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Author Topic: Brand name cost me gigs  (Read 63960 times)

Bob Leonard

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Re: Brand name cost me gigs
« Reply #50 on: April 18, 2014, 12:21:51 PM »

Rental houses have made a metric ass-load of $$$ over the years with Eons. But they're not renting to sound guys.  And their customers don't care what the logo says like the Orange Badge.

edit for Orange Badge.

Doug,
I really don't get the bashing the Eon takes. They certainly make money, and the newer version of the box sounds great if used properly in the way they were intended to be used. I'm having another WTF moment about that, and actually wish that instead of LAB and Jr. LAB the site was broken down by major manufacturer and all else.
Bashing the Eon or any other product is no sweat off of my ass, but if someone needs to bash at least compare the product to a similar product. People need to stop jumping on a band wagon simply because it appears like the popular thing to do.
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I did a gig for Otis Elevator once. Like every job, it had it's ups and downs.

frank kayser

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Re: Brand name cost me gigs
« Reply #51 on: April 18, 2014, 12:50:30 PM »


Doug,
I really don't get the bashing the Eon takes. They certainly make money, and the newer version of the box sounds great if used properly in the way they were intended to be used. I'm having another WTF moment about that, and actually wish that instead of LAB and Jr. LAB the site was broken down by major manufacturer and all else.
Bashing the Eon or any other product is no sweat off of my ass, but if someone needs to bash at least compare the product to a similar product. People need to stop jumping on a band wagon simply because it appears like the popular thing to do.


Go get 'em, Bob.  I have some 10" EON2 that are great to spread around.  We do a benefit for a horse rescue place, and the EONs are perfect for coverage of the barns, paddock, and ring. Some music, some speaking.  No one is looking for high fidelity - I wouldn't bring my QSCs to a gig like that.  And if I had some Fulcrum Acoustics, they'd be more than a waste there.


Also they make reasonable monitors (with some EQ).  I use them as side fill when our Blues festival comes around, and easy plug in and out extra monitors as the band needs. 


They've been good to me, been reliable, and with a little EQ, sound much better than fair.
Are they great.  Heck no.  But in the right setting, perfect.


frank
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John Roberts {JR}

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Re: Brand name cost me gigs
« Reply #52 on: April 18, 2014, 01:16:51 PM »



I can use Peavey as an example of outsourcing manufacture to other countries too.  Take the old XR600 mixer/amplifier.  In it's time it was a great improvement on what was available here in the UK (WEM, Carlsbro, HH) and there are many of them still in use.  My band has two, one of which gets gigged every weekend.

The XR600 series was replaced by the XR680 (and others which I can't remember). I suspect that the newer amps use cheaper components and are manufactured elsewhere such as China or Mexico (or England!) in order to make a competitive product.  If Peavey wanted to make a profit on a US made XR600 today, I don't think we could afford it.

Steve.

Well I know a little about this, one of my gigs at Peavey was manager over all mixer engineering, and I was involved in China too.

The shift to Chinese manufacturing was dominated by demand from distributors in other countries than US. US Peavey dealers resisted Chinese manufacturing kicking and screaming, in many cases far longer than their customers did (many of those dealers are gone now).

The Global manufacturing cost/price math came down to what does the XR600/680 (actually same thing but more mic inputs), cost to sell in XYZ country. Peavey set up a plant in England, and mostly built speaker cabinets there for the Euro market. The cost difference of manufacturing products in the US, and shipping them to country XYZ, vs building that same product in China and shipping it to country XYZ was significant. So significant that competition building otherwise similar product in China could undercut Peavey on price by tens of percent in multiple foreign markets. Peavey's reputation was "good for the money", so losing that "for the money" part could kill the brand.   

So the evolution for high volume products like XR600/680 was to build them both in the US for the US market, and build them in China for the rest of the world. Many US dealers were still insisting on made in USA, despite the increasing cost competition even in the US marketplace.

One interesting SNAFU, a horribly mistaken purchasing agent purchased a few hundred  230V XR600 from China for delivery to the US. I have no idea what he was smoking but it became my job to deal with this huge pile of dead money. The first thing I tried was to cut a deal with Peavey distributors in 230V markets to flip these SKUs to a market that could sell them as is but no dice. Even with me taking a partial loss, it was still too expensive to re-ship these from the US to country XYZ, VS that distributor just ordering  new ones shipped from China. Long story short I got UL approval to swap out the power transformers to 115V and that's how the first (mostly) Chinese built XR600s came into the US market.

It was kind of funny to hear the reaction from the US factory workers who were involved in swapping out the transformers. I think they were surprised then a little embarrassed by how good the build quality was of those Chinese units. This is a far better measure than trying to judge quality from onsey twosy prototype samples. Those factory workers were hoping to find build quality problems and were sorely disappointed. I ended up selling these after rework to US dealers at a discount from US built XR600s and still made a profit at the end of it all. That feckless purchasing guy ended up working in a different gig.  Those dealers were smart enough to see the writing on the wall and the rest is history.

I have been outside the walls for over a decade, so I have no idea about current practices.

JR
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Thomas Le

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Re: Brand name cost me gigs
« Reply #53 on: April 18, 2014, 01:37:34 PM »

Speaking of EON's, JBL has a new EON out, called EON615. It has a funky waveguide where the woofer is and is advertised as 1kW at 127 max SPL. I'd imagine this would eat the QSC K plastic boxes up since its priced cheap at $500 USD.

http://jblpro.com/www/products/portable-market/eon600-series/eon615
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Steve M Smith

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Re: Brand name cost me gigs
« Reply #54 on: April 18, 2014, 01:53:37 PM »

The Global manufacturing cost/price math came down to what does the XR600/680 (actually same thing but more mic inputs)

Perhaps I haven't got the right number for the second one.  Obviously by XR600, I mean the original six input (although one of ours has eight) amp with a fairly chunky plastic moulded front fascia:



And by XR680, I think I meant XR684:



Having taken both apart to repair, it seems that the XR600 was made exactly the way Peavey wanted to make it but the XR684 appears to have made some compromises.  There's nothing inherently wrong with it but it doesn't seem as robust as the XR600.  I had always assumed that the XR684 had been built down to a price to keep it affordable.

I could be wrong - If anyone can correct me on this, it's you!

Peavey set up a plant in England, and mostly built speaker cabinets there for the Euro market.

I know.  I went there in the early 1990s to borrow a truck load of equipment.  They let us borrow the first of the Peavey processor loudspeaker systems.  I forget the model numbers but there were trapezoid subs and tops and two way monitor speakers, all carpet covered. We also came away with a pile of the recently introduced Deca digital amplifiers.

The impressive thing in the factory was watching a 4 x 8 sheet of ply come in, be placed on the CNC router and go through all the stages in the assembly line to build a complete speaker in a very short time - perhaps only fifteen minutes from start to finish.

It's clever manufacturing methods like this which allow companies to remain competitive.


Steve.
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randy amos

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Re: Brand name cost me gigs
« Reply #55 on: April 18, 2014, 02:18:30 PM »

Well I know a little about this, one of my gigs at Peavey was manager over all mixer engineering, and I was involved in China too.


John, this was very informative and well written. Thanks for posting it.
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Josh Millward

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Re: Brand name cost me gigs
« Reply #56 on: April 18, 2014, 02:22:16 PM »

I know.  I went there in the early 1990s to borrow a truck load of equipment.  They let us borrow the first of the Peavey processor loudspeaker systems.  I forget the model numbers but there were trapezoid subs and tops and two way monitor speakers, all carpet covered.
I'm going to wager a guess that it was the HDH series.
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John Roberts {JR}

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Re: Brand name cost me gigs
« Reply #57 on: April 18, 2014, 02:33:53 PM »

Perhaps I haven't got the right number for the second one.  Obviously by XR600, I mean the original six input (although one of ours has eight) amp with a fairly chunky plastic moulded front fascia:



And by XR680, I think I meant XR684:


Having taken both apart to repair, it seems that the XR600 was made exactly the way Peavey wanted to make it but the XR684 appears to have made some compromises.  There's nothing inherently wrong with it but it doesn't seem as robust as the XR600.  I had always assumed that the XR684 had been built down to a price to keep it affordable.

I could be wrong - If anyone can correct me on this, it's you!

I know.  I went there in the early 1990s to borrow a truck load of equipment.  They let us borrow the first of the Peavey processor loudspeaker systems.  I forget the model numbers but there were trapezoid subs and tops and two way monitor speakers, all carpet covered. We also came away with a pile of the recently introduced Deca digital amplifiers.

The impressive thing in the factory was watching a 4 x 8 sheet of ply come in, be placed on the CNC router and go through all the stages in the assembly line to build a complete speaker in a very short time - perhaps only fifteen minutes from start to finish.

It's clever manufacturing methods like this which allow companies to remain competitive.


Steve.
Not to get all XR600 on you but there were many incarnations of XR600. They generally used a letter suffix to denote upgrades, XR600E, XR600F, etc. of course modern versions are more different. 

There was a price point imperative to hold the US$600 retail price (IIRC). So every new generation was a very sharp pencil exercise to refine the features for modern expectations (like digital reverb to replace springs) while preserving the old price point. The plastic fascia was sacrificed to free up money for other features. 

Some of the upgrades used the same power amp module but by now they have evolved up to higher power points. I invested a few years on a digital group engineer who was tasked with making a class D power amp for the XR600 (for the same cost as the analog amp). He never did, but I suspect the new modern amp technology might deliver on that promise now.

I recall one such generational upgrade where the engineer working for me on this product, redesigned the input channel gain circuit. He tweaked the design so it delivered improved channel kill when turned down. A negative consequence of the popular one knob gain trim/channel fader approach is poor fader kill. His new improved circuit worked better, but as a consequence delivered roughly 3dB less gain when set straight up at 12 o'clock.

I had to field so many complaints from dealers and distributors that the new XR600 had a weaker power amp, that we re-tooled up a custom taper gain pot, so it delivered the exact same gain at 12 o'clock as the former XR600.

The customer is always right, even when horribly wrong. it was far easier to swallow the cost of tooling up a new pot, then to educate/convince that many people to just turn the knobs up to 2 o'clock instead of 12. I knew the amps made the same power, because it was literally the same exact amp module, but I had too many dealers and reps who should have known better that didn't believe even me  :o :o (hard to swallow for me).

The engineering involved behind successful value products is often more than meets the eye.

JR   

PS:  HDH=high death hooters
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Steve M Smith

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Re: Brand name cost me gigs
« Reply #58 on: April 18, 2014, 02:37:48 PM »

I'm going to wager a guess that it was the HDH series.

Yes, I think it was.  Together with the PCS processor which had sense inputs connected via TRS jacks to the amplifier outputs.  The monitors were processed too and sounded great compared with what we usually used.

We borrowed the system to use in a yacht marina as part of the Cowes Week* yachting regatta entertainment. (* possibly the world's oldest yachting regatta).

Steve.
« Last Edit: April 18, 2014, 02:40:20 PM by Steve M Smith »
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Steve M Smith

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Re: Brand name cost me gigs
« Reply #59 on: April 18, 2014, 02:48:58 PM »

I invested a few years on a digital group engineer who was tasked with making a class D power amp for the XR600 (for the same cost as the analog amp). He never did, but I suspect the new modern amp technology might deliver on that promise now.

I think so.  I repaired a Peavey XR1212 powered mixer for a friend as was very surprised at how little space the two class D amplifiers took up.


Steve.
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Re: Brand name cost me gigs
« Reply #59 on: April 18, 2014, 02:48:58 PM »


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