SV: [sdiy] Re: designers timeline

[Michael Bacich]

On Jan 6, 2007, at 1:16 PM, karl dalen wrote:

> I have some vaughe memories from the old days of soft updates on  
> kawais
> that all of kawias digital line was made by some american (buchla  
> type dude)
> dude on consultant basis for Kawai and the analog line was inhouse  
> design.
>
> But i would imagine most larger designs was team efforts.

I don't know where or who you got that from, but it couldn't be more  
wrong.  I worked for Kawai from 1992 to about 1996, and I still do  
freelance work for them on occasion.  Everything they have ever made  
was designed by a team of in-house engineers in Hamamatsu, Japan.   
Many of the engineers have been with the company since the very early  
analog synth and organ days, all the way up through their current  
products.  I worked with them as a product development consultant for  
the Kawai America corp., trying to get some of the product ideas that  
the American marketing arm wanted to be implemented in upcoming  
products.  It was really hard to get them to be open to any ideas  
that were not generated inside the Japanese company.  We once found  
these guys in California who had developed a great super low-cost  
digital recording software and hardware for the PC, and we tried to  
get Kawai japan to manufacture and market it.  We KNEW that it would  
be a huge hit (this was around '93, well before the big PC recording  
revolution hit.)  The Japanese execs looked at us like we were  
crazy.  "Sell an American-designed product?  We will, um, consider  
it."  ("we will consider it" always means "no" in Japanese business- 
speak)  They also said "this is an interesting idea for a product.   
We will have our own engineers look into it", which meant it was  
never gonna happen, or that they would come up with their own  
inferior way of doing it that would end up costing three times as much.

Anyway, as far as I know, everything they ever sold and made was  
designed by Japanese guys.