Waldorf Blofeld (part infinity)

Well, it appears that if you type "Waldorf Blofeld" into Google, one of my previous posts shows up on the first page of results. That's kind of bad - I'm just a pork plant worker in the middle of Indiana who has nothing to do with the Blofeld, but me blogging my anticipation for one is apparently one of the easier-to-find articles out there. I'm surprised there still aren't any user reviews at either Sonic State or Harmony Central, however I've found that some people have apparently gotten theirs and they're all posting to the Waldorf User Forum, which is an old-school style mailing list. You can read the posts in their archive without subscribing to the list, that at least proves it exists out there somewhere and that people seem to be relatively happy with it.

Some of my older Blofeld posts also got some comments:

RikMaxSpeed said...

I recently ordered a Waldorf Blofeld via www.Thomann.de - they expected delivery on Jan 31st, and they have now been told to wait till March 31st. So unfortunately it looks like this little beast is rapidly becoming obsolete :o(

That sucks, but I don't think "obsolete" is the word you're looking for... It definitely did feel like it was never going to come out, but apparently they're out there. I'm sure you'll be getting yours shortly after March 31st, it's obvious at this point that Waldorf had to resort to a production strategy where there was a small initial run (almost a beta test from what some of the bugs sound like), and the orders from that first run are paying for the manufacture of the second run. The money made from selling Blofelds is probably going to be used to finance the manufacture of the Stromberg. Like I said before in this post, I'm not an insider or anything, just a guy who disembowels slaughtered animals for a living, so everything I say is speculation, but it seems pretty plausible at this point, no?

panda said...

hey! i think the snow is going to beat the blofeld out of the gate, but.. its rocking a street tag of about twice the price.. (blofeld 700, snow 1300!)
that almost ends the game if you ask me. if waldorf can actually ship the unit. it will end up on more desk/table tops.

At the Unofficial Virus TI Forum, Access employee Ben Crosland (he demos all the new Virus hardware (TI, Virus Control V.2, Snow) in the NAMM videos you find at Sonic State (except the upcoming Atomizer effect, which was demo'd by Richard Devine)) pretty much stated that Access doesn't see the Snow and the Blofeld as competitive products, essentially because the TI is a hybrid soft synth/hardware synth with audio interface capabilities and the Blofeld is a hardware synth only.

Poster: "So can we expect it to be competitively priced with the Blofeld at $699 USD?"

Ben Crosland: "Why should it be?

Just because they are both small, doesn't mean they should compete directly with each other in price - the Snow has double the polyphony, Total Integration, audio ins, full FX per Part, MIDI out, soundcard functionality etc.

Really, the Snow is an alternative option for those who want a Virus TI, and hence needs to be priced relative to the other models in the range, not to a completely different synth by another manufacturer." - Source.

The way I see it, Waldorf as a company depends on selling X-many Blofelds. When they initially announced the Blofeld at Winter NAMM 2007, they announced twice the polyphony, the ability to edit it via your computer, and a price tag of $500 (see this video). Keep in mind, Waldorf was recently bankrupt and is now technically another company that bought the old one and is trying to restart it. Here it is a year later, they've had to cut some of the features of the Blofeld (no computer editing) and increase the price (although the price increase from $500 to $699 may have something to do with the U.S. dollar sucking butt).

Access is doing fine as a company and has been since 1997. It is simply introducing a low frills version of its current generation synthesizer to gain market penetration at a price point they haven't had since the Access Virus Classic. I don't think Access cares if more Blofelds end up on desktops than Snows because there are already more TI Desktops, Polars and Keyboards in studios than Blofelds and that's unlikely to change. The theory behind the Snow is to offer a $1350 (MSRP, $1250 in actuality) Virus TI for amateurs/hobbyists who can't afford the $2000 Desktop version. (The wrench into this of course is the fact that you can get a Reboxed Desktop for ~$1600 from NovaMusik, but I guess that is neither here nor there to the people involved.)

As for me, personally, I bought a Reboxed TI Polar from NovaMusik right before Virus Control 2.0 increased the price of the TI line, so I'm quite simply not interested in the TI Snow. I am interested in the Waldorf Blofeld because I don't have a Waldorf Q or Microwave, and while I like the sound of both, I never was really interested in paying $500 to $900 for one or the other, but I am willing to pay $700 for a Blofeld which is essentially both with a few more features added on (drive curves *drool*).

However, I am not interested in paying $700 now and not knowing when I will actually have one in my hands, so rather than pre-order one, I'm content to wait until they are readily available here in the States, which may be a long, long time.

Gossipy prediction: The Access TI Snow will be easier to get in the U.S., sooner than the Waldorf Blofeld.

My qualification for making such a prediction: ZERO.