Color or no color?

[aborgman]

Thanks for the legal perspective. The scenario Bill described (buying a cab just to reverse-engineer it and then returning it to the store for a refund) certainly seemed dishonest and even illegal to me.

I'd say the "returning to the store" portion is a bit shady if not dishonest, depending on store return policies. Reverse engineering on the other hand I have no issue with.

 

[Pilgrim]

When you buy or build a cab, do you look for a cab that's is as transparent as possible or one that adds a color that you like?

Thanks.

Simple answer: I get one that sounds good to me. Anything else is irrelevant.

 

[R Baer]

Simple answer: I get one that sounds good to me. Anything else is irrelevant.

+1 As it should be. I always think the colored, not colored debate is fairly meaningless. Take 20 cabinets, put them in a room and play through each one. Guess what? They all sound different. Take the 5 most transparent cabs and play through just those. Guess what? They all sound different. Even with the "flat" cabinets, there are always going to be subtle variations. How the cabs sound at low volumes, medium volumes, how they sound when pushed really hard, how they handle finger style, slapping and pick playing.... Run each cabinet through all these scenarios and you will find differences among them. So, if each one of these relatively neutral cabinets sounds different, then aren't they all adding some degree of color to your sound?

One of the main goals we are trying to achieve with our designs are cabinets that sound fairly neutral, but still have a unique personality (i.e. color) compared to everything else out there. Why do this? My feeling is that if we can't offer something unique and different in our products, then why offer them at all.

 

[DukeLeJeune]

Reverse engineering on the other hand I have no issue with.

I can't help but wonder how many musicians would be happy to have their music reverse-engineered and sold by someone else.

 

[seamonkey]

No I can't keep someone from dishonestly acquiring proprietary information, but that's still not the same as me giving it to them. And I think most people are inclined to be honest.

You actually can get some protection by publishing measurements and your design. You have no protection if someone copies your design and you have not published that the signature sound comes from your design. I'm not a lawer, but I do own intellectual property in other industries. When we don't patent, trademark, or copyright, we publish. Publish is cheap and it keeps people from blatantly copying a design as theirs

 

[seamonkey]

You mean, how do we, bass players, reproduce it? What for?



I don't understand why a bass cab manufacturer should publish any measurements whatsoever. They aren't selling cabs to engineers or acoustic designers. They are selling cabs to musicians.

Today people are trying to turn music into a visual thing, but it's not. Music is the art of the sound.

Can you imagine a customer coming into a Guitar Center wanting to purchase a bass guitar and the sales guy says "cool, I have a bass that will suit your needs, here's the frequency chart". Would that work at all?

I would never buy a bass cab based on measurements nor flatness. I'm very old style on these things, I buy cabs based on how they sound. Weird, huh?

Say your favorite cabinet is stolen in 5 years after you bought it and it's no longer in production. So now you're going to use your ears to listen to every cabinet out there until you find one that sounds the same?

That's a lot of work, and eyewitness memory testimony is all over the news about how unreliable it is. Timbre memory is all over audiology threads. We remember patterns, much better than simple timbre.

Getting the measurements is like insurance that you can replace it in the future should you ever need to.

 

[aborgman]

I can't help but wonder how many musicians would be happy to have their music reverse-engineered and sold by someone else.

Intellectual property laws aren't about making producers happy - they're about advancing the "state of the art" by getting what previously would have been "trade secrets" into the public domain.

...and lots of music is copied and sold by someone else. Look at what portions of music are actually copyrightable.