The point was not that people are ripping into them for deceptive practices, but that a lot of people are cutting Accugroove slack which they would not cut if this were a Fender or a Behringer.haujobb said:
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Accugroove site update.....
- Thread starter Mark Reccord
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Which raises the question - what "statement" could Accugroove make that could possibly make this situation any better? What sort of statement would you accept as a reasonable explaination?SMASH said:
billfitzmaurice said:
Without a doubt, this is exactly the advice given to AG by the patent attorney to which so much reference has been made.
xyllion
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Petebass said:
None, that is the nature of a witch hunt. The way I see it. The purpose is not to make things better but rather to continue to beat up somebody that is already down.
vision
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xyllion said:
I would expect at least an admission of being wrong and an apology. Like others have said, one of two things happened here. Either Accugroove is VERY incompetent, or they knowingly lied to the public. I'm not sure which is worse.
An antiquated notion! There's three sides to every story - Ours, Theirs, and the truth is usually somewhere in the middle! That's life.SMASH said:
I'm not condoning suspect business practices. I'm merely pointing out that pushing Accugroove for an answer is a pointless exercise.
I think it depends on their current judgment of the company in question. Previous feelings and judgments about a company are very important. Once someone has invested themselves in a concept it becomes extremely difficult to change based on new evidence and apply standards consistently. Notice how many of the people here who will have a cow about criticism of Bongos, Sadowsky's or ERB's will freely bag on Wish basses. Accugroove has spent a lot of time building market loyalty and once invested in that marketing it's very hard to accept the massive amounts of evidence that this was fraud.Mark Latimour said:
Accugroove is not alone in this, I would say most companies ads contain fraudulent & nonsensical claims but there are kinds of lies we accept and Mark pushed the line too far and did it in a way that was too easy to demonstrate it was false. Not learning the lessons of Icarus he added that not only would the impedance change but all the other negative effects of an impedance change would not apply in this magical divinely inspired switch. Even installed backwards
As someone who has been frustrated with our culture of lies I'm happy to see a company get nailed to the wall and I think we should do it with all advertising. IMO.
The only problem with this judgement in the speaker industry is that they'll all end up being nailed to the wall. The speaker industry is rife with false advertising.Moo said:
vision said:
i don't think they lied in the legal sense, though. the reality is that the addition of capacitors in fact does change impedance -- not just near DC, but also it changes in the 16Hz to 230Hz range, and everso slightly from 70Hz to 80Hz. so, really, it's not a lie to say the impedance changes, even if it's the same for a gross majority of the cabinet's bandwidth.
and they got caught being fast and loose with respect to that. which is the long way of saying, i'm certain they're not imcompetent, and i wouldn't hold my breath for an admission of lying to the public. because, technically, they didn't.
robb.
They could explain why they removed the switch from their current cabinets when their last public statement on the issue was:Petebass said:
[The AccuSwitch was designed to not change the sound when you flip the switch. Hundreds of our cabinets with the AccuSwitch have been in use on nearly every continent for almost two years. With every brand and model of amp on the market there have been no problems or complaints from players using at least one AccuSwitch-equipped cabinet in a multiple-cabinet system who could not use multiple cabinets before. We feel that Bass Players results were inconclusive as the amps used in the test would not shut off with a 2O load. Our satisfied customers are proof positive of the validity of our AccuSwitchs functionality.]
If they stand by their product, which they have made no statement to the contrary, they could explain why they have removed it from the market. Then they may wish to explain why, in light of the issue, the market should have faith in their claims in the future.
They don't need to explain "how" the stuff up happened, but it would be prudent business practice to try and correct their statements such as the one in BassPlayer if it is incorrect (consumers can still rely on that statement and be mislead) and try and regain some market confidence.
Remember, some people still liked Milli Vanilli after they were exposed. The "quality" (and I use that term loosely) of their music never changed. That didn't, however, take away from the fact that consumers had been deceived. Simply because Accugroove makes and amazing product without the switch doesn't necessarily excuse their other behaviours or perceived behaviours. IMO.
As I said, the truth is in the middle. Most of us have drawn the conclusion that the switch doesn't work. Admittedly some of us (myself included) had to be persuaded. An outright admission/apology from AG would leave them open to all sorts of litigation, so it won't happen.SMASH said:
On a pure marketing note.... my feeling is except for a few of us over-compulsive gear heads on a few bass chat sites, 95% percent of the bass community, and probably 75% of Accugroove's current and potential customers don't know or care about the 'switch scandal'! And now that they've removed the darn thing and eliminated the ad copy, etc., it's probably little more than a professional embarrasment to the company (I would think it will be an uncomfortable NAMM this year, surrounded by that other 5% that knows!).
Petebass said:
To me this says God designed the cabinet. It would take a rather slippery interpretation to make it something else.
And please don't take this as an attack on religion, it should actually be seen as a defense of religion as I'm trying to expose charlatans who pretend in order to deceive for a profit. But this goes to what I was saying earlier about the powers of associative marketing. Once you can establish an us against them feeling in your market your market will do your dirty work for you.
Invalid Link Removed
Petebass said:
It's time to pull in consumerism and call manufacturers on their claims. No sense paying good money for BS
Petebass said:
While sensitivity, -3db rolloff figures, etc. are fudged, you can still play through the thing and it will either sound good or not. I don't really care is a speaker manufacturer states that the -3DB rolloff is at 45 when it's really at 50... if I play through it and it sounds good, everything is cool. However, saying a switch will specifically allow me to do something with no way of checking it through the sound (especially if it potentially damages another piece of equipment) is a totally different thing to me.... hence I think all the angst regarding this issue versus the other 'fudging' in the industry.
PS I could give a darn about the switch, but find the ethical, legal, and marketing implications really fascinating.
Your optimism is encouragingbillfitzmaurice said:
but he's too small to make a lawyer rich or get a politician elected and barring that there is pretty much no recourse for the individual. I think the best we can hope for is to publicly show his deception reversing his ill gotten gains somewhat and hope this may temper other claims a bit. Now who's the optimist 
disclaimer:
Hopefully my playful writing style is coming through and no one is finding themselves damaged over words on the net.
Doing so requires access to the products themselves, and accurate measurement systems. Mark Reccord and I have already said we're happy to do the testing, but where on earth are we going to get access to every speaker cab and raw driver ever made? Assuming access t equipment is somehow overcome, imagine the enormity of such an undertaking.seamonkey said:
And unless we can somehow nail everyone at once, all we'll do is put people out of business one at a time at a slower rate than the new companies that come along to replace them.
Until then, Caveat emptor!
+ a billion!Mark Latimour said:
But I think Fender would have the same amount of defenders if not more.
In my (highly cynical) opinion I would bet they have. There just isn't any government agency that protects individuals against more than a very few specific crimes. Based on numerous similar examples I would guess any letters to the guvmint that actually got a reply would tell the complainer to sue them in civil court.SMASH said:
I tend to get a strong assessment one way or the other
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