Montréal-based synth maker Hexinverter Électronique announced late last year that it will be closing in 2023, because global supply chain issues have made it impossible for them to manufacture and sell enough modules to be viable.
Today, they announced that their Mindphaser & Mutant Brain modules will live on, through a partnership with Erica Synths.
Here’s what they have to say about it:
“Erica Synths will be handling manufacturing, sales, distribution and support of Mindphaser, the Mutant Brain, and some others to come!
If you’ve been kicking yourself for missing out on the very limited run we had of Mindphaser complex oscillators, we’ve finally found a way for them to become available again.”
The Mutant Brains module is already available at the Erica Synths site. ETA on Mindphaser is to be announced.
Hexinverter says that it’s shipping the final units available of some its other modules; see their site for details.
Nice news! Congratulations on the fact that the heritage is not lost, at least.
can Erica keep making WMD and and MI products too?! I know there was more overlap in the WMD range…
that’s reasonable. better than disappearing completely for customers.
This is an interesting development. I wonder if there are other Eurorack companies that are not big enough to be viable now as independent manufacturers, but who are doing interesting designs that might be licensed to a larger manufacturer.
It seems like this might be an model for keeping options on the market. I wish Mutable instruments, for example, would license the manufacturing of its models, so that the line would still be available in official form, with an established level of quality.
there are so many Mutable clones now; calsynth, afterlater, “Momo (cringe)”, and a bunch of euro-cloners now too, Elements, Marble, Tides V2, Clouds, Blades, Plaits (of course), even Frames and Warps. some use better parts than others; tantalum vs electrolytic, FR4 vs alumin(i)um, Rogan vs cheapy knobs. I too, would prefer it if someone picked up the entire line and produced the product with the MI faceplate, parts, and knobs, not just the ‘popular ones’. I am very OCD about appearance – unlike many other eurorackerz, I can’t abide mismatched panels.
1. Being small is advantageous now (within reason). We see some bigger companies shutting down because they have investments in equipment, commercial leases, and payrolled employees which can’t be sustained during times of declining sales and component shortages.
2. Mutable already gave anyone in the world the license to do what you describe, for free, so it’s both quite easy to do what you suggest and quite hard because anyone else can come along and do the same thing.
That’s super cool. Both companies are great…so happy to see this!
this actually happens quite a bit in other industries, for instance a manufacturer of skateboards will produce decks for multiple companies, and in music lots of different labels have the same manufacturing and distribution. cool to think this could happen in the Eurorack world.
Erica Synths is such a cool brand, these guys rock.