler is still WAY behind what would easily be possible) and some more "experimentational" things (such as, say, modulators, great filters and wicked pitchbased things). And as far as amps go, instead of more "authentic" models, I'd really love to see some "playground" amps. Let me just roll my own and decide between certain baseline sounds combined with variuos amp topologies, tonestack placements and what not. Doesn't have to be on component level, just something to fool around with more freely. Btw, this is also why I would like to see cloning. I'd rather use it to create some not so common things in software land and then clone it to be able to also load it into my hardware.
 
Luckily, we were able to push the narrative of what POD Go is and more importantly, what it isn't. Had we attempted to sell it as an affordable Helix, the thing would've tanked.

Tbh, and no offense here, but that's actually how I perceived the POD Go from the start. Helix algos, only in a stripped-down, wallet-friendly package, which perfectly explains the difference in features and firmware updates.

Nothing wrong with that, imho, I'd guess it's still an awesome unit.
 
Tbh, and no offense here, but that's actually how I perceived the POD Go from the start. Helix algos, only in a stripped-down, wallet-friendly package, which perfectly explains the difference in features and firmware updates.

Nothing wrong with that, imho, I'd guess it's still an awesome unit.
Oh, of course, which is why we came out swinging on day one of NAMM, curbing enthusiasm of a sort—not because we were worried about cannibalization of Helix/HX, but because we didn't want people expecting a budget Helix. (Well, it still kinda is from a certain perspective, but there's a lot of nuance here.) Even if people bought it without any research, at least our consciences are clear and we could point to our own marketing, NAMM videos, interviews, etc. where we were very transparent about what POD Go was and wasn't.

The name "POD" helped a lot too.
 
It’s hard to quite articulate and I don’t want to purely point towards any specific company.

But say a company builds an amplifier circuit, spends years in R&D tweaking and refining it, does everything getting it to market and to customers, spends money on marketing and promotion and building the brand and desire for the product.

If another company sees this popularity and demand, studies the circuit heavily, then offers their own product which can only exist based on that circuit (and sells as a result of the demand for the original that it’s based on). This has happened constantly with real amps and pedals - but with digital emulations, companies seem to be able to get away with using the likeness of the original to sell their own unlicensed take. More often than not, it goes beyond the circuit and sound, and even borrows the visual likeness.

Neve/API/SSL etc constantly have their circuits and likeness copied by other companies - both digitally and by other companies making clones of the HW. Same goes for pedals and amps - sometimes they look extremely similar to the real thing, sometimes it’s implied by name or other clues. Certain companies only exist because they’ve been able to rely on (and build on) using the work of others, and often without licensing it officially.

I also think most users probably don’t care, and wouldn’t be willing to spend more money in order for a licenced version.

Are certain circuits/devices more precious than others?
It can get pretty slippery. On one extreme, your grandma might have a Yamaha digital piano containing multisamples of a Yamaha grand. Right next to it might be your other grandma's Casio digital piano containing multisamples of a Yamaha grand.

At the faaaar other extreme, you walk by this atrocity at NAMM 2004, for which they got sued for blatant trade dress violations and were forced to change their chassis shape, colors, logos, and fonts:
Slimebags.png

Where is amp modeling in all of this? Dunno, but the public generally seems to think it's much closer to the digital piano side of things. Those who don't are almost always trolls trying to ruffle feathers on gear forums.
 
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It’s hard to quite articulate and I don’t want to purely point towards any specific company.

But say a company builds an amplifier circuit, spends years in R&D tweaking and refining it, does everything getting it to market and to customers, spends money on marketing and promotion and building the brand and desire for the product.

If another company sees this popularity and demand, studies the circuit heavily, then offers their own product which can only exist based on that circuit (and sells as a result of the demand for the original that it’s based on). This has happened constantly with real amps and pedals - but with digital emulations, companies seem to be able to get away with using the likeness of the original to sell their own unlicensed take. More often than not, it goes beyond the circuit and sound, and even borrows the visual likeness.

Neve/API/SSL etc constantly have their circuits and likeness copied by other companies - both digitally and by other companies making clones of the HW. Same goes for pedals and amps - sometimes they look extremely similar to the real thing, sometimes it’s implied by name or other clues. Certain companies only exist because they’ve been able to rely on (and build on) using the work of others, and often without licensing it officially.

I also think most users probably don’t care, and wouldn’t be willing to spend more money in order for a licenced version.

Are certain circuits/devices more precious than others?

It must infuriate Kemper to see TH-U or STL sell the products they do - but to me it seems like the sort of thing that’s gone on for years (like Marshall making their own take of a Bassman).


Interesting, Mirror Profiles…


Steve Brule Reaction GIF by MOODMAN
 
It can get pretty slippery. On one extreme, your grandma might have a Yamaha digital piano containing multisamples of a Yamaha grand. Right next to it might be your other grandma's Casio digital piano containing multisamples of a Yamaha grand.

At the faaaar other extreme, you walk by this atrocity at NAMM 2004, for which they got sued for blatant trade dress violations and were forced to change their chassis shape, colors, logos, and fonts:
View attachment 5893
Where is amp modeling in all of this? Dunno, but the public generally seems to think it's much closer to the digital piano side of things. Those who don't are almost always trolls trying to ruffle feathers on gear forums.
Ha I definitely wasn't pointing fingers at all - I'm firmly on the side of modelling companies, and I think its great that these classic pieces of gear and circuits get preserved in a digital form. I think over time the older HW companies are realising that licensing their name and likeness boosts their own brand and HW sales, so its more in their interest to get on side than open lawuits. I own several clone pedals (both sold by companies and built from kits), and also a Behringer synth thats a clone of a long out of production unit. I think they are largely able to co-exist - the market for the real deal is always going to be smaller, and buying a clone won't really satisfy someone who's after the real deal. It hasn't affected the value of original Klon's or Plexi's, and if anything its just added to the desirability. That said, if Behringer upped the price a bit and paid a royalty to the original companies, I'd feel much better about most of the products they sell (even if they're essentially the only company with the means to manufacture things to the scale that they do).

I just thought there may be a discussion here as I think everyone has their own interpretation of what they think its fair use, and emulation by its very nature is always going to look back at other people's designs. I'm in absolutely no position to judge, and really the only software amp sim's that make me particularly uncomfortable are some of STL's GUI's which I think stray far too unneccesarily close to the originals, when they could be made to look a bit different and still very obvious what they are. I know there have been several plugin companies over the years that have been made to adapt their UI's (API are really protective about their knob design).

I think going forward, especially with how AI is going to change all kinds of things, I think there will be more of a focus on crediting the original creators. I was thinking this morning how vague some ridiculous lawsuits have been regarding songwriting credits, whearas a lot of plugins and music software seem to get a much more free licence to borrow and adapt. Many companies like UAD/Plugin Alliance and even Neural DSP have a majority of their software licenced officially - it obviously works as a sales tactic, but its also nice when the original companies are able to sign things off (and even help). I'm sure Line 6 have had this kind of relationship with some companies like Rev and Bogner over the years.
 
In some cases, they'll even rip off currently available products. It's soooo slimy.

Absolutely. I can perfectly understand that there's clones by function. That's just the way the world is ticking (and no, I don't particularly like that at all). I can also understand that sometimes the design has to be similar. But man, show at least a TINY BIT of respect and don't cover the design 1:1. Which Behringer did with, say, Arturia's Keystep. I'm all for saving some bucks, I'm using 2-3 cloned pedal circuits, but seriously, I wouldn't even take Behringers Keystep clone for free.
 
Oh, btw, then there's that 5-band EQ in a compact housing. That's actually been an original Mooer design. Cost was €49. Then Fame cloned it (in fact, they didn't, all they did was ordering a differently laquered and labeled housing). Cost: €29. And guess what? Then Fender came along and ordered it in yet another color, slapped their label onto it and sold it for €69.
In fact, that EQ is only worth €29, simply because the faders act more like switches and it always sounds boomy, harsh or shrill, depending on what frequency you boost. I could never understand why Fender did that. Maybe as a proof of concept ("Hey, let's see if we can ask much more than this POS is worth in case we slap our label onto it!").
 
It can get pretty slippery. On one extreme, your grandma might have a Yamaha digital piano containing multisamples of a Yamaha grand. Right next to it might be your other grandma's Casio digital piano containing multisamples of a Yamaha grand.

At the faaaar other extreme, you walk by this atrocity at NAMM 2004, for which they got sued for blatant trade dress violations and were forced to change their chassis shape, colors, logos, and fonts:
View attachment 5893
Where is amp modeling in all of this? Dunno, but the public generally seems to think it's much closer to the digital piano side of things. Those who don't are almost always trolls trying to ruffle feathers on gear forums.

Ohh, zats zo nazty, Uli.
 
And well...
Behringer V-AMP 3 bei uns günstig einkaufen.jpg


Until V2 they had at least the decency (ahem...) to color it blue. That decency went up in smoke with V3.

However, I owned V2 (along with a Pod 2 and later on a Pod XT), the VAmp has always been the most dynamic of the bunch (sounds were not as great, was quite noisy too and two pot shafts broke as if they were matchsticks).
 
Don't quote me because I'm not sure at all, but I don't think these are clones as much as generic OEM pedals that everyone (including Mooer) slaps their name on.

Sure. I just found it somewhat amazing that even Fender fell for it and couldn't resist slapping their name onto it. I mean, while the pedal has some uses (I have the Fender one, got it from someone who couldn't use it for free), if you were looking for a real EQ, this is an offense. And it's in no way meeting any quality standard one might connect with the Fender moniker.
Btw, while this is indeed one of the most rebranded pedals, it could in fact be an original Mooer design - when I was looking for an EQ pedal many years ago, only theirs came up, regardless where I searched. But then, being an original Mooer design possibly doesn't mean much.
 
Sure. I just found it somewhat amazing that even Fender fell for it and couldn't resist slapping their name onto it. I mean, while the pedal has some uses (I have the Fender one, got it from someone who couldn't use it for free), if you were looking for a real EQ, this is an offense. And it's in no way meeting any quality standard one might connect with the Fender moniker.
Btw, while this is indeed one of the most rebranded pedals, it could in fact be an original Mooer design - when I was looking for an EQ pedal many years ago, only theirs came up, regardless where I searched. But then, being an original Mooer design possibly doesn't mean much.

Wasn't it Mooer who broke the barrier by releasing sh*tloads of mini pedals all those years ago? Gotta give them something, tbh.
 
Wasn't it Mooer who broke the barrier by releasing sh*tloads of mini pedals all those years ago? Gotta give them something, tbh.

Sure. And it's been Mooer to directly copy EHX' software/firmware for some pedals:

In other words, those guys not only live in the shady, grey waters of bordering copyright infringements, no, they're outright thieves. And with the EHX "event" they have cleary (not just legally but morally as well) crossed a line you should really rather not cross.
My personal outcome of this is that I'm trying not to buy any Mooer stuff again. I own 3 of their pedals that I dig and regularly use (and I won't stop using them because that'd make little sense), but I try my best to not buy from them again.
Given I'm pretty much a cheapskater (out of necessity, as a live musician you're not getting along too great these days anymore, too late to look for another profession...) I can't avoid buying some chinese or otherwise far eastern products of rather unknown origin, but whenever things are as clear as above, that gets a strike.
 
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