Completely and totally false. Boutique builders make far less profit (in terms of total money received versus total cost of doing business) than any mass manufacturer.
However, they still try to make their profit by putting care into individual pieces rather than rattling out junk. As they are often one band bands with another job, this suits them just fine, and rewards them enough for them to continue with production.
How do you know that? Do you imagine even half the signatures in this thread actually have the money to jump on such a product release, and intend to follow through? Even if you do imagine that, there's no way to know it in advance.
There are a lot of bass players in the world. Considering these can sell for several times the original price on eBay with 4/5 bidders prepared to pay over $600 dollars for each one that gets sold. Make the price closer to that of the current whammy, and you suddenly have the entire bass playing sector of the Tool fanbase queuing outside. Ok, an exageration, but a lot of people here would by them, and Talk bass is still a tiny minority of the bass players who are interested in gear and such.
"Over time"? A "small and steady supply"? These are not concepts used by large scale manufacturers. You're talking about a big cost outlay at the beginning, on the hope that they would eventually make up that loss over the long term, and that is counter to how large manufacturers work. What you're suggesting is valid for a small boutique builder, but there are only a couple of small builders capable of designing and implementing that degree of DSP processing and investment in a treadle chassis (not a trivial cost). It is also potentially valid for EHX, as has been mentioned here a few times, but it's up to them whether they want to risk infringing on Digitech's intellectual property.
I mean small and steady by the standards of a large manufacturer. My key point was that half the expense has been covered by them already having a whammy in production, which they can use the chassis of. In the grand scheme of things, setting one of the machines up to produce the circuit boards like the old bass whammy (which they already have a tested design for) isn't too much.
Their starting up cost would be comparatively small, and in a world when they have the intellectual rights to the only mass production whammies on the market (I know of), they don't have to keep changing the design.
And moreover, Digitech is a successful company, and their success has not been declining. Success requires careful planning and analysis. They are professionals at making this kind of decision. You are not.
True, and I'm sure they have a reason for not producing them. It's just them giving absolutely no clues as to why this is when I've emailed them gets a little frustrating. They barely seem to give it any more recognition than "oh yes, we did used to produce one".
