but maybe someone has an original unmodified handle... well, handy?

Ba-DUM. "Thank you, I'm here all week."

(The resins that I use can be drilled and tapped.)

Cool. You'd probably use a different kind of screw than the factory handle, then. The factory screws have a very short shaft and a very fine thread, obviously made for metal. But if you supplied the correct screw, I could see that working quite well. Your description of the strength of the resins is promising. The player isn't that heavy. When I was thinking that it wouldn't work in plastic, I was thinking more along the lines of styrene, not a really strong resin.

Folks who want to replace the standard factory fascia with one that looks different/cool/coordinates/wows/etc. and that easily replaces the factory one.

Ah, cool. I hadn't realized at first you were going for alternate colors for your replacement fascia. Just solid colors? What about swirled colors or patterns, or faux stone/wood? Like they do on cell phone fascia replacements? Were you going to do colored translucent fascias so we could have an imac-style empeg that was backlit? Ooooo....:)

I'll post their answer here (if there is one).

I'm guessing their answer will be something like "a faceplate for WHAT?... Wait a minute, we bought WHO?... How long ago?... Ah. Well, you'd probably have to talk to that Rob guy in Cambridge, he was in charge of that project..."

Wondered about that, but that's the sort of market that companies like mine seek out.

COOL. Then you're the guy we want doing this stuff. I can't wait to order some more buttons.

Oh, and about the buttons, you have to realize that some owners have a "keyed" D-shaped knob shaft, and others have a round shaft where the button is held on by friction. The friction version is a bit of a PITA, because if the knob isn't exactly the right size, it won't grip, or it'll grip too tightly for them to pull it off when they want to change or remove the fascia.

The factory solution to the gripping problem was to redesign the knob gripper a bit, and then supply a rubber O-ring at precisely the right size so that it created a tiny bit of extra friction. It sounds like a bit of a hack job, but in the end it works really well.

Anyway, my point is that if you cast knobs, you'll need to cast two different versions. Brian simply shipped both versions of the knob to every customer, as well as shipping one of the correct-size rubber O rings, just to make sure that all bases were covered.

I had held back expressing my excitement toward Stu's 4-LED knob board, because I feared that without a source for translucent knobs I would buy it only to have it sit in my spare parts bin.

You're aware that you can just drill holes in the factory knob and buttons, and have a ring of pinpoint lights on the knob and central pinpoint lights on the buttons, right? That is a good temporary solution until you can get translucent buttons.

Support has been contacted regarding the different knobs. I believe they're going to provide spares.

Tony -
I'm aware that the knob can be drilled, but don't want to "destroy" my original knob. From what I've seen, the translucent knobs look much better, which is why I would be doing the mod in the first place. ...Mark

It's got nothing to do with Denon. D&M own DNNA who own Rio who own the IP. D&M also own Denon but they're going to be very confused by this.

The person who can raise this officially for you is me. I said I didn't want to raise it officially, and suggested you may not really need to do so. Since you clearly do want to do so I'd suggest you're out of luck as our company changed hands today and nobody is going to want to spend time thinking about a long discontinued product right now.

Rob

From: <riocar_admin@miniinfo.net>
> It's got nothing to do with Denon. D&M own DNNA who own Rio who own the IP. D&M also own Denon but they're going to be very confused by this.

It was my mistake then. I assumed that when D&M Holdings was formed to merge the operations of Denon and Marantz, it meant that Denon was somehow involved and that a message to them would eventually find its way to someone that would be able to provide some answers. Rather stupid, actually.

I should have tried to contact someone at the D&M Holdings US's new subsidiary, Digital Networks North America (DNNA), but I'm assuming that they're so new that it'll be ages before I'd get any sort of response.

On the IP rights thing, I was going with what Tatsuo Kabumoto, CEO and president of D&M Holdings was quoted as saying, "We will leverage the intellectual property and the excellent engineering talent from the ReplayTV and Rio businesses across our D&M brands while positioning these businesses to be more profitable."

Sort of sounded like the IP rights were their's. I'll have to look into this a bit more, but as DNNA is still climbing out of it's box, it'll be some time before I could get any sort of answer.

In any case, I screwed up. Really sorry.

> The person who can raise this officially for you is me. I said I didn't want to raise it officially, and suggested you may not really need to do so. Since you clearly do want to do so I'd suggest you're out of luck as our company changed hands today and nobody is going to want to spend time thinking about a long discontinued product right now.

Rob, maybe I'm misreading your post, but if I offended you in any manner, I apologize.

I know that it sounds assinnine to go as far as I do in these things, but I have good reason. In the casting field we've seen some stalwart, well-established companies close their doors because of copyright infringement. I simply wanted to do what I believe is the right thing.

And much thanks for your help. :O)
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> tfabris replied:
> ... well, handy? Ba-DUM. "Thank you, I'm here all week."

Yeah, I couldn't resist that one.

> Ah, cool... What about swirled colors or patterns, or faux stone/wood?

Maybe.

> Were you going to do colored translucent fascias...

Yes, actually. I wasn't sure how well it would be received, but it might look cool with matching/contrasting buttons.

> Oh, and about the buttons... some... have a "keyed" D-shaped knob shaft, and others have a round shaft...

No, I didn't know that. All of the buttons, or just the big one? Only one button had that problem?

Thanks. :O)

Only one button had that problem?

Just the big one. It's a knob+button. The others don't really have a shaft of any nature; they just are formed properly to sit between the fascia and the switches they activate.

Rob, maybe I'm misreading your post, but if I offended you in any manner, I apologize.

I don't think Rob was offended. I think he was trying to say something along the lines of:

"I commissioned the original design when it was made, and it's fine with me if you cast a few fascias and button sets based on it. In fact, I encourage you to go ahead and do it. I can't really say that officially, though, because we got bought and we don't technically own the IP any more. But it's a long-discontinued product which was short-run to begin with, and I'm sure our new company owners couldn't care less about you copping the design of some old bits of plastic. In fact, the only ones in the new company who would even know anything about the old bits of plastic are sitting right here next to me as I speak, so any emails you send to the parent company will probably just fall on deaf ears anyway. If you really want to go through official channels, you'd likely have to go through me anyway, and right now I'm not prepared to be that conduit, we've got other more pressing things to attend to."

Your response was essentially:

"Okay, but I have to do this all above board because I don't want to risk doing something I could get in trouble for down the road. I have to be sure, because my livelihood depends on it."

... which is very admirable and understandable. I don't think Rob is offended by that, he's just shrugging his shoulders and essentially saying, "Whatever, OK, suit yourself."

Of course, it's late, and I'm tired, and I could be misinterpreting all of the above. I shouldn't post at late hours like this...

So I think at this point, the only thing you can do from your point of view is see what responses you get from your emails (if any) and proceed as you see fit. I realize this is a legal gray area for you, and that's the very thing you want to avoid. But so far you're our best hope for getting a plentiful selection of aftermarket plastic parts for our beloved toy, and I know that none of us want to see you get scared off of the project.

Rewinding a bit to clarify a technical point I noticed earlier in the thread...

I could do about 8-9 of the usual "crayon box" colors for a start, and then the 5 metalized ones. All of the regular colors can be lightened or darkened into other shades. For example, red could be adjusted from "pink" all the way into "blood red".

When dealing with the colors of the buttons, there's an interesting issue to deal with. Unlike the "Holy backlit buttons, Batman" image posted earlier in the thread, most people will be buying buttons to match their player's lens color, which in turn was chosen to match their car's dash as best as possible.

This would be neat if you could just copy the lens color as a basis for the tint of the button plastic. But you can't, because...

The lenses go over the VFD display which glows a shade of approximately cyan. The buttons go over pure-white LEDs. If customers wanted the glow of the buttons to exactly match the glow of the text on the screen, some trial and error would be needed to determine the exact color shades of plastic to make the buttons appear to be the same color as the screen. Brian did some experiments in this area with moderate success, by (for example) tinting the blue buttons ever so slightly greenish to match the blue lens over the cyan VFD.

Casting_Fool:

I think the key piece of information that you seem to be missing, is that rob is the founding President of Empeg, and continues today as the head dude for that development group, whether the label be Empeg / Rio / SonicBlue / D&M.

He really is the only guy you need to contact about this stuff.

BBS posters who's names display in the colour blue are part of the development team, or were, at some point in time.

-ml

rob is the founding President of Empeg

Actually, wouldn't that be Hugo (altman)? No offense, Rob. In any case, you are hearing directly from the team that designed, built and marketed the original empeg, and were then bought later.

Yeah I was the founding tea boy of empeg. I've worked my way up to the top - tea boy for D&M.

Rob

tfabris replied:
> So I think at this point, the only thing you can do from your point of view is see what responses you get from your emails (if any) and proceed as you see fit. I realize this is a legal gray area for you, and that's the very thing you want to avoid. But so far you're our best hope for getting a plentiful selection of aftermarket plastic parts for our beloved toy, and I know that none of us want to see you get scared off of the project.

I've done this same thing with other IP, and the responses that you get can vary from "Heck, that's okay with me, Dude, go for it." (no restrictions), to "Well, sure, as long as you don't..." (some restrictions), to "You can have it when it falls from my lawyer's cold dead fingers." (no license, ever). And God's grace, so far none of the licenses that I've been given have involved license fees.

In order to avoid the lawyers of one giant of the miniatures gaming industry, which shall remain incognito, I developed a correspondence with their IP people in order to avoid being introduced to their fabulously wealthy lawyers over some of my own original miniatures gaming products that tread close to their IP designs.

My chief concern in this particular instance is the Japanese connection. Here in the States the line of ownership goes to whichever company is at the top, unless the IP wasn't part of the deal when the purchased company was sold to the buyer.

I'm afraid that I really couldn't tell from the material that I read on the 'Net how these issues stood with the fascia and button design. Rob may very well be the one who holds the cookie jar on this, but I'm stuck with making certain I'm in the clear.

I started CF&Son after I discovered that my doodlings with casting attracted money (not a bad thing in it's own way), but got an early jump start on going full time with it when I was downsized at my retail hobby industry job.

We're a small specialty company and have to tread carefully so as to avoid getting stepped on by the big-footed lawyers of angry IP owners (ref. "A Simple Wish" starring Martin Short, the scene with the 50' rabbi terrorizing Nevada).

Practically speaking, in relation to this particular project, there doesn't seem to be a problem with my producing a few trial castings to see how they turn out and to present to y'all (this Philly boy's been in the South for too long) for inspection.

I'm fairly certain that Rob's correct in saying that there's no problem with my producing the units; especially with the limited market, discontinuation of the line, and other factors.

I'm just trying to make sure that I'm hunting on the "King's land" with permission, hoping to avoid a confrontation with the Sheriff of Snottingham. Outlawing is exciting and profitable (and wrong in this case), but it's a pain to be beheaded. It can place a real damper on your weekends. :O)
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tfabris replied:
> ... most people will be buying buttons to match their player's lens color...
> ... to exactly match the glow of the text on the screen, some trial and error would be needed to determine the exact color shades of plastic to make the buttons appear to be the same color as the screen. Brian did some experiments in this area with moderate success, by (for example) tinting the blue buttons ever so slightly greenish to match the blue lens over the cyan VFD.

Ack. I knew that not owning one of these babies could be a problem.

Well, I could buy a set of the lenses, find a light source as similar to the player's as possible, and then tint the buttons to match the resulting output; or I could just set a new standard...

Got to think about that one. Thanks for the head's up.
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mlord replied:
> [Rob] really is the only guy you need to contact about this stuff.

Sure is looking that way.

> BBS posters who's names display in the colour blue are part of the development team, or were, at some point in time.

Ah! Didn't know that. So who are the red and green ones? (And why is mine yellow?)
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Just heard that buttons, knob, handle, handle mounting brackets, and fascia are on their way and should be here sometime next week...

So who are the red and green ones? (And why is mine yellow?)

Yellow names are from people with a post count of 1000 posts or less.
Green names are from people with a 1000+ post count
Red names are from people who have administrator rights on this forum.
Blue names are from people who either work (or have worked) for Empeg or are involved with them directly in some way.

Ack. I knew that not owning one of these babies could be a problem.

Yes. You really should try and own one.

FWIW, I'd be interested in both buttons and fascia/handle, but at this time, can't commit. If you go ahead and produce the cast, do you do a limited run, end of story? Or is it limited run + one offs in the future?

Yes. You really should try and own one.

Or perhaps a kind soul who owns a Mk2a spare could loan it to him as an encouragement to work on this project. I'd loan him my player, but it's my only one and I can't live without it.

I was just thinking that not owning one of these is a problem in and of itself.

I've been dying to install illuminated buttons on my empeg for a very long time now. You've just sparked new hope for me! I'd definately be interested in ordering atleast one set of buttons, and more depending on pricing.

However, I'd like to bring your attention to an idea I've had for a long time and one that's been echoed on this BBS a few times - translucent cutouts in non-translucent buttons. Please see this thread and this thread for more details.

Would it be possible to mould buttons to that design? I think they'd look *alot* better than entirely translucent buttons mostly from a diffusion point of view. The idea could maybe be carried across to the knob too.

Greetings.

I will take that cue.

Mike, if you are interested in having a full unit to examine, test, measure, whatever, send me a private message with all your details. We can work something out.

Heh, heh - perhaps, after trying the unit, you will become so hooked and obsessed, you will a) not want to return it and b) understand the sheer frenzy you have started.

Well alright then! This might actually come together. Thanks Paul.

Aragon replied:

> ... translucent cutouts in non-translucent buttons...

It can be done, but it will _greatly_ increase the cost of the buttons. It will double the tooling cost and possibly triple the casting cost. I wouldn't feel comfortable with this sort of project because of the increased selling price and the probability that I would not recover my investment.

It would be easier and slightly less costly to re-master the buttons with a slightly raised surface on the top, then paint the rest of the button up to the edge of this raised surface; but then again, we're looking at a niche market with a limited return.

I'll know more after I see the buttons themselves this week.
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canuckInLA replied:
> ... do you do a limited run, end of story? Or is it limited run + one offs in the future?

Most of the casting that I do of this specific type is a limited run with one-offs as needed.

For this project, after I cast some display samples, it will be whatever is ordered as needed. I've had at least one commercial inquiry that would require a small limited run, but everything else has been from individuals wanting one to three sets of buttons.

The requests for fascia will probably increase slightly after I produce some samples of what will be available.
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Archeon replied:
> Yellow... Green... Red... Blue names...

Thank you.
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pgrzelak replied:
> Mike, if you are interested in having a full unit to examine, test, measure, whatever, send me a private message with all your details. We can work something out.

I'll contact you.

> Heh, heh - perhaps, after trying the unit, you will become so hooked and obsessed, you will a) not want to return it and b) understand the sheer frenzy you have started.

I'm a gadget freak, but with my budget as tight as it is at present, I'll have to steel my resolution to not become hooked... I hope...

I'm a gadget freak, but with my budget as tight as it is at present, I'll have to steal my resolution to not become hooked

You've got no chance mate, go on, give in, YOU KNOW you want to

Yeah, Paul you may have to include an AC adapter so he really can play with it. Having an empeg that won't boot is no fun.

Or much use if the goal of sending it is to help him get an idea of the colour of light coming from the VFD.

Greetings!

I know... Trust me...

We have exchanged emails. Just waiting for confirmation and a shipping address.

It looks like the project is a go. :O)

The fascia, handle and buttons that "Mach" sent are not extremely difficult casts. I'll know more about how well the resin holds up as a handle after I've cast a few and tested them. Much thanks also to Paul for his generous offer of a loaner.

Given my current projects, it'll be about mid-May before I'll have more time to sit down with it and make the preliminary molds. I'll keep things updated here as they progress.

If someone needs a quick answer to any questions, please email me direct. Otherwise, I'll check back here occasionally as time permits. Replying to one of my posts here will forward your post to me, too.

Woohoo!!!

Greetings!

Yup. I hope to get a test player with illuminated hack installed and a complete set of lenses and buttons later this week.

Has someone contacted 303 to ask permission to reproduce his fascia in plastic? This would have numerous benefits. First would be the removal of any possibility of copyright infringement associated with the original fascia. More importantly, it's greater incentive to actually buy one of these new fascias.

I'm not overly excited about a solid colour replica of the original design. Sure, a metalic finish would be nice, but it'd still be a replica of the original which is part of what gives the unit a cheap feeling fr some people.

However a new design would interest me greatly. I'd be willing to sacrifice one of my fascias in order to make a new source for casting. ie. I would take that fascia, modify it to improve the original design (epoxy additions, drilling, sanding, carving, whatever determind to be necessary) and then supply it for mold making. Of course having an additional spare fascia would be better (I only have one original fascia for each of my two empegs).

I have a lot of stuff on my plate already both with daytime job and other side projects (plus taking a warranty company to court and trying to buy a house) but I'd be willing to spend some time on this.

Bruno

Any updates on this lately?

Bruno