Home › Forums › Vintage EHX › Why isn’t it possible to recommission old IC’s like the Reticon SAD1024?
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June 21, 2014 at 9:33 am #83531TheFloydGiverMember
Sorry if this isn’t the right thread for this but it didn’t really seem to fit specifically in any of them so vintage EHX seemed to be the best since a bunch of old EHX pedals used this Integrated Circuit. Why isn’t it possible for any company to recommission this IC? Surely they would make a mint because of the demand for it?
June 21, 2014 at 2:51 pm #120042The EH ManModeratorBecause it would cost thousands of dollars just to get production started and the returns would likely not cover it.
June 21, 2014 at 9:31 pm #120043TheFloydGiverMemberThis makes me curious as to how a company like Visual Sound would be able to recommission some old Panasonic chips then?
June 21, 2014 at 9:58 pm #120044The EH ManModeratorThe Panasonics are better chips and I think they’d be worth putting the money into.
June 21, 2014 at 11:01 pm #120045TheFloydGiverMemberFair enough. Looks like the old Mistresses and other various modulation pedals are bound to die out one day
Thanks for the insight!
July 7, 2014 at 1:01 pm #120085StephengilesMemberQuote:The Panasonics are better chips and I think they’d be worth putting the money into.“Better” is a matter of opinion. No BBD in my view sounds as good as SAD 1024!!
October 20, 2014 at 6:32 pm #120313Mark HammerMemberQuote:This makes me curious as to how a company like Visual Sound would be able to recommission some old Panasonic chips then?To the best of my knowledge, Visual Sound did not “recommission” the Panasonic/Matsushita chips. There are currently two manufacturers of several of the chips (MN3205, MN3207, MN3102): Beiling and Coolaudio, the latter providing chips to Behringer.
October 20, 2014 at 9:15 pm #120315Fender&EHX4everModeratorIs this something that a 3D printer could do? :question:
October 21, 2014 at 12:37 pm #120319Mark HammerMemberSure…if you’re willing to wait another 20 years until they have that capability.
But seriously, it would take one helluva big demand for the chip to financially justify its resurrection. There IS a big demand…WITHIN A CERTAIN SMALL COMMUNITY…but outside of that community, there ain’t much going on.
As well, the only thing that an SAD1024 does significantly better than its competitors do is flanging, simply because it tolerates faster clocking better than the Panasonic chips. Even there, the Panasonic chips can be made to tolerate faster clocking, with some outside buffering help. As for delays longer than what is needed for flanging, we have the good old MN3207 and MN3205 clones. There is no real advantage to using SAD1024s for chorus and analog delays.
So when one considers just how large (read: “small”) the flanger-user market is, and what share of them use it for its shortest possible delay times, there is simply very little financial return for whomever got it in their head that fabricating a new batch would be a good idea….which is as big a disappointment to me as it is to you.
December 23, 2015 at 6:12 pm #121126TarmogoyfMemberSure. There is a big demand within a small community now, but that would change over time with the availability of new SAD1024 chips.
April 19, 2020 at 9:11 pm #126008Blaze_InfernusParticipantBecause you can’t just start making someone else’s chip, you either have to own the patent or be willing to pay the appropriate licensing fees. That’s before you even get to the actual tooling to do it. There is no demand for this chip (yes I need one too). As a matter of fact they are still in stock with a few different bulk electronics suppliers — one place I looked at has 5000+ of them, brand new—but they require minimum orders of 1000 pcs. So if no one is willing to do that, it’s not considered high in demand. An electronics manufacturer has to demand it, i.e. cranking out hundreds if not thousands of units a day that use the part, not a few dozen, or even a couple hundred pedal geeks like us.
May 28, 2020 at 7:36 pm #126122DelicieuxzMemberQuote:Because you can’t just start making someone else’s chip, you either have to own the patent or be willing to pay the appropriate licensing fees. That’s before you even get to the actual tooling to do it. There is no demand for this chip (yes I need one too). As a matter of fact they are still in stock with a few different bulk electronics suppliers — one place I looked at has 5000+ of them, brand new—but they require minimum orders of 1000 pcs. So if no one is willing to do that, it’s not considered high in demand. An electronics manufacturer has to demand it, i.e. cranking out hundreds if not thousands of units a day that use the part, not a few dozen, or even a couple hundred pedal geeks like us.If there are sources offering thousands of the SAD2014 for reasonable prices, then I wonder why EHX hasn’t bought them to re-release their vintage pedals that go for many hundreds of dollars used. 5000 would go a long way for a pedal company without being too many, especially for a company like EHX. They might be able to keep reproduction vintage-spec Electric Mistresses available for a year with that stock.
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