RE: Echoplex in Belgium? 2nd try

[Dino Cattaneo <DCattane@gibson.com>]

To people who have questions about the Echoplex, here is the story.

We are shipping the Echoplex from Nashville to many US dealers. We
shipped
50 units on Friday alone!
The unit is not yet CE approved and so is not being shipped to the EEC.
We
have quite few dealers in Canada but regularly ship to Long and McQuade
up
there.  We expect to have CE approval by the end of September.

Our largest dealers are Musicians Friend out of Seattle, Bananas at
Large
out of San Francisco, Thoroughbred Music out of Florida and Sam Ash out
of
New York.  As of Friday we have no unfulfilled backorders in our system
for
Echoplexes.

We are ramping up production but I must stress the fact that we have no
unfulfilled orders in our system.

If you need to get in touch with Oberheim, contact us at our customer
service address:

obie@gibson.com  
This is the Oberheim Customer Support e-mail.
 
or from the US call toll free at
(877) OBERHEIM


-----Original Message-----
From: Serge Devadder [mailto:serge.devadder@planetinternet.be]
Sent: Saturday, August 01, 1998 12:31 PM
To: 'Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com'
Subject: Echoplex in Belgium? 2nd try


Hello loopers,

Since I didn t find my mail in the digest, I post it a second time with
some additions:

After reading about the Echoplex in the Looper's pages, I really wanted
such a thing. But after a few weeks hunting in Belgian music-shops
around Brussels and Antwerp, I have come to believe the EDP is like the
Loch Ness monster: it's picture is on the web, everybody's talking about
it, but does it really exist...??? No one sells it.

As soon as I mention the word Oberheim, vendors get this worried
expression on their face. Many complain about Oberheim service and
refuse to list the stuff. Like Claude Lassonde in Montreal, I was told
the story that Oberheim no longer lists the EDP. Moreover Oberheim seems
to have a peculiar idea of customer service. None of my mails get
answered, and the Echoplex-page is indeed still on the Gibson website. I
do not know of many succesful companies that ignore requests saying "I
like your product! I want it! I need it! Please, please sell it to me!".
Those that do so, end up in Dilbert cartoons.

In any case I am surprised at how few looping devices are available.
With all those experimental musicians outthere who worship Fripp, how
come you need to kill for a JamMan or EDP? Not everyone can afford a TC
Electronics box, and judging by the stories I hear, even the smallest
shops get 2-3 requests for looping devices every week. There's a market
out there but nobody seems to want it...

Since I first tried to post this last week, I've seen that even in sunny
California finding an EDP is not a sinecure. Does any European looper
know of a distributor for the EDP in a city near Brussels (Paris?
Amsterdam? Cologne? London?...). Thanks!

Serge Devadder
Brussel, Belgium
serge.devadder@planetinternet.be