That leads me to your already mentioned conclusion about the huge number of B.'s "teasers" the recent weeks/months and wondering how much of it ever will be produced and released on the market, besides the next important question... when will it be available? To me, this becomes a rather "irritating" experience getting to know about those "teasers" but nothing much else than that...
-- GarfieldModular
100% with you there. I have a great deal of annoyance at B.'s dropping teasers and then not offering any concrete follow-up info. For example, the PPG clone...wanted it, it's not out, so fukkit...went with a Sledge instead. Similarly, they keep making noises about their VCS3 clone...which I would be in line for IF it comes out, but B. just drops teasers and nothing concrete about this one. And where's the Solina clone? They might want to finish CURRENT projects FIRST before whipping users into a frenzy!
Look, if Uli wants a synth to copy, one that definitely benefits from the current tech AND which can be copied in its entirety and sell for about a grand...there's the Crumar GDS. Crazy-complex stuff for the late 1970s/early 1980s, it was the predecessor for the DK Synergy and Synergy II. But with the present-day tech, you could use a computer ed/lib to store patch data as well as to pass various signals (clock, for example) to the synth via USB, eliminating the need for the computer side of the instrument. And the internal microprocessors, RAM, etc are now nowhere the prices they were back then, which kills the expense aspect.
But the important part? Well...amazingly enough, that synth engine is 100% PUBLIC DOMAIN. I kid you not! It was originally developed by Hal Alles when he was working for Bell Labs in the mid-1970s, and given that the Bell Labs patents are open for public use without royalties, there's no way in hell anyone could scream "KNOCK-OFF" about it. Also, Hal Alles's prototype is still very much in existence, and it's housed at Oberlin's TIMARA labs. Studying that would be productive, along with a Synergy or Synergy II IF they can find one anywhere; it's not like these grew on trees, after all!
C'mon Uli...if you want to pull off a HUGE win without infringing patents and angering your putative customer base, THAT is the project I would suggest. It'd be a win all around! We're talking a synth that was used by the likes of Wendy and Klaus...so clearly, it's got loads of mojo, otherwise those two alone wouldn't have had anything to do with it.