John Bowen Synth Design

We recently received our booth assignment from the NAMM Show, so I thought I'd post here, even though it's still a couple of months away (NAMM this coming year is January 15-18, 2009). Solaris will be shown at booth 1121 (John Bowen Synth Design). I'll also have the Sonic Core group there
sharing the booth.

john b.

Watch out for the roaches at the Jolly Roger..

Seriously, that's great news.
The 2 companies together will scare 'em.
When Yamaha offers to buy both companies, triple their first offer.

Hard to believe it's getting to be that time again already. I'm sure it will be nice for you to have a finished product to show this year instead of one in the pre-production stage. I wouldn't be surprised if you get a lot more orders this time.

Jimmy if Yamaha, Roland or Korg come anywhere near John or the Solaris I will personally send out my bridgade of seamonkeys to thwart their attempts to overtake the world with sampled pianos, drumkits and arpeggiated dance music studio in a box faux synthesizers!!

Yeah, but that's why they need some ideas and talent there, instead of the same regurgitations.
I am actually going to see the Booth Babe John hires.

http://www.planetz.com/forums/viewtopic ... &sk=t&sd=a

Jump through to page 3.

seamonkey wrote:Jimmy if Yamaha, Roland or Korg come anywhere near John or the Solaris I will personally send out my brigade of seamonkeys to thwart their attempts to overtake the world with sampled pianos, drumkits and arpeggiated dance music studio in a box faux synthesizers!!

Seamonkey, at last year's NAMM I had quite a few Korg people come up to see the Solaris, even though we were pretty hard to find. Of course, I think it was more out of courtesy, since I worked with them for a long time, and left many good friends there. Besides, a synth with so many displays as Solaris is not a very practical approach for the larger companies, who need a bigger profit margin to support their business model.
JB

And that business model is exactly why we are here.

John Bowen wrote:

seamonkey wrote:Jimmy if Yamaha, Roland or Korg come anywhere near John or the Solaris I will personally send out my brigade of seamonkeys to thwart their attempts to overtake the world with sampled pianos, drumkits and arpeggiated dance music studio in a box faux synthesizers!!

Seamonkey, at last year's NAMM I had quite a few Korg people come up to see the Solaris, even though we were pretty hard to find. Of course, I think it was more out of courtesy, since I worked with them for a long time, and left many good friends there. Besides, a synth with so many displays as Solaris is not a very practical approach for the larger companies, who need a bigger profit margin to support their business model.
JB

I'm not sure John, Korg has produced the Oaysis which can hardly be a big money maker for them, not too many hobbyist's or semi-pro musicians can afford a $8499USD pricetag.
Of course much of the technology from their R&D for it is trickling down into more cost friendly synth's like the M3.

At any rate, we who have shared in this journey of the evoloution of the Solaris are grateful you have followed your vision of a hardware Solaris and it won't surprise me if it's production model is once again the buzz of NAMM and Musikmeese.

Their were some in the early days who dared call this vapourware, I know because I got into a heated discussion on one of the forums with someone who wrote that.

Have a safe journey John.
If there is any way, can you please take some pictures of the production?(without giving away any secrets of course ) I think it would be pretty cool plus you should have some anyway for archival purposes. THIS IS HISTORY IN THE MAKING!!

You'd be surprised how many Oasys keyboards Korg sold in Italy - I was told it was part a 'status thing' to have one, and I guess they had sold 20 the first month of release. But, yes, it's not the money-maker the M1 was

It's funny, because when we produced the first OASYS, I did demos at NAMM and Messe, and it was pretty exciting - then Korg decided it was going to end up costing too much, (estimate was $10,000), so it was cancelled. But I have to give credit to the head of Korg at the time, Kato Senior, because he was willing to take some risks as well as do the tried & true thing (witness the Wavestation, another 'failure' at first for Korg).

RE: the vaporware comment - sure, that's completely understandable. This has been an enormous undertaking for a small group, and a very expensive one at that. Fortunately it's finally all coming together.

-john

John,

can you please tell whether the Solaris that will be shown in the 2009 will be the finished product? Any images of its final layout yet?

Regards,
Yannis

Yannis,

Yes the Solaris at NAMM 2009 will be the production version....actually the units I bring there may be the 'Limited Edition' version that the first 50 pre-order people will be receiving. All who have pre-purchased have been sent a final graphics rendering by private email, but as of this last week, I've decided to add 8 more switches, and I don't have the updated graphic for that yet.

I guess I could post one of the renditions sent out a couple of weeks ago to the pre-order group, now that everyone has had time to see it, etc.

-john b.

John Bowen wrote:I guess I could post one of the renditions sent out a couple of weeks ago to the pre-order group, now that everyone has had time to see it, etc.

-john b.

Please do!

Actually Korg is the only developer I am aware of that has every segment of the market covered. The Oasys PCI card was really a great card for it's time, and due to the demands for more power their choice of a keyboard was a sound decision.
IMHO it is an incredible instrument and I would love to have one, but I already have Scope DAW's w/ Gigastudio / VSTi offerings. Hence no need. The XITE-1 with Solaris and a laptop will be my weapons.
But the Oasys is a very mature, well developed masterpiece IMHO.
Using your own samples for waveshaping and vectoring is great also.
Oasys's only blemishes are the lack of controllers to use as drawbars. the Leslie emulations ( 2 if needed ) are Korgish, and just a shortage of DSP models. I will still go and see it again @ NAMM to see if they came out with anything new for it. But it smokes the pants off of all of the 88note Workstations and really caters to a Pro niche. I commend them for that.

Solaris's waveshaping and vectoring capabilities if allowed to have user samples will be a huge plus in my book, as we all know it is a FAT BASTARD already, and these unique features w/ wavesequencing and vectoring will expand it's horizons even further.

Those who enjoy analog subtractive synthesis are going to really love the seperate Oscillator glides and Poly Glide features. I never thought I would find a synth based on DSP that could be as powerful as my Oberheim XPander or Matrix 12 ( R.I.P. ) but this synth is the rebirth of the Oberheims with much much more to offer.

If you were wise enough to buy a Solaris, you will be King of all you survey.

ThreeFingersOfLove wrote:

John Bowen wrote:I guess I could post one of the renditions sent out a couple of weeks ago to the pre-order group, now that everyone has had time to see it, etc.

-john b.

Please do!

Please look here:
viewtopic.php?p=1616#1616

Hi all,

now that the Virus TI|2 hasn't met my expectations aesthetically (also, how many times are they going to repackage the same synthesizer???), I can safely look back to the Solaris again. Does anyone have any real photos of the finished product?

Regards,
Yannis

ThreeFingersOfLove wrote:Hi all,

now that the Virus TI|2 hasn't met my expectations aesthetically (also, how many times are they going to repackage the same synthesizer???), I can safely look back to the Solaris again. Does anyone have any real photos of the finished product?

Regards,
Yannis

TFOLove, Carbon111 was at John's booth and posted a link for some pictures of the finished Solaris(Special Edition version). You can find them here:http://matrixsynth.blogspot.com/2009/01 ... laris.html