RE: Controllers & Expression Pedals (PC1600[X] subthread)

[Travis Hartnett <tiktok@sprintmail.com>]

Well, there's two obvious answers why they didn't include this feature:

1) They didn't think of it.  
A lot of things like this are much more apparent after the finished thing 
hits the market.  

2) Cost.
The cost of adding this is much more than adding a $1.50 jack.  Big 
companies don't design products by saying "Oh right--just like we were 
thinking but add a jack to the back!"  First, someone conceives of the 
feature.  Then he floats the idea.  Some people are indifferent to the 
idea, some are excited, some reject it.  If he sticks to it long enough, a 
meeting occurs.  People hem and haw over it, recalculations are made.  
Another meeting.  The accounting people may say "Great idea, but low 
return-on-investment [if any], and we've only got $X to spend developing 
and producing this thing".  

Or maybe it gets accepted, and the testers have to check and make sure 
that Just One More Feature doesn't have unintended consequences.  All of 
these people cost money, and if they're spending time on the new jack, 
they're not spending any time on other things.  A half hour meeting may 
cost a thousand dollars in salary for all the people attending, and it's 
going to take a lot of meetings to propose, design, implement and test 
Just One More Feature.  And so on.  I could never keep track of how much 
time I've spent in the last few years in meetings such as these.

I'd recommend reading the Vintage Synthesizer book for case study after 
case study of well-intentioned musical instrument companies that went 
under after terminal bouts of feature creep.

TravisH

>From: goddard.duncan@mtvne.com

>Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 13:35:27 -0000

>um- yeah, that's more or less what I meant... I think  I've seen this 
>page before. I remember thinking 


>a) yes, that's what I would've done, use the existing  faders to scale 
>the voltage available to the pedals, and


>b) why didn't he use stereo jacks that reconnect the  fader when the plug 
>is pulled out?


>I've done exactly the same modification to a few midi  keyboards to add a 
>pedal/socket to the volume control. it's absolutely >beyond me  why 
>evolution/roland/whomever would leave this feature off of otherwise  
>reasonably good midi controller >keyboards. the cost of a stereo jack 
>socket, for  god's sake. arranged so that the volume control works 
>normally when there's >no  pedal, and so that it scales the max vol when 
>there is a  pedal.


>baffling.

>d.