cjacek
Analogue Enthusiast
I hope an ARCHIVED copy of the forum is, at least temporarily, available soon.
cjacek
Analogue Enthusiast
monty said:
Agree 100%
cjacek
Analogue Enthusiast
philboyd studge said:
I think for ordering parts such as belts etc ... they're great, especially if you call CC in hand, but other than that, TASCAM is not the same company of yesteryear. That's for sure.
CoolCat
Well-known member
its all about Money...not much Customer Support these days anywhere unless you like talking to Electronic Voice mail. There's no money in Customer Support (after 30days..No refund).
I think at a minimum, Tascam could hand out a "30-day phone code" for Customer Support HOTLINE, immediate questions and answers to new customers.
after your 30day testdrive is over (and you can't get a cash refund).....
your Customer Support Phone Code wouldn't work.... it'd be expired!!
the phone voicemail would just say..
"your code has expired! Your 30days is EXPIRED!!
so you can go (*& yourself!!! HAHAHAHA....Thank you for buying TASCAM....
er...THANK YOU, Good-bye...Please use our FREE ONLINE FORUM IF ANY QUESTIONS ....Thank you for buying Tascam"
Please press 1= if you like this email/post
Please press 2= if you think Tascam Customer support sucks
Please press 3= if you have severe mental problems
Please press 4= if you want to donate to the US Oil Cartel Fund for Record Profits during Wartime and Enviromental Disasters. (please mark your checks with ATTN: Billionaire Bush Family Texas Oil,Inc. and Halliburton No-Bid Division.
Please press 5= if you would like to chat with the CEO of Tascam
Please press 6= if you would like to speak with the janitor of Tascam
Please press 7= if your mixes still suck and you want to blame Tascam
?
I think at a minimum, Tascam could hand out a "30-day phone code" for Customer Support HOTLINE, immediate questions and answers to new customers.
after your 30day testdrive is over (and you can't get a cash refund).....
your Customer Support Phone Code wouldn't work.... it'd be expired!!
the phone voicemail would just say..
"your code has expired! Your 30days is EXPIRED!!
so you can go (*& yourself!!! HAHAHAHA....Thank you for buying TASCAM....
er...THANK YOU, Good-bye...Please use our FREE ONLINE FORUM IF ANY QUESTIONS ....Thank you for buying Tascam"
Please press 1= if you like this email/post
Please press 2= if you think Tascam Customer support sucks
Please press 3= if you have severe mental problems
Please press 4= if you want to donate to the US Oil Cartel Fund for Record Profits during Wartime and Enviromental Disasters. (please mark your checks with ATTN: Billionaire Bush Family Texas Oil,Inc. and Halliburton No-Bid Division.
Please press 5= if you would like to chat with the CEO of Tascam
Please press 6= if you would like to speak with the janitor of Tascam
Please press 7= if your mixes still suck and you want to blame Tascam
?
M
MCI2424
New member
monty said:
The membership is you analog guys who:
1. Cannot part with $$$ for new analog equipment, then whine on about why it is gone.
2. YOU guys did not donate to keep the site up. I guess the ladies over at "The French Chef" bbs should kick in for you cheap idiots.
Analog is dead and gone because of people like you, the cheap home wannabe recording crowd.
Studer still makes pro machines for people who open their wallets.
Otari still makes a great open reel 2 track, but sadly, the eBay welfare analog crowd cannot afford such equipment. I guess TASCAM were a bunch of real stupid weenies to turn up the great opportunity to host a forum with 0 interest in new products. Why don't you guys go dumpster diving for your next prime piece and leave TASCAM alone?
Just an observation, mind you.
M
MCI2424
New member
TeyshaBlue said:I believe this may be a power play on Dr. Who's part to get Tascam to pony up some bucks....but I believe he may be falling prey to a false assumption....namely, that anyone in Tascam management gives a damn about TF.com or sees any value whatsoever in a technical forum.
I reiterate, see post above.
Why should TASCAM care about you if you don't care about TASCAM's products? They are in this for profit last time I checked the worldwide buisiness model.
TeyshaBlue
It's the smell..
MCI2424 said:
Oh please...you know nothing about that site whatsoever and your asinine little "observations" are both incredibly stupid and insulting.
You've got zero knowledge concerning how much money I've poured into my analog and digital gear over the decades..and you've got an equally limited knowledge concerning how much money was donated by the membership. Apparently you never bothered to spend anytime at the site which was dominated by users of Tascam digital gear...working together to flesh out poorly written manuals and work around bugs with one of the Tascam designers who was a member as well.
I don't know where the source of your poorly focused animosity is rooted but, go pretend to be important somewhere else....where all full up here.
T
The Ghost of FM
Banned
To label ALL of the analog enthusiasts as cheap individuals is unfair and insulting to say the very least. Many of the analog guys WERE contributing members to the forum and many of us also contributed huge amounts of our personal time and experience to make the forum a place to want to come to. Money alone will not make a bbs fly. There must be content and personnel to attract people to the board and keep them coming back.MCI2424 said:
If you want to talk about what people can and can not afford to buy with their money, you should think before hitting the submit button. Much of TASCAM's original analog line-up of larger format mixers and open reel gear was aimed squarely at the lower end of the professional studio market place, meaning, people who earned a living by using the gear. Why you see fit to group a hobbyist recorder into the same level of customer escapes my comprehension. Should we analog enthusiasts be vilified because we have a love for the sound quality of analog gear and use our money to purchase it second hand because of there being no other way of getting it? Is it our fault that they made sturdy analog gear that could last 25 years or more? Should we throw our working analog gear in the garbage just to make you happy?
Studer and Otari, who do still offer highest end, professional analog gear do so because there is a remaining professional client base out there to purchase their products.
The recording world went digital because of emerging technologies that allowed end users the opportunity to have more tracks and more automation but not necessarily better sound or at least the character of analog sound which many people with real ears still appreciate and prefer.
The last time I looked, the store shelves were loaded with cheap digital software and hardware products aimed at getting people into computer based, digital recording for well under $1000 for a program and sound-card to facilitate home multi-tracking and in many cases, these products could be had for under $100 for those on the tightest of budgets.
TASCAM and others knew that they couldn't continue to offer entry level, semi-pro analog gear at several times the price of digital and made their own marketing decision to abandon analog.
Cheers!
B
BRDTS
Member
Folks sometimes forget that "Tascam" isn't really an entity or company unto itself. On paper yes...but not r-e-a-l-l-y. Tascam is just a division of the Teac behemouth......which In general, is doing very very well globally.
Tascam is a separate company on paper, but that's it. It was "invented" within the Teac company to serve a certain kind of market that needed certain kinds of products. It still does that. It's just a part of Teac.
Teac makes so..so..so..many things. It's been at least a half century since Teac was simply a tape recorder company. They make an incredible number of products that serve many markets. Even their new thermal 4 color dvd printers are incredible...and flowing into the pro dup market in droves....Teac has no competition on that machine at the $6,000 price point....but one may not know about this ...or the other hundreds of Teac products makes because Teac doesn't even advertise a lot of them in any mainstream consumer way. The amount of stuff Teac supplies to aircraft builders alone is staggering. You won't read about these things in Electronic Musician.
Teac is a business that has been around for a long long time. It started as a tape recorder company and evolved into something much bigger a long long time ago.
At the time of the original Tascam forums...sponsored by Tascam...there was an issue of paying Montebello staff to monitor/answer/filter the forums. Was that a profitable use of Teac employee time when the company was already so so busy? Dunno. I didn't hear the conversations.
At the time of the original Tascam forums...sponsored by Tascam...there was at least one conversation I was part of at a Namm show where one of the Tascam folks I knew mentioned that there was some discussion about the value of having a forum tied to a company ...where a degree of negative comments were showing up on the forums. Is it beneficial to a company image? Is it profitable? Does it make sense from any sort of business angle?
Is there a way to reliably measure...measure...whether a forum is helping to increase or decrease sales and company image. What were the actual conversations Teac/Tascam held internally about this? Dunno. I didn't hear them.
But what I do know is that the Tascam sponsored forums stopped. And if Tascam didn't enthusiastically step up to pay for a 3rd pary forum....doesn't surprise me.
I personally would never tie a forum to my company, my products, or anyone else's. Forums...in my opinion...are too likely to hurt a company rather than help. Plus..they cost a lot to run and to monitor. They were cool in the early days of the Internet, but the downside of company sponsored forums are increasingly apparent..to me.
There is of course the routine consumer position of ..."hey a forum shows a company's desire to be responsive to customer service"...or something like that. I don't buy it.
I cringe at the thought of Amazon or Target or Best Buy or Sears or Chevrolet or HP etc having open forums.....woah! That would be bloodshed overall. I have never heard of folks saying they won't buy from a company because the company doesn't have a forum. HOWEVER, I have seen plenty of company sponsored forums where folks post...on the company forum...that they have gripes and will never support brand x again. To me...that's damaging. I'd pull the plug on my company forum right away if it were mine.
Customer service via tech departments, email, posted manuals, faqs, tips, dealer structures are the greatest way to help customers. That's why they work so well now after decades. In my opinion. It's easy for a company to pull customer questions/concerns from OTHER forums nowadays and then assimilate the postive/useful information into company run websites in many ways. Without having to monitor negative, damaging, boring drek.
Tascam is a separate company on paper, but that's it. It was "invented" within the Teac company to serve a certain kind of market that needed certain kinds of products. It still does that. It's just a part of Teac.
Teac makes so..so..so..many things. It's been at least a half century since Teac was simply a tape recorder company. They make an incredible number of products that serve many markets. Even their new thermal 4 color dvd printers are incredible...and flowing into the pro dup market in droves....Teac has no competition on that machine at the $6,000 price point....but one may not know about this ...or the other hundreds of Teac products makes because Teac doesn't even advertise a lot of them in any mainstream consumer way. The amount of stuff Teac supplies to aircraft builders alone is staggering. You won't read about these things in Electronic Musician.
Teac is a business that has been around for a long long time. It started as a tape recorder company and evolved into something much bigger a long long time ago.
At the time of the original Tascam forums...sponsored by Tascam...there was an issue of paying Montebello staff to monitor/answer/filter the forums. Was that a profitable use of Teac employee time when the company was already so so busy? Dunno. I didn't hear the conversations.
At the time of the original Tascam forums...sponsored by Tascam...there was at least one conversation I was part of at a Namm show where one of the Tascam folks I knew mentioned that there was some discussion about the value of having a forum tied to a company ...where a degree of negative comments were showing up on the forums. Is it beneficial to a company image? Is it profitable? Does it make sense from any sort of business angle?
Is there a way to reliably measure...measure...whether a forum is helping to increase or decrease sales and company image. What were the actual conversations Teac/Tascam held internally about this? Dunno. I didn't hear them.
But what I do know is that the Tascam sponsored forums stopped. And if Tascam didn't enthusiastically step up to pay for a 3rd pary forum....doesn't surprise me.
I personally would never tie a forum to my company, my products, or anyone else's. Forums...in my opinion...are too likely to hurt a company rather than help. Plus..they cost a lot to run and to monitor. They were cool in the early days of the Internet, but the downside of company sponsored forums are increasingly apparent..to me.
There is of course the routine consumer position of ..."hey a forum shows a company's desire to be responsive to customer service"...or something like that. I don't buy it.
I cringe at the thought of Amazon or Target or Best Buy or Sears or Chevrolet or HP etc having open forums.....woah! That would be bloodshed overall. I have never heard of folks saying they won't buy from a company because the company doesn't have a forum. HOWEVER, I have seen plenty of company sponsored forums where folks post...on the company forum...that they have gripes and will never support brand x again. To me...that's damaging. I'd pull the plug on my company forum right away if it were mine.
Customer service via tech departments, email, posted manuals, faqs, tips, dealer structures are the greatest way to help customers. That's why they work so well now after decades. In my opinion. It's easy for a company to pull customer questions/concerns from OTHER forums nowadays and then assimilate the postive/useful information into company run websites in many ways. Without having to monitor negative, damaging, boring drek.
philboyd studge
New member
The Bose PAS forum is an example of how it can be done, IF the company is interested in input for the purpose of improving their product. For them it can result in further improvements in firmware and software presets for the unit and hardware concepts such as the guitar hanger for the tower.
Their method is for their engineers to screen every post.....thus eliminating trolls and useless comments, but contructive criticism is kept however.
Had Tascam done this they would have a far better product with far better sales, and a good return on investment in my opinion.
Their method is for their engineers to screen every post.....thus eliminating trolls and useless comments, but contructive criticism is kept however.
Had Tascam done this they would have a far better product with far better sales, and a good return on investment in my opinion.
cjacek
Analogue Enthusiast
I really enjoy comments posed by people like "MCI2424", 'cause it goes to show how much of a limited knowledge base these types of individual have and yet pass themselves as "knowitalls". It's nice to have their "opinions" challenged and knocked down to a more appropriate ground level.
~Daniel
~Daniel
D
dolod44
Guest
Business models and business models
Yeah--There are business models and there are business models---You don't have to be a total evil,selfish,greedy pig to make it--hence the good companies do shine through,just as do the good people
Yeah--There are business models and there are business models---You don't have to be a total evil,selfish,greedy pig to make it--hence the good companies do shine through,just as do the good people
OldDude
Elder Skatesman
TASCAM Forums Closing
Hey Mark, Max --
Good to see you guys. I got a letter from TASCAM about the closing. They sounded pretty final in their decision not to support Bruce in any way. Sad.
Funny thing is they pointed me to several forums (as suitable substitute) and on every one of them I found postings from folks that thought TASCAM is being very short-sighted in not supporting such a postive forum as the one we had.
Anyway, glad to find you guys around. Will keep in touch.
OldDude
Hey Mark, Max --
Good to see you guys. I got a letter from TASCAM about the closing. They sounded pretty final in their decision not to support Bruce in any way. Sad.
Funny thing is they pointed me to several forums (as suitable substitute) and on every one of them I found postings from folks that thought TASCAM is being very short-sighted in not supporting such a postive forum as the one we had.
Anyway, glad to find you guys around. Will keep in touch.
OldDude
D
dolod44
Guest
Hey Dude-I goty a letter aswell.It was probably sent to everyone who wrote them.I still think we need to sit tight...I don't think this is over.
OldDude
Elder Skatesman
Talk about timing . . .
I was just sitting here chillin' and listening to Buddah's "Play it all Again" with Teysha's collaboration on the keys. Damn! I hope it comes back.
I sent Bruce a follow-up and told him about the Tascam letter. I said that if they don't want to subsidize us, maybe they'd be willing to pay for that Full top banner we already give them -- that's just good business, for cryin' out loud!
They're really pretty dumb about this whole thing. Funny that one of the sites they (Tascam) pointed us to had a half a page of links to Corporate-sponsored user forums -- including Mackie and others. Talk about Duh!
I also told Bruce that if nothing else works, he should send the membership an email and suggest a subscription system to get it going again. Five bucks a month, or so, is not even soda money. I'd pay it in a heartbeat.
Anyway, regardless, I'll keep in touch. By the way -- do you have MarkDart's personal email address? I'd like to contact him, but only ever PM'd him in the past. If you have it, send it to my email address.
Thanks, dude. See around here and there -- hopefully back at the homestead.
I was just sitting here chillin' and listening to Buddah's "Play it all Again" with Teysha's collaboration on the keys. Damn! I hope it comes back.
I sent Bruce a follow-up and told him about the Tascam letter. I said that if they don't want to subsidize us, maybe they'd be willing to pay for that Full top banner we already give them -- that's just good business, for cryin' out loud!
They're really pretty dumb about this whole thing. Funny that one of the sites they (Tascam) pointed us to had a half a page of links to Corporate-sponsored user forums -- including Mackie and others. Talk about Duh!
I also told Bruce that if nothing else works, he should send the membership an email and suggest a subscription system to get it going again. Five bucks a month, or so, is not even soda money. I'd pay it in a heartbeat.
Anyway, regardless, I'll keep in touch. By the way -- do you have MarkDart's personal email address? I'd like to contact him, but only ever PM'd him in the past. If you have it, send it to my email address.
Thanks, dude. See around here and there -- hopefully back at the homestead.
kkrauss
New member
It looks like TASCAM has pulled the two links to tascamforums.com and tascam2488.com from their support page. This has to be the fastest I've ever seen their web monkeys move in response to needed changes on their own web site.
It's not in the best interest of companies like TASCAM to subsidize a forum that 1) allows constructive criticism of their products, 2) allows users to recommend or promote one preferred vendor/reseller over another, and 3) welcomes and promotes all forms of music, allowing rights of "free speech" even when one musician's art may be offensive to others.
To think that TASCAM, having shut down their own forum for these reasons, would ever actually subsidize someone else's private forum, would be optimistic at best, regardless of the amount of pressure applied by the community. As far as TASCAM is concerned, I'm sorry to agree that this case is closed.
-Kent
It's not in the best interest of companies like TASCAM to subsidize a forum that 1) allows constructive criticism of their products, 2) allows users to recommend or promote one preferred vendor/reseller over another, and 3) welcomes and promotes all forms of music, allowing rights of "free speech" even when one musician's art may be offensive to others.
To think that TASCAM, having shut down their own forum for these reasons, would ever actually subsidize someone else's private forum, would be optimistic at best, regardless of the amount of pressure applied by the community. As far as TASCAM is concerned, I'm sorry to agree that this case is closed.
-Kent
D
dolod44
Guest
Drat!!--Sorry--There's one person I didn't ever get an e-mail from.I think maybe I know someone who might have it--give me a little time
T
The Ghost of FM
Banned
^There's the reality of it all, right there, folks.kkrauss said:
How long will it now take to advance the logical conclusion that bruce should have known all of this from the beginning and will end up looking like the one person throwing a hissy-fit by pulling the plug on the forum?
Bruce,
If you're reading this, please accept my apologies in advance but when it comes right down to the brass tacks, it was your baby to raise or throw out with the bath water.
Thanks for the opportunity to baby sit for a while.
My condolences on your loss.
D
dolod44
Guest
Yes --I think as far as Tascam is concerned it is over--but perhaps we should sit tight while the good Doc comes up with his own solution--I would imagine you probably know more about what's going on than I. I was told to sit tight.
TeyshaBlue
It's the smell..
I'd keep that bookmark...something will come back in it's place....but probably not a Tascam Tech forum...lol.
Hey Don...glad you wandered over here. I haven't been posting much lately....taking a small haitus from the kick in the kidneys from the TF forums closure...
I'll be hangin around tho...and probably get back into the flow of things again.
Hope you guys had a great Thanksgiving, or Canadain-boxing-beer brewing-back bacon day, or whateve the heck they do in Canada.
Hey Don...glad you wandered over here. I haven't been posting much lately....taking a small haitus from the kick in the kidneys from the TF forums closure...
I'll be hangin around tho...and probably get back into the flow of things again.
Hope you guys had a great Thanksgiving, or Canadain-boxing-beer brewing-back bacon day, or whateve the heck they do in Canada.