[sdiy] Couldn't help myself....Buchla 219

[jhaible]

> >Please let me point out, he got thousands of dollars for that thing
> >at a time when a new Toyota Corolla could be bought for $1795.
> >The 219 alone probably cost more than the Toyota. What did he get for
> >the whole system, $20k? The price of a Bentley....
>
> I don't know what a Corolla, much less a Bently, would have cost if
> only a hundred or so were being built. And with a lot of original
> engineering design too....


There are car-hobbyist who do just that: build one-off models in their
spare time, or restoring oldtimers. They face the same dilemma as
most of us: They have created something that is unvaluable, and selling
it would be most unlikely because "invaluable" translates to ridiculous
price tags once you consider selling it.

The car builder's golden golden exhaust pipe is not unlike the 600 Dollar
Schaeffer panel for a huge Modular synth ...

When I look at Paul's Buchla pix, my first thought is that 90% of the
cost must be in the mechanics, and much of the rest goes into trimming
Vactrol circuits and hand tweaking the circuits in general.

Unique circuits, brilliant designs, for sure. But nevertheless I bet the
biggest cost factor was just the low quantities in which these were made,
and the resulting (deliberate) lack of streamlining the products for
mass production.

JH.