EdisonRex
Site Admin
Joined: Mar 07, 2007
Posts: 4579
Location: London, UK
Audio files: 172
|
 Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2010 1:21 pm Post subject:
|
  |
|
Meh. Here's what he wrote me. Personally, I don't know if this is any of our business at all, but it's a bit of a teknik bomb.
| Quote: |
Well first i want to say that the problem is not a 'personal'
problem,i did take it personal when i did discovered it but realized
very quick its a waste of time to try to
made it public as a single person comming with the information upfront.
The person in question has a huge vast 'fanclub' ,and in the end you
get immediately burn or banned from any forum.
First of all i did try to communicate with the person in private,and
it was immediately clear something was not 100% in what he told
me,asking for clarification result in immediate blocking of the
communication (all very polite conversation etc,but the smells
imediately that 'you know' and it stops)
Ok so whats all abouth.
(I need to explain all whats happening in the background aswell)
Ken Stone,of CGS synth kits,has a private online section (sub-site)
you can only reach when you are in the 'club' ,you can only be in the
'club' by knowing someone very well thats in the 'club'.
The 'club' is a yahoo serge clone group,it has now only just above 50
members,and it exsiting already since 2003 if i remember well.
That group occupies like the name says to reverse engineer all serge
modulles,this consist of trying to get hold of a physical serge module
open it up ,redraw shematics of the module and redraw a pcb from it.
Then from time to time batches are made from these pcb's and sold in
private to the members of the group at not realy cheap prices.
I mention not realy cheap because whats happening in private it
happens in public.
Ken Stone claims in the private group aswell in public that for the
serge designs
he pays royalties to serge.
Ofcource the ppl in the group don't care they are happy to have access
to the pcb layouts,schematics,info and can built there own serge for
cheap.
Now,the only prove i have that he is a liar is from what he write on
his site abouth some of his modulles in public compared to the proofs
i have from his private site
An example is the wave multiplier,here a quote from his public site:
'Serge wave multipliers. I have never seen or heard one of these
units, nor have I seen its schematic diagrams' ,now thats a lie as he
redrwed the schematic and even made a clone pcb from it,there are
other modulles where he write similar vague things but am not going
trough everything again to show you.
Now what i can not prove but am almost pretty sure,and this not from
my own findings but from other source,is that the man does not have
contact with serge or have had his permission to sell clones of his
modulles.
With clones of mudulles i point out to the for now only couple of
modulles he sell in public i.o.w. the serge VCS and filter.
I did try to communicate with him when interest did grow up for second
hand modulles of the stopped of production VCS Bananalogue Branded
modulles.
Second hand prices did rise up,topics abouth the module where started
(on another forum) etc.
When i did mailed him then he told me he got permission from serge to
built 100 VCS modulles in frac format (together with Seth Nemec) under
the Bananalogue Brand and added very clear for these he did not need
to pay royalties to serge ,WHILE at the same moment on the forum in
public in those fancy VCS topics he clairly wrote he did pay royalties
.
Second,in the same mail he wrote he wait for an answer of serge to
have permission to made another batch again...,he wrote that aswell in
public.
Then as the interest into VCS modulle grows up due to the
topics,suddenly a week later Ken Stone have a VCS module PCB for sale
on his site, 'he got permission' lol
More,lately several groupbuys are organised for silkscreened finisched
serge style panels that host ken stone PCB's
Now what i know the guy that design the panels,get clone pcb's for
this little job,ok thats not importand,but what is happening in one of
the last panels is that he did include (in the design layout) a clone
PCB of a dual serge VCS modul (same as the original)(those that he
sells now are single versions)
Ppl that did sign in for a panel where able to buy the dual VCS pcb
but only if they did buy the whole pcb set.,i think 70 panels or so
where made ,you can count quickly a pcb set at 175$ x 70 ..
Ofcource for the dual VCS he got permisson aswell.
A bit later a new panel design whas offered again with a sugestion to
include another original serge module in the whole of others cgs
modulles on that panel,this will be probably for the next offering.
I think its clair he try to push up the sales of his own pcb's each
time including 'a limited with permission manufactured (and with payd
royalties) original serge clone'
All this behaviour,with the documents i have,with what he write in PM
vs in public etc. am pretty sure he has no contact with serge and have
no permission like he claim to sell his modulles.
Am pretty sure he made use of the fact that serge did sell to Rex only
the right to remanufacture the modulles,and only the exact names of
the modulles are like been sayd copyright protected.
This info Stone told me in the first communications i had with him,and
a friend of me that had very closecontact with serge in the past
confirmed this,now the problem we know that serge lives in france but
we don't have his contact info,i tryed to get the contact info from
serge from Stone in the first com. but he told he could not give it..
What this all mean,the serge modulles are not copyright protected
(except one module there is a patend for) one cannot use the original
names given to the modulles,but you can reproduce the pcb's and resell
them,or just can made them public for DiY,nobody gonna say anything
abouth this,in fact it has been done,and i did verified this,Modcan
has several 1/1 clones but he names them differently(i did buy the
modulles) Rex is not happy with this but its like that he can do
nothing.
BTW,Rex Probe did made some simple add on modulles he included in hes
serge panels he made and even these are been copied and layouts are on
the private site.
Note, i cannot link you the private site anymore,Stone did changed the
URL after he had probably suspisions an outsider has access (me,when i
did release som shots in public on another forum)
But i have all the contend Downloaded from the site,also a letter of
Ken STone with quotes from Grand Richter (as you know Grand is a
'good' friend from Rex!!)
So in short: Ken Stone sells clone pcb's from serge designs,sells them
seperately or in limited kits offerings,lies are writen on his public
site abouth certain of his own modulles and he claims to have
permission to sell clone serge modulles from serge and for each of
these cloned pcb's a royalty is payd to serge.
imo,Stone want to maintain the 'i got permission and pay royalty'
status so he controls the public and private outgoing sales of serge
clone pcb's as it boost his sales for hes modulles and for the
bananalogue branded modulles aswell.
In my first communication i wrote Ken: well yes so if there are
royalties to pay,bring me in contact with serge am interested to see
if something can be worked out for other pcb's(well knowing there is
no copyright to these design anymore and there is no serge contact at
all)
He talked so much good abouth serge,but when i offered a possibility
for serge to gain some more money Stone blocked ,haha,just this says
enough.
I send you in another mail some docs from the private site.
Note,if you try to attempt communication with Stone abouth all this
,he will know you got it from me for sure and will destruct me totaly
so you are sure gonna have a bad vision on the kind of guy i am.
i know this because he did it already for 2 other guys i know,he
realy want to prevent this going public and his serge club have to
stay secret at any cost.
So its up to you what you want to do with this info,but if there is
realy something i don't like is liars,and like you say this forum is
very nice,but some ppl misusing it
Sorry for my bad english
Best Regards,
Steve
|
but wait, there's more.
| Quote: |
Paul,Here a quote from the private serge group:
Its not a direct prove because its a copy/paste,but this is totaly contrary to
the claim he have saying to be in contact with serge and pay royalties.
attach: picture of serge wavemultiplier clone pcb and schematic,you
can clairly recognise the stone style pcb.
First, Welcome to this list.
First we must remember that we are cloning a synth that is still in
production, even if the modules we build are no longer produced. As
such it is a good idea if we don't spread news of what we
are doing to
everybody. Lets keep it to ourselves, and people we trust who would
like to be involved. Please don't mention it on any of the Synth
mailing lists.
To quote Grant Richter from the SDIY list:
I showed Rex the Serge stuff on the web and the Synapse articles. Rex
doesn't care about DIY people building stuff for themselves.
As such, as long as what we are doing is kept for our personal
enjoyment and expansion of our own synths, we won't be upsetting Rex.
Even so, I have NOT mentioned it to Rex myself, and suggest we don't.
To quote Grant Richter again:
Rex has spent years figuring out the schematics and getting Serge's
designs
to work (some of which used to be pretty iffy). Because of the huge
cost of
reverse engineering and improvement, he guards those documents
religiously.
He will not show them to anybody, even me. It would be easier to get
the
plans for a B-2 bomber than the STS schematics.
As such it is probably a good idea if we keep the circuit diagrams to
ourselves as well. The few that
are already on the web can obviously
be distributed without any problems. The remained have all been
reverse engineered by people on this list. Of course, the difficulty
here is that we have to find a module in order to reverse engineer it.
If you like a module that is not on our list, that is because we
(or more specifically, I) don't have access to one to reverse
engineer.
Ken
from ken
|
accompanied with images of a triple wave multiplier hand drawn schematic and a Ken Stone PCB layout for it.
And he sent another after I replied with
| Quote: |
On 10/18/10, Paul Harriman <edisonrex> wrote:
Oh dear. I see what you mean. I hope your posting in the forums
doesn't tip off anybody. I won't speak publicly about it certainly not
now (or yet).
But... This is all checkable, somehow. I knew of the Yahoo serge group
(I am not a member, but I don't really want a Serge and I would have
bought a proper one if I did. That one I think we can get the members
of. I'm sure there are some we know there.
I think this would piss off a lot of people in our forums. You had
better be very sure about what you think before you say anything. And
I agree, whoever calls this out will get hurt, surely.
By the way, I know others make Serge modules - I do have a VCS for
example (which I bought from mono-poly actually) but it's bananalogue.
But yeah I get the point. Secret society, eh.
I just got your next mail - I'll read that before I say any more.
Regards
Paul
|
and he wrote back ...
| Quote: |
Well if Ken reads the post in the forum he will know ,maybe its better
you delete it .
The only way to check to be realy sure is finding Serge and ask him.
I have a serge and i clone serge pcb's for myself,but i don't sell them.
Plenty guys clone them,but for own purpose,Zthee is in the Group
aswell as Andrew and Topp that i know.
Yes Dennis,i know him personaly.
Secret society is one,selling in public or not is different.
Regards,
Steve
|
So the good news is, I don't think he expects us to blow Ken's secret society apart. He sure as shit doesn't want to actually be involved. Maybe he's trying to set up Tom or something. I don't trust the guy, even as far as I could throw him. But it fits in with his attitude.
I heard of this list before, somewhere. I'm not such a sergeophile though so I didn't think that much of it. But ah well. Anyway, that's what he's on about. I would recommend extreme caution.
I don't mind the mod helpers reading this. But I would mind it going public, as it's quite possible Teknik planted it on purpose.
_________________
Garret: It's so retro.
EGM: What does retro mean to you?
Parker: Like, old and outdated.
Home,My Studio,and another view |
|
Forum index » DIY Hardware and Software » mod helper
FAQ
Calendar
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
Chat Room
