ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
Is it true that the last batches of MMCs were destroyed by B&O themselves when they stopped manufacture?
Jacques
Dont know, but in here local B&O destroyed old spareparts storage when they moved to new location... Arrrghh
blah-blah and photographs as needed
Arrrrgh indeed! I'm betting there are a lot of us that would have loved to have seen them kept. They should listen to such a huge market, yup, they should indeed!
Crying shame though. What a waste. I'm betting the panels and grill cloths I needed for my Beovox 3000's were in there!
Jeff
I'm afraid I'm recovering from the BeoVirus.
The legend has it that they even recalled part stock from dealers in order to destroy them.
That reminds me of unsold Apple Lisa computers that were landfilled in the USA, nobody ever knew where.
If that is true, I have real luck to run in ex-reseller who had a new MMC5 in his shop, some ten years ago! A rebel I guess.
There was certainly a clear out of old stock some years ago - rather than flood the market, it was destroyed - with only a few refugee pieces
Peter
chartz: That reminds me of unsold Apple Lisa computers that were landfilled in the USA, nobody ever knew where.
They're in Texas. I'm sure of it. I read it on the Intrawebs so it must be true.
I don't know if they destroyed any cartridges from the production line, though they certainly did destroy the tooling, spec sheets and manufacturing specifications in the mid 90's.
Vinyl records, cassettes, open reel, valve amplifiers and film photography.
I'd like to find the landfill where B&O buried all the cartridges
Søren Hammer:though they certainly did destroy the tooling
If they had not you would have it set up in the house by now.... :-)
Søren Hammer: I don't know if they destroyed any cartridges from the production line, though they certainly did destroy the tooling, spec sheets and manufacturing specifications in the mid 90's.
I thought they sold the tooling, specs heets and manufacturing specifications as well as the production rights to Sound-smith which is why they managed to produce such close replicas in a relatively short period of time.
Regards Graham
Carrotman wrote this on the danish site Hifi4All back in 2004:
"I've just read an article about Ortofon in Politiken (Danish news agency). It mentions, that Bang & Olufsen has stopped the production of pickups and destroyed the tooling (fools!) so nobody else can produce them (Ortofon was interested regarding to the article)."
Original text.
- Dennis
Dennis: Carrotman wrote this on the danish site Hifi4All back in 2004: "I've just read an article about Ortofon in Politiken (Danish news agency). It mentions, that Bang & Olufsen has stopped the production of pickups and destroyed the tooling (fools!) so nobody else can produce them (Ortofon was interested regarding to the article)." Original text. - Dennis
I stand corrected! My info came from the original Beoworld of a decade or so ago so we can all draw our own conclusions
I suppose the fact that sound-smith can produce them provides some comfort, but the prohibitive cost is what rally leaves a bitter taste. Not Sound-smith's fault, in fact all credit to them for taking up the challenge, it just smacks of short-sightedness on B&O's part. With sales of Vinyl now seemingly permanently on the rise, in theory there's nothing to stop B&O re-investing,. I just don't see that happening since they pretty much gave up on Hi-Fi.
This risks going a little off topic for this thread but the much-discussed growth in vinyl sales is hardly likely to convince B&O its a market worth attention.
BPI data shows 390,000 vinyl LPs were sold in the UK last year (up 15%) against 69 million CDs (down 20%). That's still only one vinyl LP for every 177 CDs sold. At current rates of growth and decline (respectively), CD sales will considerably outnumber vinyl sales for many years to come.
However, sales of complete digital albums were up by 15% to 30 million in the UK last year. Add in the sale of 186 million single downloads (and an estimated 50m illegal digital music downloads) and B&O's strategy of focusing on digital formats looks pretty sensible.
Hardwriter: This risks going a little off topic for this thread but the much-discussed growth in vinyl sales is hardly likely to convince B&O its a market worth attention. BPI data shows 390,000 vinyl LPs were sold in the UK last year (up 15%) against 69 million CDs (down 20%). That's still only one vinyl LP for every 177 CDs sold. At current rates of growth and decline (respectively), CD sales will considerably outnumber vinyl sales for many years to come. However, sales of complete digital albums were up by 15% to 30 million in the UK last year. Add in the sale of 186 million single downloads (and an estimated 50m illegal digital music downloads) and B&O's strategy of focusing on digital formats looks pretty sensible.
But there are loads of B&O decks out there, and the older generetions still possess a large amount of well-preserved, often mint LPs. I will myself buy the odd LP from time to time, but what I want is to play my collection of several hundred records on my B&O decks.
If B&O were silly enough to do what they did, the Soundsmith cartridges are expensive and so is an Axel MMC20CL re-tip!
But then, if B&O were still producing those, how much would they set us back? Probably a lot more, wouldn't they?
A retip by Axel is much cheaper than the original B&O prices, I remember that an MMC 4 was about €170.- when my old shop still stocked a couple in 2002.
I agree, like I said, they gave up on Hi-Fi, but indeed, so did the music buying public, so hence their commercial decision to burn their bridges (literally).