Make Noise QMMG on Reverb.

Guy listed it for $5000, now down to $3500. Sold "as is." How do these people sleep at night?

I personally don't especially mind this phenomenon. The QMMG looks like a pretty sweet module, and it's super rare. If they can find someone who is comfortable paying this price, more power to them, and putting on my empathy hat I can wonder if they need this money for rent, essentials, etc... we are in a pandemic after all. A 6X or 10X markup isn't cheap, but Eurorack is ultimately a hobby. What really bugs me is 10X or more markup for houses, healthcare, college, etc... just my 2 cents.

Heading this way myself, I have let stuff go for small monies in the past and while there is cursory appreciation at the time, it ultimately feels like at least a small number of folk totally cashed in (no one here).

Going to sell some rare stuff for big monies, for no other reason than I have been out of work for a year and need the cash...

If anyone has a go, they will be violently verbally abused in return! Just no need... mind your own business!

While I am here, the old adage that everyone is nice until the chips are down and they are pushed just that bit too far is 100% true... seen it, seen it again, now watching it happen to myself in slow motion like a really bad car crash where people are hurt badly!

This lockdown has taken a massive toll, I have personally lost nearly everything, work contracts, friendships, family... and increasingly my ability to cope with anything!

It's not funny!

Seriously considering my options, selling the musical instruments that have always brought me joy and happiness feels like yet another gut wrenching loss after another, but needs must!

So, seriously, anyone who thinks they are being big and clever by attacking people selling things for as much cash as they can get, needs to have a seriously long hard look at themselves in the mirror - how do YOU sleep at night?

If the answer to that question is 'soundly' then you are really, really lucky!!

EDITED Apr 7th 2021, 17:50

It's just the folks who buy something and immediately list it for profit that bug the **** out of me. Hard times/needs must as you say, no issue with that. How do you tell, that's the question. For me, it's something like the Chase Bliss collaborations where they sell out, and then the aholes list them for double/triple the price the same day. I was glad to see Joel saying he wasn't doing limited editions anymore because of the phenomenon. So, I think there's quite a difference, and I do sleep quite well at night.

All that said, very sorry to hear you've been through, and are going through, hell.

Good response!

I was aware of the Chase Bliss flips, it's one thing to have had something for a while, used it, realised it has acquired value and sold it at what the market will provide, it's another to capitalise like that; it's not exactly in the spirit of the scene is it. Joel is a good person who deserves to be treated better, he has been very kind to me personally for absolutely no reason whatsoever other than he could. I hate to think that his good nature has been taken advantage of in that way.

I probably wrote my words stronger than I really mean, but it is frustrating as hell! I have been self employed for a long time now and I know that the last thing you need to be when looking for work is stressed, so it's this constant effort to remain positive. It's okay for a bit, but with one more rejection or failure and it all gets too much, then I feel silly for being emotional about it all, tell myself it's better to express it then hold it in, shake myself out of it, and then am okay again for a bit, make some progress... but sooner or later it all gets a bit much again... on it goes round and round.

I am obviously being very open here, I know I am absolutely not alone in this. So many people have things much worse than I do. I hope anyone who is struggling, reads this and needs someone to talk to will reach out. My DMs are always open.

Thank you for your kind words. Things will get better :)

It's been a surreal, brutal, year. I really hope things turn around for you!

Well, I certainly don't wish any ill on you Kel, but I guess I'm just coming from having been on the other end of that transaction. In fact it happened not that long ago when I first joined Reverb and I was just super excited and discovering how much weird, varied analog gear was out there for sale. I got a little excited and in the excitement committed to purchase an FX unit for which the seller was charging about 3x the cost you could easily get it elsewhere.

Now I get "buyer beware" and all that, it was somewhat my own fault for not doing my research more carefully. But if you are selling an item with a hugely inflated cost and you are hoping for/counting on the ignorance of potential buyers in regards to its fair value to score extra money, then yeah, I think that is a really slimy thing to do. I hope things turn around for you, but not at the expense of ripping off some excited young kid who doesn't know better.

I know you don't, don't worry about that!

Sorry you got ripped off, that sucks :(

So, I sell something at a high price, but then someone else comes along and sells the same thing for a low price, does that make me slimy?

I don't think it does... it's certainly not my intention to rip anyone off, my intention is to get my ass out of trouble by any legal means necessary. I am not being dishonest. I am not breaking any laws.

This is why we have laws. So we can differentiate between criminal activity and free markets.

Or do you believe that markets should be further regulated and buyers and seller controlled beyond the point they are now?

I am not sure that would be such good idea. How would it be regulated?

I would rather trust that the person doing the buying is in a comfortable position to do so and is doing it of their own free will.

As for the suggestion that I would rip off some excited young kid, well... come on! Are you implying that people doing nothing other than listing their stuff for sale at a high price are ripping people off? I don't think they are.

To 'rip someone off' there has to be some intent to mislead, manipulate, etc. that means you are dishonest and tell lies to con someone out of money. Listing something for a high price does not constitute that.

Listing something and lying about what it actually is, the condition it is in, passing off fakes as the real item etc. that is ripping someone off.

You are entitled to your opinion, but it's a bit sketchy to say the least.

Lets keep it real huh!?

(Shrug) ... it sounds like you're trying to convince yourself. I'm not saying it should be illegal, but there are many things that I don't think are a good thing to do that I don't necessarily think should be illegal. This is one of them. To me Reverb is a place to buy/sell used gear at a bit of a discount, because it's used and being passed on. Let's just say it's not something I would do, and that I hope you find other ways to improve your situation (and maybe even be able to keep your gear) than knowingly selling it for an inflated price. Look at it this way: you yourself say "sorry you got ripped off," which implies you agree that I was ripped off. The guy was just doing what you're describing doing, basically.

Like I say, I don't think it's morally the worst thing in the universe, and the buyer does have some responsibility to look out for themselves here. With my example, I feel I was kind of ripped off (or would have been -- I was able to back out of the sale, as it happened, at the cost of a "restocking fee") ... but I also accept that it was partly on me for not shopping with more care. But personally I'd just prefer to be able to trust that sellers are offering me a reasonably fair price. What is reasonably fair is admittedly going to be a little subjective. But, I'm only just getting into modular, and I can already tell it's a very addictive hobby, and it's certainly easy to get a little carried away clicking the "buy" button on sites like Reverb -- even with non-inflated prices.

EDITED Apr 8th 2021, 20:41

buying anything on a secondary "used" market is and has always been buyer beware. It is up to the buyer to make sure they are getting what they are expecting and are cognizant of the underlying costs. Any misrepresentation by the seller is not cool and sellers that act this way don't survive long before people no-longer buy from them, and in this case I feel bad for anyone that did their homework and simply didn't receive what they intended to buy through no fault of their own (ripped off). On the other hand, if someone a seller prices something above market it is the buyers responsibility to recognize this and through the powers of supply and demand simply make that calculation for themselves, if you buy something and then come to find out you overpaid (and allow this to impact you emotionally), perhaps you shouldn't have bought it in the first place.

If you buy something that you want, got exactly what you ordered, just could have bought it somewhere else cheaper, better to just let it go and enjoy what you bought because at the time you bought it you were okay with both the item described, and the price and got exactly what you paid for.

I agree with that in theory, but I think degree and seller intent are important. (And again I'd stress I'm not talking about legality here, just personal ethics).

Say I bought a Moog DFAM new from Moog for $650, which is about the price brand new through a typical retailer. I decide I don't want it and I sell it as an open-box item for $750 and someone buys it. Fair enough. I'd say that the buyer got kind of a poor deal, as it's not too hard to find a used DFAM in near-mint condition for $500-600 (I paid $480 for mine); but hey, it's certainly no seller's responsibility to offer the lowest or fairest possible price imaginable every time they sell something. People offer to sell things above their average market value all the time, and I don't think they're all doing something bad or unreasonable.

But in terms of personal ethics, to me, there's a range that's conscionable, and that range is based on the seller's knowledge of the generally conceded value of the item he/she is selling. If I take my Moog DFAM and price it at $2500, purely staking my hopes to sell it on the notion that someone will buy it simply not knowing any better ... to me, that's really slimy. If someone does that and can just murmur "buyer beware, buyer beware" to themselves and sleep okay at night, so be it. Personally, I couldn't.

That being said, in all transparency and fairness, I took another closer look at the listing I originally mentioned at the start of the thread as I got to thinking more about this, and it appears to be for a version of the module that's now discontinued, which I didn't initially realize. Combine that with the fact that Make Noise seems to be a hot manufacturer in modular right now, and that puts the listing in a different and much more understandable context, where they're pricing it for hardcore collectors who want something no longer available through the normal channels. I still think it's a greedy mark-up, but since it's an "out of print" unit, so to speak, I've actually no issue w/ it.

EDITED Apr 9th 2021, 00:16

Through the power of dialogue we all got on the same page. It's a Modular Grid miracle.

I would like the market to go back to how it was until recently, it's erm, slow to say the least, but then there are people who clearly still have plenty of disposable income.

This to me marks a subtle but seasonal change in the ever widening gap between the people who have, and the people don't - it's a global phenomena.

Is redistribution of wealth in this context such a terrible thing?!

It's definitely made me think about how I will list these things, if I do, and some words along the lines of 'priced as rare item' would alleviate all slime perhaps? I am open to suggestions for other wordings that would achieve similar or better!

One thing I have never done, and will never do, is act unethically or deliberately try to deceive someone, it's simply not in my nature.

There's another very old saying: A fool and his money are soon parted, I have been that fool on many an occasion, some would argue every time I dropped relatively large amounts of cash on synths heh :))

Maybe these situations are just an inevitable part of life, there will always be the con artist, there will always be the fool and part of growing up is learning to tell the difference.

Through the power of dialogue we all got on the same page. It's a Modular Grid miracle.
-- troux

I know I drop in and out here, but I have always found it to be the most level and reasonable group of people, adults who can have different opinions without turning to all out war :)

You see the inflated prices mostly on Cwejman modules. These were made by an ingenious inventor in high quality and small quantities. During his lifetime the modules were already the most sought-after and expensive. Now that Wowa has passed, it is clear that the price is no longer determined only by the functionality of the module. They are considered as a legacy, as pieces of art.
Sure some people want to cash in but if you think about it this way it is very relative: what is the price of any Banksy certified reproduction print.

That's a great point!

Of the things I have that have this kind of inflated value, one in particular is absolutely 100% a work of art - I happen to think one of the most stunning eurorack modules ever made, out of print, and totally unobtainium!

For a bit of a giggle I did a quick search for expensive 'rip off' art:

https://www.oddee.com/item_98781.aspx

Suddenly, someone charging #5K for a rare module seems like a bargain!

EDITED Apr 9th 2021, 10:24

Markets are weird... take Beeple's $65 million sale of an NFT. NFTs make absolutely NO sense to me, and the piece in question isn't even close to high art, or really good low art, in my opinion. Value is a vague noun/verb, however, so it's whatever people make of it.

NFTs...gah...I got excoriated over on Reddit's r/vaporwave forum by some "true believer" in that because I dared to point out that this is, in all likelihood, some fad-grade nonsense that's just ASKING to get punked by someone well-versed in culture jamming. True, there ARE artists making money via this method (one musical act that comes to mind here is Kings of Leon), but when that bubble pops, look out!

As for the $5k QMMG...clearly, this derp hasn't quite picked up on the fact that Make Noise's MMG is NOT discontinued, and that four of them tallies up to $940 street. Add a very basic mixer/attenuator module that lets you break out submixes (sorta like Intellijel's QuadrATT tile...but as a "proper" module) and you have a...QMMG! Sure, it's physically bigger, but you have the same basic function PLUS a lot more control capabilities over each MMG. And instead of a fixed mixing paradigm, you could just as easily swap the basic mixer out for a quad VCA instead. Given that, I 100% do NOT see the point in trying to shuck rubes over this "RAR vintage W0W!!!111!!1!" module that they want $5 grand for.

This behavior is something I've long despised. I didn't like it when synth-brokers were trying to use Usenet back in the day to run their commercial enterprises (in violation of the Usenet charter and, in one especially egregious case, the Usenet AUP for U Michigan), and I don't like it now. It's become a lot easier to spot, thankfully. But during that early Usenet period, you had all sorts of bottom-feeders trolling around, buying disused synths for pennies on the dollar and then flipping them for sometimes HUNDREDS of times more than they'd paid. And around that time, you also had the emerging concept of "synth collectors"...people who bought synths and DIDN'T play them, simply because they were "valuable". I'm sure that 90% of those instruments are now dead from disuse unless they were "rescued" somehow. Fools, money, etc etc.

This is the nastiest post I have read on here so far... seriously? Please consider removing the xenophobic language!

Many will miss it, but I think you can say what you need to without the particular phrase you used. No need.

I am a country person, but I am no idiot!

EDITED Apr 11th 2021, 06:42

This is the nastiest post I have read on here so far... seriously? Please consider removing the xenophobic language!
-- Kel_

??? What xenophobic language?

As for the $5k QMMG...clearly, this derp hasn't quite picked up on the fact that Make Noise's MMG is NOT discontinued
-- Lugia

Ah yes, but the CURRENTLY available ones don't have the ugly color scheme or the "good" vactrols.

As for the $5k QMMG...clearly, this derp hasn't quite picked up on the fact that Make Noise's MMG is NOT discontinued
-- Lugia

Ah yes, but the CURRENTLY available ones don't have the ugly color scheme or the "good" vactrols.
-- eexee

Reminds me a bit of the snakeoil behind the idea that running a certain, specific green magic marker around the edge of your CDs will make them sound better. I tend to laugh my a$$ off when I run into someone these days who STILL believes this nonsense, especially after Wayne Green (W2NSD, the former editor of 73 Magazine and a shortlived sister high-end audio publication) finally told the story of how he and some of his other staffers cooked this total lie up to see how far everyone in the audiophile community would run with it.

EDITED Apr 12th 2021, 03:39

This is the nastiest post I have read on here so far... seriously? Please consider removing the xenophobic language!
-- Kel_

??? What xenophobic language?

-- Lugia

It's hard to believe you don't know...

https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/rube

We are in the 21st Century now, we don't use offensive terms like this against whole groups of people in this way, I mean why not use the n-word? It's along those lines. Not cool.

In fairness to Lugia, that's not xenophobic. Derogatory, perhaps, but not xenophobic. 'Rubes' is pretty benign in the US, maybe not in the UK?

How is using a derogatory term, as defined by the link I sent, against a whole group of people not xenophobia?

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/xenophobia

Why am I explaining this?

Why does degree of offensiveness matter?

Why be offensive like that, even just a little bit?

Thin edge of the wedge? Once one person is accepted as being okay to throw slurs around about groups of people, who's to say it's not okay for the next person? Where to draw the line?

I say just don't do it at all!

As I say, what was being said didn't require the use of xenophobic language and it still doesn't.

Someone has to stand up against this outdated and mind-numbingly pointless behaviour, no matter how small it is...

By all means start throwing around the n-word - there are groups of people here in the UK who seem to think that is acceptable, therefore everyone else should accept it right? Er... no!

I too wonder if this is a UK/US thing. I've never known anyone to take particular offense to the word 'rube' (in the US). Well ... at least not in any sense relating to xenophobia. And Lugia didn't even use it as an insult ... he used it to mean someone not educated or cultured enough to see through the marketing buzz and snakeoil. Which is what the word means. What would be a better word to use in this context?

EDITED Apr 12th 2021, 22:58

Kel, you really need to calm down. There's no "there" there. And eexee is 100% spot-on; the term, as I used it, is American "carny speak" for precisely the sort of person who someone pushing a $5k QMMG is looking for, just like carny barkers looking for an easy mark among the midway crowd. Nothing "xenophobic" about it.