Synhouse has customers in 42 countries.
Synhouse ships to your country and has since before eBay existed.
If you are looking at a small/normal item in the Synhouse eBay listings
and seeing no shipping options to your area or seeing a notice that
says the seller doesn't ship to your address, this is incorrect. I've
been shipping to Australia, England, etc. since 1990, five years before
eBay even existed, and eBay has deleted ALL the shipping options and
prices I've spent many hours setting up, in order to enable eBay
International Shipping, and then tells people in the most commonly
shipped to countries that shipping is not available there. This is fake
and idiotic; eBay had already been shipping there with the eBay Global
Shipping Program for a few years, now says they don't with eBay
International Shipping AND deleted my own shipping options without my
permission or knowledge, when it could have and should have been left
in place as an option because at least it WORKS and eBay doesn't know
what they are doing.
This goes WAY back to 2017 with people in New Zealand (one of the most
commonly shipped to Synhouse countries) telling me that I don't ship
there, and 1) multiple calls to eBay didn't solve it, 2) they sometimes
said they solved it but didn't, and 3) said "Uhm, wait 24 hours and it
will be working.", which is how eBay gets you off the phone. And I
could never get that New Zealand problem solved. The new problem since
early 2023 is eBay deleting my own shipping options in order to put
theirs in, then theirs tells people no, the seller doesn't ship there,
but I CAN manually set up a shipping method (usually with Synhouse it's
one price each for USA, Canada, Asia/Australia, and the rest of the
world.
Now I'm getting messages like these:
5/16/2023: Hi, Wondering how much shipping would be to Canada, postal
code T2N 2P7. Thanks!
Can you enable the ebay international shipping option for me? I am very
interested.
1/1/2024: Hi there can you post to London uk and how much would postage
be?
Hi how much would postage be to London England
Thanks for your reply. Im trying to check out but im get the message
saying seller doesn't ship to your address. Please advise as i really
need the new faceplate.
1/30/2024: Hello synhouse, I have a T8 and would like to buy your
Optical-Emitter-Set just to make sure to have it in the future. Is
there a reason you don't ship to Germany?
If you see that any small/normal Synhouse item does not ship to
you/your area, this is FAKE and wrong, please send an eBay message to
tell me and I can manually enter shipping to your area AGAIN.
Sorry for this incompetent platform I've been struggling with for 25
years now...
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(Please note: The photos in the photo gallery are the copyrighted
property of Synhouse and as such are watermarked with SYNHOUSE SYNHOUSE
SYNHOUSE in purple, green, and black across the photos. These marks
don't exist on the actual product. As you can see, those words run off
onto the background wall, floor, wood, etc., they aren't really there,
just superimposed on the photos to secure them.)
The photos show the protective plastic still in place front and back
over the shiny clear window that goes over the LCD, this is to be
removed when installed, it's just there to prevent scratches in
handling and I usually don't like to peel them just to take photos
because they don't stick back on a second time.
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This listing is for the full set of overlays for the E-mu Emulator II,
both the main control panel overlay and the smaller Moog wheels panel
overlay are included. This is a small $6 discount for the set and free
combined shipping on the Moog wheels panel overlay.
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Completely renew the control panel of your E-mu Emulator II with this
brand new replacement overlay from Synhouse, manufactured of the
highest quality polycarbonate and adhesive with crystal clear printing
and brilliant colors.
It is properly made of a sandy-textured polycarbonate substrate
material, with die-cut holes for the buttons, LEDs, and sliders, and
has the correct smooth clear plastic window over the LCD.
The E-mu colors:
The dark blue color is a slightly bright bluish dark blue that some
would say is most like the original Emulator II machines from the
second half of 1984, for reference I have included a photo of an
October 1985 E-mu advertisement in the photo gallery here that shows
what is probably a fairly early unit. While most of my Emulators are
wrapped in padded blankets and flight cased in the back of the Synhouse
warehouse, I do have five of them in front of me at home, and the dark
blue on all of them is a slightly darker and less blue than it is on
this new overlay. I did it this way because people have commented that
Emulator II overlays from other sellers in the past weren't as blue as
they remembered, and I guess the blue is a distinctive thing about E-mu
instruments. I should note, though that the differences I am referring
to are very slight, and the actual color difference between anything I
have owned or seen or manufactured is very small, too small to capture
in some photos. When I created this overlay set over the fall and
winter of 2017, I spent a lot of time working to achieve that bluer
blue of the 1984 Emulator IIs that people talk about. The Emulator II
overlays sold by anyone else have been shown in many, many photos (dark
and blurry photos, and most often photographed through the plastic
wrapper), both from the seller and from people who bought them, didn't
put them on their instrument, and put them up for sale, don't show much
of a blue color at all. They have a blacker appearance in all photos
I've seen. This could be related to lighting or other factors, but I
feel that my Emulator II overlay set perfectly matches the E-mu blue
that people remember and see in old photos.
Emulator IIs that were used little and have been kept in the flight
case seem to have the darkest blue now, and my estimation is that this
is darker than it was 35 years ago, as things tend to darken.
Everything gets darker over time, from car seats to footballs to wood
to human skin. Emulator IIs that were used a lot, sold and resold (some
of these actually got steady use throughout the 80s, 90s, 2000s, and
2010s, not a lot of instruments can say that, even the mighty Minimoog
saw almost no use in America 1980-1995), often have overlays that are
severely faded and streaked, very badly on the little Moog wheels panel
overlay. In my "Brand New E-mu Emulator II Replacement Moog Wheels
Panel Overlay - MINT & NEW!" listing, you can see a particularly
bad one, and on that one, just in the dark blue area, you can see it
has transformed into fifty different shades of blue, from badly
darkened by age to damaged almost to light gray.
I have total control over every aspect of every process in the
manufacturing of all Synhouse products. If I want it to be orange, it's
orange. If I want it to be a 5% darker orange, then it will be redone
in a 5% darker orange. If I want it orange with gold polka dots, then
it will be done in orange with gold polka dots. This isn't a random
process for me and I don't just shrug my shoulders and accept what I
get the first time if it isn't precisely right. Big suppliers don't
expect me to accept whole production runs of things that were done
wrong and don't look right because they know they'll lose my business.
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There is a minimum shipping price for all of my small components and a
different minimum for a very low value item or for something $50 or
more. However, I can ship almost any number of parts for the
international shipping that it shows for most of those items. So if you
want, for example, an SP1200 overlay and some knobs and some switches,
or knobs and switches and potentiometers or whatever, just let me know
IN ADVANCE and I will set up a special listing for you so that you will
only pay the shipping once. This is if you tell me IN ADVANCE, not if
you ask for it later because any shipping money paid has already been
docked 14.9% by eBay managed payments and that money is not coming
back. Yes, eBay takes the same percentage of the stated shipping charge
as they do on the item since 2011. So let me know in advance and I can
set it up so that you can save a lot of money by buying and shipping
the parts together.
I can also set up special listings for different quantities of items
sometimes. Usually the price is the same per item but I can set it up
and that saves a lot of money on shipping.
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Please read and understand everything above before buying.
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Everything below this line is just extra information about Synhouse
overlays and the work that goes into making them, reading it is
optional.
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All Synhouse drum machine/synthesizer overlays are in stock and
available at all times, but sometimes the listings expire and aren't
relisted. There are presently 13 Synhouse drum machine/synthesizer
overlays (not including the miscellaneous array of overlays used in
Synclavier production) in production and in stock:
E-mu Drumulator Little SP overlay (SP1200 style overlay that sticks
over original Drumulator graphics [which are usually worn off] and
makes it match the look of your SP1200) $49.50
discounted/combined shipping full set E-mu Drumulator Little SP overlay
+ (1) new SP1200 fat cap slider cap + (2) new replacement knobs $74.50
E-mu SP1200 overlay $144
E-mu SP-12 (non-Turbo) overlay $144
E-mu SP-12 Turbo (says Turbo on it) overlay $144
E-mu SP-12 rear jackplate overlay $29
discounted/combined shipping full set E-mu SP-12 (non-Turbo or Turbo)
overlay + rear jackplate overlay $168
E-mu Emulator II main control panel overlay $168
E-mu Emulator II+ main control panel overlay $168
E-mu Emulator II+ HD main control panel overlay $168
E-mu Emulator II Moog wheels panel overlay (normal new blue color that
matches the new main control panel overlay) $29
E-mu Emulator II Moog wheels panel overlay (slightly lighter/grayish
blue color that is more likely to match a faded old main control panel
overlay, normally recommended if you are keeping the old main control
panel overlay and only buying the Moog wheels panel overlay) $29
discounted/combined shipping full set E-mu Emulator II, Emulator II+,
or Emulator II+ HD main control panel overlay + Moog wheels panel
overlay $191
Moog Source control panel w/62 REAL SWITCHES to replace membrane panel
$247
New England Digital Synclavier II ORK MIDI panel overlay $29
360 Systems Instant Replay HD Audio 2.0 overlay $69
Most of these are listed here on eBay most of the time and the prices
don't change.
If you need one of these but don't see it listed, please send me an
eBay message and I will relist it on eBay for you, and I can also make
a special listing for you along with any other parts needed, which can
usually go with free combined shipping if the normal shipping is paid
for the overlay.
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Other brands:
Others have made drum machine and synthesizer overlays before Synhouse
came to the market in late 2017, and they're cheaper, too (as they
should be, with wrong colors, stripes and other details in the wrong
places, etc., well, sometimes they have been HIGHER than the Synhouse
price, like SP overlays for $160 then the price is cut in half to $80
saying he's losing $25/each because they cost $105 to make, and within
a year is back begging for ten guys to pay $99/each so he could make
more, sure seems strange that, after the Synhouse overlays are out, he
wants to do additional production at a loss of $6/each...), others
something like 100 Euros then price cut to 40 Euros, others have been
offered for less than 1/5th of the earlier price, going from $135 to
$25). As an added bonus, their prices CONTINUE to drop now that the
superior quality/detail Synhouse products are available, along with
ever more emphatic claims of "IMPOSSIBLE TO GET NOW.", "LAST ONES!",
"RARE!", "CLOSEOUT", "SELLING AT COST!", and "WON'T BE MADE AGAIN.".
Please allow me to say something about business that you may have
already figured out fifty years ago from the advertising of car
dealers: Any business that has a sales pitch that tells you in their
advertising what their actual cost is (the most closely guarded secret
in business), they are either 1) lying or 2) the village idiot, pick
one (although I will allow that BOTH may apply in the examples I am
giving).
You can eBay search the items to look at completed listings, see even
more old eBay listings in web searches, and check the forums and other
websites, and see the pattern of price drops that have occurred because
of me. It sure is funny that the 2018-2019 price is lower than the
2013-2014 price was! Back here in the real world, MY suppliers
certainly haven't dropped prices, in just the past six months, some
components and materials have gone up 5%-10%, another one 100% (though
that one is more likely a temporary spot market price spike and will
eventually come back down about 80%). Thus far, one of the other
overlay guys has dropped the price 20%-80% and dropped the shipping 35%
in frantic listings and relistings with countless price and quantity
changes, another has dropped the price 38%.
Their sales pitch has changed: Before I existed as a competitor, they
were selling on quality. Now that I exist, they're selling on price.
That's the effect of the Synhouse quality. They're running for the
exits.
So whether you get the superior Synhouse quality here or the huge
discounts coming from lower quality competitors running scared and
having clearance sales, you can thank me later.
On each eBay overlay seller, you can click to see the SELLER'S OTHER
ITEMS, then click to see completed listings, and see that the prices in
green are the ones that actually got a buyer, then use your pocket
calculator to add it all up and see that Synhouse sometimes sells more
in two days than the others have sold in two months.
Wrong details on other brands:
The gray-blue-gray-red stripes are wrong: The first time I saw that
Emulator II overlay set that's been selling since 2013, it looked wrong
to me, just different from the old one it was supposed to replace. The
main problem that catches the eye immediately when looking at it for
the first time is that the gray-blue-gray-red stripes atop each panel
section on the main panel are wrong. The stripes are too far apart. It
looks bad. For example, see where the broken red stripe seems to sit
too high and just run into the right side of the "l" in Master Control.
And compared to the stripes on the small Moog wheel panel, it just
doesn't match. This is no minor detail, it's a huge mistake in the
design that can be seen from ten feet away. You can see an example of
this in the eBay photos here.
The printing and cutting aren't properly aligned: The Emulator II Moog
wheel panel that goes along side the main panel basically looks correct
in a lot of ways, but the printing and cutting were out of alignment,
it varies greatly as you can see with the three examples in the eBay
photos here. On some pieces seen, the white pinstriped section isn't
even centered in the overlay, the light gray border on the left side is
wider than the one on the right side. That is to say that the artwork
of the Moog wheels panel overlay is off-center relative to the die cut
edges of the overlay. This is more evident on some pieces and less on
others, so it likely means the die cutting tool came down on top of the
artwork in different places from piece to piece.
Additionally, the die cutting is not correct. It is using a defective
die cutting tool (if they even have a die cutting tool at all) that
cuts it to the wrong shape and the wrong size, multiple Emulator II
owners have pointed this out. One used a laser cutting machine to try
and correct the cut, or at least as well as it could be done after the
fact. Another one re-cut it with tools, saying, it was "too big and I
had to cut it - which led to color peeling off from it.".
It would be easy to pinpoint a single problem if everything else were
correct, but almost everything is a little off.
Text in the wrong place: On the main panel overlay, a LOT of the text
is too far left. The word GAIN in the Sample section is so far left,
it's past the leftmost edge of the round hole for the potentiometer,
and while the right edge of the word SAMPLE is almost exactly in line
with the right edge of the switch hole above it on the old one, this
one has the word SAMPLE aligned with the LEFT side. In the
Special---Disk section, on the old one you can draw an imaginary
straight line down from the right edge of both of the switch holes, on
the right that comes down directly on the back left edge of the K in
DISK 1 and DISK 2, but on this one the text is too far left, just the
same on the left side of that same section, the right edge of the left
switch hole goes right down the back left edge of the P in CATALOG
SPECIAL, where in this one the entire P is to the left of that
imaginary line. In the Enter section, this is one place where E-mu had
the word ENTER actually centered under the switch hole, but on this
one, it's misaligned, it's way off to the left.
Diminished vertical light gray areas: This is so minor that it should
sound like nitpicking, but it's part of what makes it look wrong to the
eyes. On the main panel overlay, the light gray areas between the white
pinstriped sections are too narrow. In the vertical areas they are
barely wider than the white stripes themselves, where the old one (and
the Synhouse overlay) had gray areas that were 2.5 times the width of
the white pinstripes. This happens in six places, for example in the
light gray space between the Master Control and Sequencer sections.
Borders in most designs are usually uniform all the way around, so when
one part is far too narrow, it's going to be noticeable. The basic
Emulator II motif has sections of large dark blue and small light gray
boxed off with white pinstripes, and all of those sections are
separated by light gray areas. So, for example, if you look at the old
overlay on your Emulator II, the bottom where the Sequencer and Enter
sections are separated from each other and from the bottom edge of the
overlay, you'll see that the horizontal lower light gray part at the
edge and the vertical light gray part between those two sections are
just about the same width, and you can roughly measure with your eyes
how wide they are by comparing them to the uniform thickness of the
white pinstripe (the light gray area is approximately 2.5 times as wide
as the white pinstripe on either side of it). Now look at this one in
the trash design selling since 2013. The horizontal light gray area is
twice as wide as the vertical area! Again in this design, a 100% error
from one to another. The reason I'm using the Sequencer/Enter area as
an example is because the problem is worse there than in other areas
and it will be easier for you to see in the photos, because this crap
design is different all the way across. You'll see that your old one
has vertical light gray sections of the exact same width all the way
across. This is much like the problem below with the cutouts for the
LEDs being in the wrong place (actually, the printing design is in the
wrong place, making the LED that should be well into the dark blue area
so high up that it is touching the light gray area), I'm using the LED
under Special as the example, because it's the most noticeable there.
And it's slightly less noticeable on the other LEDs, probably because
one or two of the silkscreen tools is crooked, or because the die
cutting tool is of poor quality and bad accuracy.
Your eyes are used to seeing manufactured things that are straight and
uniform, so when you see this, it just looks wrong, even if you can't
tell immediately exactly what it is that is wrong. As if someone cut a
piece of plywood a little crooked on one or two of the edges, you
couldn't tell which edge was wrong or by how many degrees, but it's
straight or not straight, and you can tell that right away.
These vertical light gray areas are so narrow that it gives the whole
thing a wrong look. Since that dark blue area came out SO dark on that
one, the added problem of diminished vertical light gray areas just
gives the whole thing a darked-out look unlike the original which is
more two-toned in style.
LEDs appear to be in the wrong place due to graphics printed in the
wrong place: In the sections Enter---Real Time
Control---Special---Disk---Sample of your old Emulator II original
overlay, the LED holes are well into the dark blue section, but this
one selling since 2013 has the LED holes touching (on some) or almost
touching (on others, there's no precision at all in the manufacturing
of it and one piece varies from another) the light gray area. It's
probably not that the LED holes are in the wrong place, but rather that
light gray area is too large and comes down too far. It's hard to tell
by eye, because the main feature of that area is the gray-blue-gray-red
stripes atop each panel section, and those are totally screwed up, as
noted above.
In general, there are imperfections in the spatial relationships of
everything. This is almost certainly because it's drawn on a computer
screen piece by piece by piece, lots of little bits of piecework put
together and moved around, and is not done globally. If you were able
to look at as a 3D transparency with it and a scan of the old one (and
the Synhouse Emulator II overlay as well, which is the same as the old
one because we do it this way, globally, viewed as a transparency) at
once, it might be that only the die cut LED and switch holes are in the
correct locations, and that ALL the graphics and text are in the wrong
places.
If this were a unique design for an original new product that no one
had ever seen before, it would be fine, it's generally well made of
good materials, is durable, and will give a long life of usage. But
it's not. The point of this product was to be an exact replacement, to
look like the old one, and to fit like the old one, and that's what it
was falsely claimed to be, and in that regard it has missed the mark on
many, many points of reference.
To the best of my knowledge, the location of each letter and graphic
detail on the Synhouse overlays is exactly the same as on the old one
it replaces. Even using the 3D transparency technique that we use, it's
almost impossible to find a single letter that is 0.25mm out of place.
If it were, we'd see it right away in most cases and fix it easily,
because we just work it until the new work seems to disappear behind
the old one because it's in exactly the same place as the old letters
and other details. It's plotted out globally at the same time in
engineering software like a circuit board, and all the text, colored
areas, and stripes are correctly located relative to the others. It's
not just drawn section by section in art software, then moving things
around to correct problems here and there, while ignoring the spatial
relationships between everything and everything else.
Doing a huge project piece by piece, then fixing it piece by piece, is
the kind of work that wears people down, and at the end, they are
letting mistakes pass because they are so fatigued they don't see it,
or so fatigued they don't want to see it, they just want to finish and
be done with it. This is where all the whining comes from, as seen on
eBay and other selling sites, and any forum that would have it, "These
labels took over 2 years to get right.....over a grueling 2 year
project." and, "These labels took over two years to painfully
manufacture."
What is the level of competency of people who need "over 2 years" to
make a sticker? Do you think there are any sticker companies out there
that spend two years making a sticker, and tell their clients, "Yes,
we'll have this new sticker design ready for you in two years."? Do you
think E-mu and their overlay supplier spent over two years making this
overlay in the first place? I'll bet they didn't even spend two whole
days on the artwork. If I needed over two years to do something someone
else had already done in two days---and I still failed to get it
right---I would keep it to myself.
There's no precision in the design or manufacturing. It's sloppy. And
if using both pieces, it makes the instrument look bad, due to the
totally mismatched stripes noted above.
There's no excuse for all these mistakes, this item has been produced
incorrectly time and time again, with the most recent one announced
with, "Another short run of our beautiful E-MU (sic) Emulator II
reproduction...". It goes on with "These labels took over 2 years to
get right.....over a grueling 2 year project." and, "These labels took
over two years to painfully manufacture." Took over 2 years to get
right? They STILL aren't right, and it was wrong almost six years ago.
So let's say more like five years and still counting...
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Why all the criticism?
The reason I need to speak freely about the problems with the
replacement synthesizer and drum machine overlays is that so, so much
misinformation and just plain lies have been put out there year after
year since at least as far back as 2013, and NO ONE has challenged this
publicly and no one has set the record straight by providing correct
information.
Internet-using electronic musicians/collectors sometimes tend to put
everything they hear repeatedly into their memory bank, then use it as
criteria to judge things, even if they don't completely understand what
that criteria is and if it should be considered important or not. For
example, if someone were selling some type of kit year after year
saying that the screws are real copper, not steel, then another seller
or two started saying their screws were real copper, after a few years,
someone else selling something would constantly be asked if his screws
were "real copper"? When screws aren't supposed to be copper and people
had just been throwing that out there for years as a sales pitch.
One example with replacement drum machine/synthesizer overlays is with
sellers that always make claims about the material (that is probably
incorrect), and make claims about the old ones (that are ALWAYS
incorrect as far as I can tell), and, at once, they claim that theirs
are 1) the same materials/thickness as the old ones and 2) much better
than the old ones because they used improved materials. So which is it?
The same? Or better? And why?
One seller said "OEM quality", "10 mil Lexan just like the E-MU (sic)
originals!", and "10 mil velvet/matte Lexan". Another seller said,
"...this is an exact replacement made of the same 10mil Lexan E-mu
Systems used but with modern materials that will far outlast the
original.", "they are 10mil lexan (sic) sheets", and "The new overlays
have full 10mil of textured lexan (sic).".
One of the toughest and clearest types of plastic is polycarbonate. It
is used to make those raised orange reflective markers dividing the
lanes in the roadway, polycarbonate being the material of choice 1)
because it is incredibly tough and never brittle even in extreme cold,
and 2) because clear polycarbonate can be electroplated with chrome on
the inside, making a great reflector that can't be scratched off
because it's on the inside. Similarly, industrial nameplates made since
the early 1970s are very durable because they have the lettering and
graphics reverse printed on the underside, so it can't be scratched off
with normal wear from the top. Even though one of the 2014-on overlay
sellers has a sales pitch that makes it sound like he invented this
process for you, this is how all of the overlays on the old synths and
drum machines were made, although at least three versions had some of
the most minor colors (black lettering and white pinstripes) printed on
the top side and a (thin and not very long lasting) clear coat was put
over the top while the other 95% of it was printed on the bottom side.
High quality eyeglasses are often made of optical grade polycarbonate
for improved safety due to the incredible impact resistance of the
material.
Polycarbonate was made famous in USA under the General Electric
trademarked brand name Lexan (that is a proper name that needs to be
capitalized, and there were other trademarked names from other
companies in Europe and elsewhere). American companies tend to get out
of businesses that have low profit margins by selling off those
divisions. Since countless companies around the world were able to make
the same thing, it just drove the average selling prices lower and
lower. Polycarbonate costs more than some plastics, but is cheaper than
some others, and compared to everything else, polycarbonate is cheaper
now than it has ever been. GE sold off the production of polycarbonate
and the trademarked name Lexan many years ago, and Lexan brand
polycarbonate is presently a trademark of a company in Saudi Arabia. I
doubt that any of these replacement overlay sellers are buying supplies
from a Saudi company, and if they persist in that claim, get them to
show you the packaging from the Saudi company.
It's been many years since the (GE) Lexan brand dominated the
polycarbonate market. Even back when I was working with R/C cars in the
early 80s and doing my first manufacturing projects in that field (yes,
I was designing and manufacturing 37 years ago), very little of the
polycarbonate used in R/C car bodies (because it would not crack, and
it was clear so you could paint it on the inside with flexible paint
that would really hold up) was made by GE, the companies that dominated
the market were foreign and definitely not using it. I can absolutely
assure you that Tamiya and Kyosho were not going to USA to buy Lexan
from GE, it was standard Japanese polycarbonate they were using. No one
really knows if the supplier to E-mu was using the GE brand back in
1984 or not, I'd say it's not likely, but on the overlays used
1993-1998 on the black reissue SP1200s, no way, the GE brand wasn't
being used by almost anyone, and E-mu probably never knew or cared
either way because they just had the overlays made by contract
manufacturers who made that decision for them (just as they did with
circuit boards, board assembly, wiring harnesses, and everything else,
and why all those things once had stickers on them with purchase order
numbers on them, E-mu didn't issue purchase orders to E-mu, they were
ordered from subcontractors).
Point is, it's almost impossible that any of the "Lexan" are Lexan, so
that claim is most likely incorrect and false, and it wouldn't matter
if it were (even a skilled polymer engineer can't tell one polymer
brand from another), so it's irrelevant. If I'm wrong, purchase orders
and stacks and stacks of packaging from a Saudi company will be an
acceptable offer of proof. None so far...
As far as the (at least) two sellers selling "10mil lexan (sic)", 10
mil is an American a thickness description (not to be confused with
people using metric milliliters and millimeters sometimes calling them
both "mil"). In America, "Mil" is the shortened version of mille, which
is Latin for thousand, so 10 mil is 10/1,000ths of an inch, or we might
say 0.010" in a machine shop.
I have used synthesizers since 1980, and it never occurred to me to
wonder what the thickness of the overlays on synthesizers and drum
machines were. But subliminally, this "10 mil Lexan" mantra got into my
head seeing it on eBay and in the forums in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and
2017 (and it still persists in 2019), and it was easy to assume it was
correct.
But it's not correct. I didn't make overlays all those years, in fact I
came across so many people selling them, it never occurred to me to
make overlays, as Synhouse doesn't make "me too" products. If others
have it covered reasonably well, there's nothing there for me. And I
just assumed I could buy whatever I needed when I wanted it, and I'm
smart enough to know that all the claims about "ONLY A FEW LEFT!" were
total bs, so I waited until I needed one. But I had a few SP-12s I had
to sell and a whole lot of SP1200s to sell, and most of them had ratty
overlays.
Then when I was ready to buy, I got serious and started reading all
those ads in early 2017, reading them carefully for the first time. It
all seemed like crap, and I read all the ads that I could find in the
search engines back to 2013. That stuff was pathetic. I wouldn't put
that junk on any of my instruments I was keeping, nor on anything I was
trying to sell with my company name on it. The colors were wrong
(fruity blue SP-12s and almost black Emulator IIs), the items were
defective (scratches, ink blobs in the wrong places, text was missing,
etc.), the SP-12 logo was cartoonishly bloated and the clear window for
the LCD was missing (and the story about why it was missing was
ridiculous), the SP1200 dark gray was too shiny and much too dark and
always showed itself horribly when someone used a flash photo to sell
their SP1200 on eBay with a trash overlay, text was in the wrong
places, LED holes were in the wrong place, SP1200 LED windows were
missing (instead replaced by plain holes or by weird recessed portholes
you can feel by scratching with your finger).
I'd already made multiple overlay type products with very simple
graphics for my Synclav site Synclaviers and various New England
Digital peripherals (I don't usually sell them, I just install them
during my restorations because the old ones are damaged, darkened,
yellowed, or coming off on the edges), with very high quality automated
factories, so I knew this was something I could do a better job on than
anyone else, and probably more easily. It required a gigantic
investment just to start, because I knew that doing it the cheap
T-shirt shop equipment way everyone else had done produced bad quality,
bad quality control, and a self-liquidating business, and the new
Synhouse overlay design and production continued to require lots of
money for most of six years, but otherwise, it wasn't difficult for me
to significantly surpass the accuracy of details and the construction
quality of every overlay that existed before the Synhouse overlays
first came out 11/21/2017 (or since).
Starting these overlay projects, I didn't presume anything about
anything and I wasn't going to base anything I did on the trash made by
others, so it was a project starting from scratch. Mostly I didn't have
to go out of pocket buying instruments just to take the overlays off to
use as a reference master, because I already have most of these
machines in my collection (250+ instruments), and some in such poor
condition that I was glad to rip them off and get a new one put on. I
think I only had to buy two machines in total for that, because the
ones I had in my collection in those cases were just too nice to shred
for a project.
So we started the work of reproducing the overlays, and the engineers
specified the material for the first four overlay projects, and the
polycarbonate was specified at 15 mil. Not the "10 mil" we've all heard
so much about before, with people claiming that's so thick and so
costly. Two of my engineers had measured them all, and ALL of the E-mu
overlays for drum machines and keyboards were 15 mil thickness
polycarbonate. Sometimes I buy thinner material for Synclavier
peripherals, because that was what New England Digital, as they are
decorative stickers on panels that are never touched, some even behind
a grille (the main issue there is the high quality adhesive that won't
come off with years of heat). When I checked into it, it was confirmed
that all the overlays were 15 mil and they were all being made that
way, unless I wanted it done another way for some reason, and since 15
mil is correct (and there is little difference in the cost,
polycarbonate isn't so expensive/profitable anymore, remember, that's
why GE abandoned the business they themselves invented).
So all of the Synhouse overlays sold on eBay for E-mu instruments are
15 mil polycarbonate. BTW, for a reference, the (usually gray, but
sometimes greenish or other colors) stiff insulation paper on top of
your SP-12/SP1200 panel PCB is 0.010" thick (10 mil), and if you
compare that thickness to your old overlay after you rip it off, you'll
see the paper is thinner than the Synhouse overlay.
Of all of the photos in all the eBay listings for Synhouse overlays,
none of them actually have the overlay peeled and stuck down, they were
just set down on top of a chassis that had no overlay on it, or on a
piece of plywood or cardboard, and I quickly snapped some photos. But
you can see that they lay down perfectly flat all the way around.
Overlays from another seller have been seen in photos where they can't
even sit flat on a smooth table, they are wavy and curled up on the
corners (if you don't believe it, send an eBay message to ask for it
and I'll send you a photo). Maybe the difference is the 50% thicker
material used in Synhouse overlays.
Since this is a bs spec that doesn't matter, I didn't bother mentioning
"15 mil" in the eBay listings for my first overlay in 11/2017, and I
didn't do it in many, many repeated listings of the next 8 overlay
designs from Synhouse. I didn't mention it until now, three years
later, as I had to, in order to dispel this phony superiority myth
about "10 mil". If that makes it better than something else somewhere
else, then Synhouse are 50% better than anyone because they are 50%
thicker material. But I won't say it because it's stupid.
But thanks to years of nonsense talk and ads on eBay and in forums and
other sites, I still get people asking questions like, "How thick is
your overlay? Is it made of the same 'lexan' (sic) material?"
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About Synhouse and Synhouse synthesizer and drum machine overlays:
The construction details and quality of the Synhouse synthesizer and
drum machine overlays don't come easily; It requires
multimillion-dollar factories with automation and properly trained
operators, and tens of thousands of square feet of large-scale
equipment. Any factory that knows what they are doing and is properly
automated and equipped is not going to take an order for 10 stickers.
Get serious. That wouldn't pay for the time to set up the materials and
equipment, much less the materials themselves, the downtime of the
equipment, or the tooling cost. It wouldn't even pay for the wasted
2-part epoxy ink that is lost during every production run setup and
subsequent cleanup. I learned this sort of thing the hard way 20 years
ago. As such, I did what was needed and more than 20 years ago I was
making a robotically assembled electronic product and shipping it to
customers in 39 countries around the world.
Synhouse has made a substantial investment to get into the production
of synthesizer and drum machine overlays and it shows in the
construction details (seamless textured LED windows on the SP1200
overlay, smooth clear windows over the LCD on SP-12 [instead of a lie
about how SP-12s are not supposed to have a clear window over the
LCD---when you know very well that your SP-12 and every SP-12 you've
ever seen in your life had a clear window over the LCD, it's one of the
top reasons people buy the Synhouse SP-12 overlay with the clear LCD
window, because the old one was dented, scratched, perforated, kinked,
or yellowed], and smooth clear windows over the LCD on Emulator II
overlays) and quality (2-part epoxy screen print inks, different
textures of polycarbonate substrate materials, high strength peel and
stick adhesive backings) and this company will continue to prove itself
over time with very, very high quality goods shipped worldwide
consistently for 22 years and counting.
You can buy this product from me now or you can wait and buy it one
year from today, your choice. It depends on when YOU want it, not on
the instability of the joker trying to sell it.
Synhouse Multimedia Corporation has been in business for 22 years and
has been manufacturing from day one. Synhouse existed for 4 years
informally before incorporation, and was only officially incorporated
in 1999 when a huge amount of expense was going to be incurred in
manufacturing the first products, to ensure that the investment and
expense of the startup could be deducted and written down over the
course of many years, because there was no possibility of making money
in the first year of business. Over twenty years later, those first
products (the Synhouse Original MIDIJACK, MIDIJACK II, and Moogiestyle
MIDIJACK) are still being manufactured.