How can you determine how many were sold based on your SN?
The rest of your logic is plausible, however.
I guess Heisenbass simply guessed, right?
But actually, I would think that small selling numbers are a reason to offer a firmware update. Of course bass players are always, as I said in an earlier contribution here, rather neglected in comparison to guitarists. Everything goes slower and there are less products. Like Line6, which has completely given up on us bass players (I still own two POD X3s, which I plan to sell asap). Yet, for the G3 Zoom has not shied away from going through all the trouble of updating not only the firmware, but also the manuals packaging etc. as Heisenbass previously described. I am no businessman (actually far from it), but I could imagine that when sales of a product such as the G3 or B3 start declining, you may wish to give it a boost with something like a firmware update, not as expensive as manufacturing an entire new product, and sales may start climbing up again.
So we may have done ourselves a disservice so far
: Either by lauding this piece of equipment B3 here so much, that sales are still going up, or, we have failed to complain loud enough about our dissatisfaction of getting neglected relative to G3 owners.
I guess it is rather the first.
.
On more serious grounds: It may well be that sales of the B3 are still too good and the boost from a function enhancing firmware update is not yet "necessary". We owner tend to count less, here in this forum I fear in particular: We already own one.
As I said, I'm not a businessman and maybe my speculations here are only wild and have little to do with Zoom's reasoning. I also trust that the company will not completely forget its faithful customers, since word of mouth is in today's Facebook world nothing to light-heartedly neglect or dismiss. Moreover, I have a rather good opinion of Zoom. I believe they are honestly and earnestly also committed to good products and here I subsume of course also the B3 (but, admittedly, rather not the hardware of the B1on/B1Xon
).
What I still hope they will do is to offer a firmware update similar to the one they offered for the G3, while also offering the B3X (expression pedal included). Since the case and hardware is basically identical to the G3X, the manufacturing of it by using a different case color and a different software only, should not be more expensive than it was for the G3/G3X. And I still trust somehow Zoom will do something along those lines, since many companies have come with new products in this way: First on the low end and next time on the higher end of their product ranges. Since the B3 is on the high end, but the B1on/B1Xon was clearly on the low end, I expect something to happen next on the high end. The question is only, what exactly and when exactly?
Or do you all think differently and have much better reasons for this than what I as a bad businessman can offer/have?
Cheers,
Andreas
).
