Ridiculous ebay price rises on unbent machines

[Circuitbenders]

I can't be the only person here who has noticed the ridiculous prices rises on ebay for certain machines over the past year or so and i'm wondering if this is the direct result of forums like this, and people getting into circuitbending.

Putting the outrageous cost of a VSS30 aside for a moment, about 3 years ago you could get a TR505 off ebay for about £20-£30 and you wouldn't be paying more than £30-£40 for a TR626. I've just done a check of completed items on ebay and the average cost of a 505 is now over £50 and anything up to £80-£90! A 626 will cost you from £60 to over £100!
Plainly people aren't buying this stuff for its music making potential as a normal machine. If they are then they are idiots. 

If someone had said to me 5 years ago that i wouldn't be able to buy a speak & spell machine for under £25 i would have laughed at them.

£20 including shipping for a Casio SA1? Has anyone here ever paid more than £2 for an SA1?

I can't wait for the car boot sale season to start again. We seem to have priced ourselves out of the ebay market. 

[noystoise]

the thing that bothers me the most is that just a few years ago you could find almost anything on ebay for dirt cheap. people would just list whatever they had. now people only seem to list things that they think will bring a big payoff.

[Circuitbenders]

I've never paid more than £20 for an RX17, the world has gone mad
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280457524553

[jamiewoody]

i have noticed this trend too.

i have an idea....if we can get circuit bending outlawed all over the world, maybe casio keyboards would sell cheap, and we can be rennegades!


okay...bad idea. but, we have to think of something! ;-)

[Circuitbenders]

i give up:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280457531374

and the average price for a speak&spell appears to have gone up to about £45-£50

[jamiewoody]

the first rule of circuit benders club, nobody talks about circuit benders club.

the second rule of circuit benders club, nobody talks about circuit benders club!!! ;-)

[arron]

 The price rise is down to people who know that they can make good money from circuit bending, the prices that some machines go for when modified means that £20 for an unmodded SA-1 is a good investment. New music always comes about when new instruments are available, boundaries are broken down and the whole thing moves on. Take the TB-303, I paid £45 for my first one and am now just about to pay around £1,200 for my next one. I have just seen a Devil Fish unit up for almost £3000, if it sells then an investment of £1,200 at the start point makes very good business sense.

[Circuitbenders]

I see you've got yourself a new IP address, username and email then S-CAT? I could have sworn you were banned. 

Shall i just ban you now or do you want to wait until you've annoyed people enough to make it necessary?

[Gordonjcp]

I don't know why anyone would pay more than about £100 for a TB-303.  They're shit, and they're relatively easy to make.  There are no magic unobtainable bits in them apart from the CPU, and you'd be replacing that with one that responded to MIDI anyway.

TB303s are the most grossly overrated pieces of crap out there, and I say that as a TB303 enthusiast and as someone who has spent many hours coming up with an acceptable TB303 synth plugin.  Jeez, 1200 quid?  Are you off your head?  You could buy ten Redsound Darkstars for that, or five brand new Novation Xiosynths.  WTF do you want a TB303 for?

[Circuitbenders]

personally i love the sound of the 303 but i agree, in itself a real TB303 is a piece of crap. £1200 is absolutely absurd, especially when you consider that you can build a decent x0xb0x for about £100 or so and i can guarantee that nobody in their right mind would be able to tell the difference in a blind test when its actually playing in a track.

Having said that, people are willing to pay £50,000 or so for some vintage Les Paul as if its going to make them any better a musician than just spending £500 on a modern equivalent thats exactly the same. People spend up to £800 on a 70's Tone bender or 60's Fuzz Face pedal like its actually going to be a better sounding fuzz than something you've knocked up for £5 with the exact same components.

People are idiots.

[kitsophrenik]

just noticed this thread!

your telling me about ridiculous priices....

i went on ebay and had bids on  5 different speak n spell auctions.... the reason being is tht my speak and read died a death... and im gaggin for a new unit to bend! ...each one went for at least 25quid!   

i got a cuple bids on a few more atm, but i somehow doubt ill be winning them!

..any one know where i can get one from?

=]

[Gordonjcp]

I wouldn't bother with a hardware speak'n'spell.  Grab the example LPC10 codec source off the 'net, encode some speech and then write a wee proggy to flip some bits in the resulting stream.  Perfect results every time...

[Circuitbenders]

ah hahahahaaaaaa

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110535689665

[kitsophrenik]

i feel sick...

[Matt the Modulator]

Renco sound fx machine how much!
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Vintage-70s-REMCO-SOUND-FX-MACHINE-Chip-Analog-Synth-/150447684923?cmd=ViewItem&pt=Keyboards_MIDI&hash=item2307617d3b
really these things don't sound that good