History section - The recent history of replacement drum machine/synthesizer overlays

Defects and Quality Control:

Synhouse overlays have extensive correct construction details and quality control that other overlay sellers have never had. Prior to Synhouse moving into overlays, there were mainly three sellers that seemed to have nearly all the overlay business to themselves 2013-2017. Then Synhouse, doing other electronic music business 1999-2017, moved in with the first Synhouse overlay, the SP1200, released 11/21/2017, and ran all three of the main previous sellers out of business.

All three of them were using the same 1970s custom T-shirt shop style of process to make overlays (only Synhouse has ever done the fully enclosed automated computer controlled silkscreening process which is the same as used to make the black/white/red/blue overlay behind the heater levers on a Toyota or other car) which guaranteed a lot of inconsistencies and defects for a lot of reasons, but the most common reason is debris (lint, dirt, crumbs, hair, etc.) falling onto the workpiece before or as it is being silkscreened with each color one at a time, first making a little lump, then a flub in the artwork. Due to static cling, debris on the substrate is impossible to avoid in their open environment.

Now, in the real world, making auto dashboards for Nissan or jeans for Target, the bad pieces coming off the line go into the trash. Anyone knows this. This isn't questioned, they are just trashed.

But the garbage making overlays before Synhouse came along? ALL THREE OF THEM WOULD SELL THEIR DEFECTS! Some would discount their defective items while acknowledging the defects, but some wouldn't admit the defects, and sell them anyway. All of them were just making TINY production runs of 20, 15, or even only 10 pieces at a time (this right there is your guarantee that they would never gain access a real factory, factories don't discuss orders of 10 pieces of anything) and it appeared that they were picking out the best pieces first, shipping them to the people who bought into their "pre-order" scam (these people want to pretend they are running a business, but won't invest the money to produce their own product, even when they have only one product, they expect customers to finance their business for them, in advance, this isn't some of them, this is all of them, 3 out of 3), then selling some more of them, then getting into selling the defective pieces, making discounts bigger and bigger as needed as they went along.

This is a RIDICULOUS business practice. How much do you want to pay for bad food? Throw it out! But only Synhouse does that.

Synhouse has discarded at least five full production runs of overlays due to design defects or mistakes made in the processes of the overall production. Some of those have stopped a thousand bucks from coming into Synhouse for months, but oh well, the quality is enforced. Those all went into the chipper here at Synhouse, meaning a total loss taken. None of the Synhouse competitors has ever done that, which is obvious from looking at the trash they have sold over the years, with "RUN/STOP" not being on the overlay, "small swirl scratches" on it, etc., just embarrassing garbage, but it didn't matter, even with their utterly pathetic tiny quantities being made, they could NEVER bring themselves to throw it in the trash where it belonged, they'd always sell it, even if it ended up being at a 2/3rds lower price, anything for money no matter how small. And a scrapped Synhouse fully automated production run is more overlays than all competitors that ever existed COMBINED ever made in a single production run. But this is part of what it takes to keep the Synhouse quality and detail where it is, and where people have come to expect it to be.  


Correct construction details (whether expensive or not):

The Emax keyboard overlay has many graphic details and construction details to it, but not the clear window over the LCD, because it was designed to have the LCD just on the bare plastic off to the left of the huge 26" wide overlay to the right of it. But Synhouse makes six different other overlays that do have the clear window over the overlay. One of them, the Emax HD SE Rack overlay has the clear window over the LCD with the half round black eyes on the right and left edges.

The clear window over the LCD has been the subject of a lot of discussion over the years, as others have told ridiculous stories about why theirs didn't have it, or just lied about it. Two of the three past overlay sellers discussed here didn't have the clear window over the LCD, and the explanations, geez, listen for yourself...

 One of them said his SP-12 overlay didn't have the clear window over the LCD because, "My personal last production run SP-12 Turbo was bought new BY ME and had no clear window over the LCD from the factory - in case you're wondering (Ed note: We're not.), doing that just adds to cost and E-mu removed it in the last year of production anyway - just like on the SP-1200.".

M'kay, so in this case it's being presented as an UPGRADE to the latest version to NOT have the LCD window, so you could put an overlay without a window on your SP-12 when you know 1) it had the LCD window on the old overlay you are removing, 2) all of your other SP-12s also had that LCD window, and 3) every SP-12 you've seen in your life also had the LCD window (unless it had already been struck with a fake overlay installation from these two lame lop losers). What a baffling explanation, and the funniest part is that this story has him as a child buying a $3,540 drum machine.

Whether the child prodigy turned failed overlay seller had $3,540 to spend on drum machines or not, nobody bought into this story (one commenter in a place that story was being unsuccessfully tried said, "Nah I don't think its happening. This dude Synhouse has them on (e-commerce platform), and his actually have the clear window that goes over the display, which I prefer.") and this low energy hump went out of business................then woke up in a state of delusion thinking someone out there was going to buy his website and garbage artwork. That didn't work out, either.

Trying to explain it away like this is dumb.

It "just adds to cost"?

YES, everything the customer gets "just adds to cost" and, ultimately, the customer is paying that cost to receive the goods they want and the company is making a profit on top of that cost and part of that is what pays for the development and production of more and more products. That's how it works outside the Soviet Union, comrade.

Another one of them made the SP-12 overlay as well, multiple times, each one being absolute trash that has made my wall of shame of failed overlay memes twice (one being the fruity blue with a few examples shown, and the other having the text missing for the main button on the machine). Most of the failed Synhouse competitors only get roasted once, so he gets a real honorable mention there.

He explained the missing text, "This is the last version of the SP12 overlay I made and honestly, other than the Run/Stop text missing due to a mistake before printing, the overlay is pretty close to the original.". These were absolutely atrocious, with the "good" text that was actually there being pale and faint compared to the RUN/STOP text that was later stamped in bold white over the top (where it can be scratched off, this is why we silkscreen these replacements on the bottom of the clear material, that's the whole point, but don't worry about that, at least he got through it and got some money, no matter how small) in a secondary operation.........instead of throwing the whole production run in the trash where it belonged. Those were blown out for 2/3rds off the normal price.

He explained the missing clear window over the LCD, "The hole, instead the window for the display, on this second bunch of overlays has been decided by customers, in the preorder, even if I tried to explain them that the SP12 had a window there and only leds had holes, but it was all well described in the ad.". Okay, so this is a "company" where the boss is powerless and overruled by the public. What could I DO? It's out of my hands. Stupid.

This is an unimaginably low standard for quality and detail, ".....other than the Run/Stop text missing......the overlay is pretty close to the original.".

Can you hear yourself?!?! That is the chief button on the entire machine, the first button pressed when you walk in and the last button pressed before you walk out. This is like leaving your car at a body shop for two weeks to be painted, then going back and they say, "We missed a spot on the roof, but otherwise we think it looks pretty good.". You had ONE job!!! ONE JOB!!!

This overlay seller had no ability to make ANY other part of the machine (try as he might, seeing his GARBAGE 3D printed Emax slider caps is traumatic, just a horrible sight that one can never unsee), it was just the STICKER being attempted and he couldn't even get that right. This is not a negative personal characterization, he's a modest (it was the other two always claiming "dead on", "perfectly", "they are perfect", etc., this one didn't seem to boast or claim perfection, it was just more like "here is something I did"), nice, and polite guy, unlike some others who were the irascible type that seemed to take it the wrong way as Synhouse stomped them out. The kids at the nearby group home for slow kids are also nice, but I don't want them running my manufacturing.


False Praise and No Critical Reviews:

This is a lame beta male aspect of the electronic music business, the "everyone's my friend" business model. As far as I know, none of these three EVER attacked or even criticized the products or practices of one of the other three, even when teed up in an online chat to do so, and there are many instances of Synhouse competitors publicly praising each other (while attacking Synhouse because they are losing). None of them would specifically mention a competing item and competing seller and explain what's wrong with it, and thereby why theirs is better for the buyer. Because fake friendship. How weak. Even 50 years ago, you had Ford buying a Chevy truck and showing it how bad it was in their TV ads, or vice versa, or one paper towel on the right side of the screen and another on the left, showing which one is more absorbent. This is normal in free enterprise in free society.

The "everyone's my friend" business model that has no normal competition strategies going is like the state run enterprises in a communist country and, uh, not to put too fine a point on it, all businesses on both sides of this analogy fail every time.

These sellers are SO meek, obviously biting their tongues when one of the others is selling someone that is appallingly bad, they still praise them at least somewhat every time they mention them, and keep trying to sell their own without making any critical review of the others. This can be seen time and time again on any synth or audio forum where sellers are so lame they spend their lives posting/replying on there instead of spending their time doing their work, improving their products, and correcting problems in their products.

One of the three failed overlay sellers discussed here made a design 2013-2014 that was defective on many points, and before, during, and after, posted again and again and again on any mailing list/forum they could find, on social media, anywhere. And not a single one from Synhouse in 27 years, nor a reply to a post. You guys can talk amongst yourselves without company interference. But don't think for two seconds Synhouse won't be mocking you for it even more than 20 years later.

And instead of just listing the item/description/photos like Synhouse and letting people buy it or step the **** off, they would edit the item listing multiple times per day, and list, end, and relist the same item dozens of times per month in order to abuse and manipulate the "saved searches" system and force people who have a saved search of the name of that synth, etc. to get the SAME garbage item listing (that they've already seen) sent to them five times in a week.

And instead of spending so much as five minutes correcting that defective overlay design that was made again even after knowing of the defects, it was just all night after work posting online on IG in their fake B-boy lingo, listing after listing, forum after forum, and keyword spamming and hashtag spamming on a comical level, with titles or posts having (and all of these are actual examples---I couldn't make this up if I tried) "sp1200 Emax Depeche", "+sp-12 +sp1200 +12 bit +lexanlabels +synthrepair +hiphop +techno +vintagesamplers", "sp1200 sp12 emax", "sp1200 emax hxc depeche", and even 25 hashtags on single listings, "+emulatorII +emax +sp12 +sp1200 +emusystems +emu +ssmfilters +8bit + 12bit +depechemode +80s +1980s +vintage +(e-commerce platform) +techno +hiphop + 4pole +analog +analogfilters +ssm2045 +synthesizers +samplers +sequencer +lexan +synthlabels".

What the HELL do Depeche Mode or HxC have to do with a STICKER? That's just embarrassing. But these failed overlay sellers would do ANYTHING that doesn't involve putting in the work or spending money.

The "everyone's my friend" business model has them handling competitors delicately, like this: Someone selling something posts about their item, then the competitor, instead of coming back and saying "this is a dumb product, the claims are false and here's why (and then showing some actual photos of it, screenshots of the ever-changing claims about it)", says "Yes, he's a great guy and I love his work. But I feel what we do is good because we tried to do it a different way...". Every time.

When they spend enough time befriending people on social media, etc. and it goes far enough into the "everyone's my friend" business model, they start to delude themselves because by then they have a good number of those people praising them/their products/their services on that social media and making it seem like their items/business is popular............when they are, actually, selling NOTHING. Did the people praising it BUY it? In almost every case, no. This kind of nonsense is especially common in the New England Digital systems/parts/support business Synhouse has been in for 25 years, a lot of people (who couldn't get hardware/software/manuals/support from Synhouse for free because it's a business) attacking Synhouse and just kneejerk praising everyone else to a comical extent, I mean praising businesses that were out of business YEARS before, then saying oh it's so sad so and so isn't around anymore that was a really great company, and did any one of those buy their system from them? NO!

This was clear to Synhouse on day one 27 years before this writing, the people posting again and again on forums (it was mailing lists then) in order to sell their products were just idiot losers, and Synhouse never did this. Those forums weren't put there so "companies" could sell their "products", and if the proprietor of one of those goes and establishes himself on a forum and becomes a regular poster that posts all the time, it's not too likely that the real users can do the hobby chat those forums were intended for because then they can't speak freely. Oh, this guy is a regular here, he's an institution, he's our friend, you can't say something he did was not good, that's a backstabbing insult. Well, it wouldn't be backstabbing if they didn't do the "everyone's my friend" business model first. Just let people talk themselves about whatever they want to talk about.

Those morons call this "marketing". Yeah, they do loads of "marketing", so long as it doesn't cost money. It's just taking up space on everyone else's forums and breaking the rules on all the e-commerce platforms with listing abuse, search manipulation, and keyword spamming.


It Was the Best Quality Ever  -  Back Then:

Everybody gangsta until Synhouse steps into the ring. Before Synhouse showed up, everyone was selling on quality/detail/accuracy to the old one. Then Synhouse comes in and suddenly everyone is selling on price and doing discount after discount.

One of the sellers cut the price 50%, another 67%, and another doing various increasing discounts until it got to 40% off, 41% off, 53% off, and ending up at 80% off before going out of business. This is total nonsense. Company selling prices are based on manufacturing cost, general company overhead, perceived market value, and competitive pressure that may be holding prices down, and those things don't change 50%, 67%, 40%, 41%, 53%, and 80% in a single year.

The music business has always been dishonest, but the electronic music business has been particularly dishonest in some areas because the buyers are mostly people who like to read, tech nerds, and some DIY types, so the sellers feed them technical specs or manufacturing process information that is fake, phony, wrong, irrelevant, or just information that buyers shouldn't be given, as it prompts them to judge other things on a basis they don't even understand.

All three of these halfwits combined had ZERO manufacturing experience, but came out from day one talking like they were experts advancing the disciplines of manufacturing, at least two claiming irrelevant specs (but it seemed that the one that was near-illiterate was mostly copying the claims of the other), one even embarrassingly acting as if he were appointed by god to make overlays because no one else could do it right but him...........when he had never made a single overlay---nor had he manufactured anything else---in his life.

For example, one car company doesn't claim that they have thicker metal in their body stamp tooling that is of a different hardened tool steel which makes their body panels better than another car company. This would be extremely irresponsible to the point of being dishonest, and even if it were in some ways true on some points, telling this to auto consumers would be insane, because it would set them off to judge other brands based on this "information" they have just received that makes them think they are an expert, when they don't understand any of it at all.

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A side note on that topic which doesn't actually relate to an auto company making a claim (it wasn't the auto company that made/posted the video), but is very similar here is a video that claims to show a billion dollar machinery setup used to make auto body panels, says that it is a six-stage process where other companies are using only a four-stage process (What the hell is the difference? I can add seven more stages to the process, some not helping and some making it even worse, all adding cost, this is a nonsensical spec, RARELY is a company working towards adding MORE processes.), and that this panel production line is used by Volkswagen and this gives them the utmost quality that other brands can't match. Hello?!?! Volkswagen cars are absolute trash, with VERY low quality control and crappy bodies. I see 1988-era Toyota pickup trucks driving by every single day. When was the last time you saw a 1988 Volkswagen Fox on the road? Or even one from the 1990s? Or for that matter, consider how rarely a working 1987 Jetta can be seen. There was a Volkswagen model I used to see overseas in previous decades, it looked angular like a Fox but I don't know the model name, very basic inside and out, there were at least hundreds of thousands of them, but a decade later not ONE existed on the roads. So someone watching videos and seeing some story about a six-stage manufacturing process making superior vehicle body panels is someone who was made even dumber by seeing that video.

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Stupid Top 10  -  All From the Same Seller:

We'll take a case in point with one overlay seller saying things that are made up, wrong, or at least so lacking in detail and historical context that the normal reader will certainly go away thinking something that is wrong...............and then tell others, post it on forums and social media, etc.. This one describes materials and manufacturing processes, even giving the possible impression that he had invented this new improved process (which, as a matter of fact, was a process in use before he was born).

Here are 10 actual examples of the claims made, with comments debunking most of it inserted inline here:

1) "Due to demand we have NEW factory replica SP-12 and SP-1200 faceplate overlays coming..."

It's due to "demand"? What demand? This was embarrassingly posted next to an online poll asking the busy forum "Do you want one?" and 0% said yes. And if there was demand then, in those years, what happened to that demand now?

And "we have NEW factory replica....overlays coming"?

That sure is odd wording, and "factory" is a weasel word there. The one using that term might not have used a factory at all but been making the overlays, hands-on, himself (this is an assumption because that seller had more different overlays than capital to invest in them and no real factory would take his stupid orders for 10 stickers, and NO, having their own equipment is not at all a quality advantage, the low grade crap production that all three of them use is done with equipment that mostly doesn't even plug into the wall and at the low end, you couldn't spend a whole thousand dollars on it if you tried, Synhouse actually owns multiple pieces of all of this equipment [silkscreen printing stations, impulse dryers, etc.] but doesn't use it for Synhouse overlays, EVER, and Synhouse has spent more than five times as much money as all of that equipment cost combined on paying a factory for a single production of one overlay, it costs a lot of money, and this accesses millions of dollars of fully automated equipment that none of the competitors has ever accessed). What is a "factory replica"? Is there a factory that is replicating the old one for them? Or is it a replica of the overlay from the old factory?

And to be clear, that would be a misnomer to even mention a factory no one even knows the name of (though many people do), E-mu didn't make their own overlays (and almost certainly used at least two different overlay suppliers over time, this can be told by examination), PCBs, circuit board assemblies, power supplies, cables, wiring assemblies, sheet metal parts, plastic parts/chassis, or anything else, those all came from different suppliers to E-mu that changed from time to time. These are stories told by people who were never close to the process, weren't even in the same state, and have fancifully imagined it like Santa's workshop where Dave Rossum is Santa Claus and the others are soldering circuit boards at his direction. No, it was all contracted out and they came from contract manufacturers like Pactron, Wellex, etc.. So all the clever talk about "When E-mu made them.....!" or "When Dave Rossum made them.......!" is a lot of nonsense, they didn't "make" anything, just did the final assembly and test (it's far too expensive for a small company to get a contract manufacturer to do final assembly and test when making only 30 pieces per month in an irregular schedule). This subcontracting, generally speaking, improved quality, and always lowered cost. These are the things one learns in a lifetime in manufacturing and in a lifetime of running a company, and none of these other overlay sellers will ever know either of those things.


2) "....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..."

Wow. Hard to screw up one sentence of lies so many times, good job. Okay, with "this is an exact replacement", wow, lulz, no, it's not. Isn't it amazing that the greatest and best selling drum machine/synthesizer overlay company of all time, Synhouse, has never said "this is exactly the same as the old one" and "completely identical"? It's always EVERY OTHER OVERLAY SELLER who is seen to post on any platform, forum, mailing list, etc. that they can find that their overlay detail is "completely true to the original", "exact", "spot on", etc.. Saying something is exact is just a lie, because even a company having the artwork, silkscreens, and die cut tooling usually can't make the same overlay look EXACTLY the same in two production runs, there may be different temperatures or humidity, more thinner in the 2-part epoxy inks (even inadvertently from cleaning before starting), newer stock of inks flowing faster than older stock (the ink spreads out a lot more and this can make the exact same text look small and thin one time but very bold another time, and this becomes a BIG issue making the Emax keyboard and Emax HD SE Rack overlays with all of that tiny text, which would just be a blobby blur if the ink came out too thin and flowed too well), and the mixed color being slightly different each time.

There are so so so many morons out there with their clever talk about Pantone Pantone Pantone colors, usually the ones trying to spray paint an Emulator II or SP-12, asking what Pantone color is that, etc.. This is stupid, as if the blue on an SP-12 overlay is available in a spray can somewhere and they can just go buy one can of it if I'll just tell them a magical Pantone number for it. These are LAZY untalented people that think there's a trick or shortcut to everything (these are the losers that think they can buy a 3D printer and compete with Synhouse on anything, and not one of them has even taken a 2% bite out of the Synhouse sales on those items), and this is why Synhouse out runs them EVERY TIME. The colors on the panel of a 1982 Synthesizer were not itemized and listed under the Pantone coloring system, because it wasn't in use for that then. And this is why---man this is so dumb I shouldn't have to say it---the colors came out at least a little different every time, and even right there in the 1981 Moog Source advertisement (that everyone has posted all over the internet for over 30 years, even on the Synhouse site in the Source article for 26 years now) you can EASILY see that the big membrane button panel and the two side wheels/display overlays don't even BARELY match each other, and that was on the SAME KEYBOARD!

Today, someone who really knows what they are doing will, at most, look at a set of Pantone swatches to quickly find the closest colors, and use those as a starting point when mixing the correct colors. Look at the INCREDIBLE Synhouse gray steel rack ears for the Emax Rack, that color didn't come in a sack marked "Pantone color Emax Rack"!

There's more to this, people: It's called W O R K.

Saying "this is an exact replacement" about those TRASH SP-12 and SP1200 overlays from the other seller is very, very wrong. Without even breaking down into detailed criticism, just at a glance those scraps of trash were way off, with the SP-12 having an obviously bloated, cartoonish "SP-12" lettered logo on top (Synhouse got this completely right with the SP-12, and even created another one that says "Turbo" right next to it in the same text style), and the SP-1200 having holes in the overlay surface where the large LEDs are, but claiming there are clear windows over them because there is some type of patch of clear plastic applied under it, or on top, somehow, even a blind man could EASILY FEEL the so-called "clear windows over the LEDs".

The constant, neverending idiot talk about "10mil" will be discussed below.

Then on "Lexan", it isn't known for sure, but it's highly unlikely, I'd say nearly certain that from 2013-on, neither of these three overlay sellers were buying/using "Lexan", and it is just about 100% for sure that the suppliers to E-mu systems from 1981 through the end of SP1200 production in 1990 WERE using "Lexan", and more like 50-50 that they were using "Lexan" through the 1990s on the black reissue SP1200s, Emax II, Emax II rack, etc..  

Synhouse has always referred to the substrate material of these overlays as polycarbonate, because that's what it is. In the trade, it's known as PC, for PolyCarbonate.

"Lexan" is/was one BRAND of polycarbonate. Another brand is not "fake", and the last 15-20 years, almost no one is using "Lexan" brand polycarbonate. One is like the other and I wouldn't know anyone who knows or could tell the difference between them BUT I wouldn't tell anyone Synhouse is using---and thus they are getting---"Lexan".

And leather is not "Connolly leather", if a car company says their car has Connolly leather in it, it had better have leather bought from Connolly in it, not just some sort of leather. Same with Lexan, it's a brand, and saying you use that brand when you don't is a false commercial claim.

And Lexan is "Lexan", not "lexan", and these sellers wrongly spouting that off year after year were using those interchangeably. Lexan is a capitalized proper noun, like your name starting with a Capital Letter, not lexan.

There's a long history to this. 140 years ago a company called General Electric, also known as GE, was founded. Over the decades, GE got into almost every business there was from light bulbs to radios to TVs to plastics to power generation equipment to health care to atomic bombs to jet engines.

GE even got into business finance. That lending arm doesn't exist anymore because they thought they were printing money lending at high rates to relatively small businesses until it blew up in the global financial crisis of 2008-2010, and GE shut down GE Capital Finance. Synhouse bought several truckloads from GE Capital Finance as they had shut down so many recording and post production studios that had defaulted on credit, including The Enterprise and Audio Affects.

From 1953-1960 a type of plastic called polycarbonate was invented (based on work going back to 1898) and sold by at least two companies, and GE was one of them, selling polycarbonate under the brand name "Lexan", later forming the GE Plastics division in 1973.

Polycarbonate can take the form of molded plastic known to be fairly hard and often clear (for the last 50 years, it was yellowish like amber before that), sometimes having optical clarity, or can be rolls of sheet material that can be punched out and printed in many ways, which is what we use to make overlays for drum machines and synthesizers, and also the front panels of various rack mount audio processors, synthesizers, and other musical devices (going back to at least 1978). Even 40 years ago, many of those road reflectors in the middle of the road (sometimes called Botts' Dots but those more correctly referred to round ones without reflectors in them) were made of polycarbonate, formed and then chrome plated on the inside (same as a car taillight housing) to be reflective.

Polycarbonate is a very common and slightly expensive plastic for more than 50 years. "Lexan" was just one brand, one of the two oldest brands of polycarbonate, the other being Makrolon. "Lexan" is not "another word for polycarbonate" or "another way to say it", it's a BRAND name, and one that, as a practical matter, barely exists anymore, having been sold off to an unknown company in Saudi Arabia after years of losing market share and getting down to nearly no market share at all.

GE shut down almost all its divisions, then spun off the last three into separate companies like GE Aerospace and GE Health Care. Almost nothing made of polycarbonate that can be bought today is made using the Lexan brand, so calling ANYTHING else "Lexan" is wrong and, frankly, illegal.

It is a false commercial claim to claim your product uses Lexan when it does not. So unless some overlay seller out there has the open packaging and empty boxes (as you might see 3M industrial adhesive boxes in the background of Synhouse photos a time or two in the past when quickly photographed at the factory) from the Arabian company that sells Lexan, it's not Lexan, so shut mouth immediately, stupid.

The "but with modern materials that will far outlast the original" will be dealt with below.


3) "The fonts are an exact match (same font)..."

This can't be said for sure, but two things are likely, a) these clowns didn't have the ability to create new alphabets of new letter styles as Synhouse has sometimes done, and b) the idea that there's an art program out there that has the 1984 Emulator II/SP-12 font in it is just dumb, and right from the first two letters in the upper left "SP", they blew it, so I didn't bother to examine it further into the smaller text. There might be a similar text style in programs today, but this gratuitous use of the word "exact" is embarrassing, these are trash products by trash sellers who were crushed instantly when Synhouse appeared. Dismissed.


4) "....they are dead on...."

As above. No on that.

And this can be determined just from the very, very few, far away indoor photos the seller offered that showed walls, a table, and a parquet floor as well as it showed the overlay, and this was after many postings of "I will post photos soon." and "I will post a side by side comparison photo soon..." and "will post the SP-1200 later". None of these photos ever showed the surface closely, and never showed the surface texture and gloss, etc..

Compare those photos to the very honest always-outdoor-lighting photos from Synhouse, such as the Emax HD SE Rack overlay photos showing the sheen off the black eye areas around the LEDs. And one of those other three sellers of trash overlays posted low resolution photos again and again with the overlay in dim indoor lighting and the item---I couldn't make this up if I tried---wrapped in plastic! There's gotta be a reason...


5) ".....it will far outlast the original E-mu overlay for sure with better materials available today..."

This is so dumb. And the many of you reading this who read that and believed it before Synhouse came out and told you better, you're dumb, too, because, at once, he's saying it's so good because it's a) exactly like the old one with the same materials and same material thickness and all but b) it's way better than the old one because the materials are different. Which is it? This is a self-refuting dumb sales pitch. Works every time on music people. Other greatest hits from the music business, "(our product) was the hit of the NAMM show (when it was in a 1/4 booth in the far back hall no one had time to go into)." and "We took $200,000 worth of orders at the NAMM show (for product that doesn't yet exist)."

And with "it will far outlast", you had to embellish it with "far"? Just lying and saying "it will outlast" wasn't enough lying for one day? This claim, even if it were coming from a far better supplier like Synhouse, is not only unknowable information, but right there it's coming from someone with NO manufacturing experience at all who has done NO long term failure analysis. This is just a guess, and even from a top quality company, it could easily be wrong, because you can't know the future until the future.

This doesn't consider normal, common failure modes. In items used in electronics/music, this could be items like rubber, polyurethane, foam rubber, paint, etc. turning sticky, or even into a pure liquid at some point (a third party aftermarket pinch roller on an Otari MTR-12 tape machine here at Synhouse was 20 years old, then suddenly over 3 months turned to liquid that could be poured from one glass to another. Or the metal plating on something (a panel, a connector, or some other piece of hardware) can turn brown, purple, then black, and even shed off very easily later on (like those garbage "gold plated" circuit boards Synhouse competitors are selling, those plated surfaces don't solder well and separate as soon as 6-18 months later). I have seen the plating on original Neutrik connectors turn black in a decade, still in the packaging. And I have talked to factories (Synhouse competitors wouldn't even know where factories are, much less having BEEN in those factories to have such discussions) that gave me some theories about what causes this, but it can happen to anything at any time. I have seen the soft overmolded hand grip on a Harbor Freight laser thermometer turn sticky in less than one year...........when several driver/drills with the same grip from the same place didn't do that in ten or even 20 years.

This is unknowable, so saying it WON'T happen is a LIE. The best that can be done is to describe the process and list the materials, but even that is more than a consumer should be told, because they think it makes them smart and they can go on and judge other products by it, and it's wrong because they don't understand it, and, as a consumer, have no need to.

Synhouse has only put loads of technical information into these listings to impeach and refute the STUPID claims made by idiot overlay sellers who know nothing about overlay manufacturing, or any other type of manufacturing, for that matter. It would have been far preferable to just show the photos and sell them from there, without devolving into stupidity with "10mil", etc..

This is a common "make easy money" ploy of the guys trying to sell things to electronic musicians, "the old one is bad because it fails and this one solves that", and here's one example:

One guy came out selling a foam ring replacement kit for the Sequential Circuits T8 and New England Digital V/PK velocity keyboard (and I'm as-yet unconvinced he ever even OWNED one, much less became technically knowledgeable about them, Synhouse hasn't just crushed competitors in drum/synth overlays, but also in every other category Synhouse got into, including sales/parts/repairs/support for the New England Digital systems), telling everyone in his ads that oh this is a super huge problem, these foam parts and foam rings go bad, deteriorate, and get sticky, and the keyboard won't work and the keyboard action will be bad, but this $225 kit (a quarter pound of foam rubber that would have cost six bucks at Home Depot if they had it) solves that problem!

Really? At that time, those keyboards were almost 30 years old (so it's not surprising a rubbery part had deteriorated or become stiff, powdery, or sticky), so how does this "product" from this know-nothing solve that problem of the foam parts going bad? His kit could, as in the laser thermometer example above, go bad and get sticky in under a year, it's unknowable now and very dishonest for him to say. And it WILL go bad at some point, so the problem of the foam going bad is solved now is NOT SOLVED. Another wannabe just trying to scam his way in.

And with "with better materials available today", WOW, this is profoundly stupid. I can't blame the readers for believing this without question, because it's not up to them to know the history of polycarbonate, but now you know a lot more than those readers or that seller ever did, just from reading this very long Synhouse listing.

I can't confirm exactly what material it was from this other seller, but presumably some 2010s industry standard type of polycarbonate (and NOT "Lexan") like Synhouse uses, and this is the EXACT same material as the supplier to E-mu used on the black 1990s SP1200 reissue overlay (made from approximately 1995 to the last ones made in 1998). This is the exact same polycarbonate material!

And the material used by the supplier to E-mu over 10 years before that in 1981 was also exactly the same, this is standard sheet polycarbonate material that comes in rolls, and the same material was used on the overlays on products from 360 Systems in the late 1970s. This process with sheet polycarbonate material was first used around 1972 for industrial nameplate applications.

There was no way for this clown with ZERO manufacturing experience to buy "better" sheet polycarbonate material in 2014 than the supplier to E-mu was using in 1998. And he was making an "exact" replacement overlay for that black reissue SP1200 and claiming it was way better. Not only was it not better, it wasn't even in the realm of possibility that it could be better.

Giving a little more background detail and context could have explained that there were two different construction methods used by the overlay suppliers to E-mu.

All of the Emulator II overlays, all of the SP-12 overlays, some but not all of the overlays on the early type gray SP1200s, and all of the gray Emax overlays were made from a different, mostly inferior, process (though using the same polycarbonate material) than some of the gray SP1200s, all of the black 1990s reissue SP1200s, and all of the black Emax II models, as those used a different, mostly superior, process, which meant that they didn't shed like a dog after getting some wear, even in just a few years, and didn't bubble and blister up and turn yellow after 20 years.

So when speaking about the old overlays from the SP-12 and black 1990s SP1200 reissue, these were made in a completely different process, the former would deteriorate and become hard to read eventually whether used or not, and the latter would (so far as we've seen in about 35-36 years with the last of the gray SP1200 overlays made by a different supplier with the better process and the black Emax II overlays) NEVER fail, unless someone burned the top with a cigarette, gouged it, got paint on it, etc..

And as you see below, he is using that second construction process and letting people think he invented it or something, you know, to bring better product to the market in 2014...........when that process was being used in 1972 (I have NO idea why E-mu was getting such lousy overlays from their supplier on the earlier models, 360 Systems got this right LONG before E-mu came out with any samplers or drum machines.

Bottom line: There was NO scientific advance in materials that allowed the sheet polycarbonate to be better in 2014 than it had been in 1998, or in 1984 for that matter. Even on the worst old overlay you ever saw, the sheet polycarbonate material is still intact, not sticky, not powdery, and not cracked (this is fairly expensive material compared to, say the clear laminate over the kid's menu at Denny's).

6) "....The new overlays have full 10mil of textured lexan...."

This is where everyone else not being specific as Synhouse always has been really goes wrong. Material means, well, MATERIAL. Oh, I'm using a different material, it's a 2 x 4, NO, I'm using a 4 x 6 and it's the SAME "material". Being "textured" or not is immaterial to the material type. ALL of these are the same type of material, except for the horrible fake overlays made on computer printers from Custom Synth UK and other earlier overlay attempts (see the hall of shame in the photo galleries of the Synhouse SP-12 and SP1200 overlays, a few of them are shown, these are BAD).

And here it goes again for the more than 100th time, "full 10mil". What the hell does "full" mean? Like that's the maximum size that exists? Like 24 karat? It's not, I could make them as thick as a ham sandwich if I wanted (and they could not).

This is purified fake sales pitch and nothing but. It needn't have been said, should NOT have been said, and if unsaid he wouldn't be getting roasted here 12 years later with 50x as many people reading it now as comedy than saw it then.

"10mil"? That was not to be told to people looking at overlay ads. This is the quintessential uninformative made up fake spec given to make the seller seem superior to other sellers, implying that other sellers have used thinner material. And that can not be proven, I don't think anyone ever used polycarbonate material thinner than 10 mils, except for the Synhouse overlay for the "Brand New! 360 Systems Instant Replay HD Audio 2.0 Replacement Faceplate Overlay" in order to beat the failures of the old one.

On that Synhouse "Brand New! 360 Systems Instant Replay HD Audio 2.0 Replacement Faceplate Overlay", the failure mode was a curved front edge it had to adhere to that caused 100% of the old ones to delaminate and crack across that curved front edge it has to grip to. It was solved with a few techniques.

One method was changing the old PE (or polyethylene, more correctly HDPE for high density, this is the same slippery trash material as a disposable water bottle from Costco) to PC (polycarbonate) and reducing the thickness of that material so it could make the curve and stick to it, hopefully forever.

And for some failure analysis, a piece of a normal Synhouse SP1200 overlay was curved over and stuck around a tight bend on a stainless steel angle on a fixture here and left there for years, thinking that these polycarbonate overlays MIGHT make a good surface for an upcoming Synhouse audio mixer with a curved front wrist rest to avoid silkscreened panels that ALWAYS rub off.

But after a few years, it had cracked many times across that bend, first micro cracks, then big ones. The 3M industrial adhesive, however, did keep it tightly on there, and once it that overlay piece had to be removed because it was completely striated with deep cracks because it couldn't take the curve, dang if it wasn't hard as hell to get that little 2" square piece off of there.

This "full 10mil" spec was so dumb, repeated so many times, and even copied by one of the other halfwits making overlays ("27"x 8" 10 mil velvet/matte Lexan" and "...on 10 mil lexan [sic] just like the E-MU [sic] originals!", something he never said the first year until the other guy said it and he copied it), that it ended up with people writing to ask a question about a Synhouse overlay for E-mu, asking, "Is this overlay really made of 'full 10mil Lexan'?".

My god, the laboratory hybrids of chimps and parrots have been completed and released into the wild. No, you smooth-brained sycophant, all of the Synhouse overlays for E-mu have always been 15 mil thick from day one. And I never even thought about it.

We have the measuring instruments to use (none of those three ever did), and every one was engineer-measured and found to be 15 mils thick, "mil" meaning thousandths of an America inch, or 15/1000". Just a normal part of starting the Synhouse reverse engineering process which is, as you can see from the selling history on this account, heh-heh, very accurate, and the 3D printer maker types trying to take a piece out of Synhouse are losing and can't even take a bite at 1/8th of the Synhouse price.

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A Quick Sidebar On Quality, Price, and Competition (or total lack thereof):

This is how business works slow boy, the 757 and 767 were developed with profits from the 737 and 747, and the 777 and 787 were developed with profits from the 757 and 767, resulting in the 737, 747, 757, 767, 777, and 787 selling simultaneously out of the same product line, absolutely blocking out the sun for anyone else even T H I N K I N G of getting into that business.

Therefore, the Synhouse items that seem to, as one total moron put it, cost "way too much money", were "incredibly overpriced" and "super duper expensive!" and "extremely overpriced" and angry that Synhouse will "charge so much", bring in gross profits off the top per unit sold, all of that goes back into company expenses, putting even more Synhouse products in the catalog, which is 9-1/2 pages on the Synhouse site at the time of this writing (and it's not the absolute fantasy of claiming to have "nearly 20,000" parts, then looking more closely as in "What do they have for Linn LM-1 parts?", you see a 1N4148 switching diode listed as an "LM-1 part" for $.95 [when Synhouse can buy those face to face in the factory 5 for a penny], and not a single actual part unique to the LM-1, just counting absolute jellybean generic parts again and again for 89345894895 different instruments, totaling out to "nearly 20,000" parts, so, so lame).

Well put: You've received feedback on your sale of Brand New Moog Source Control Panel w/62 REAL SWITCHES to Replace Membrane Panel.  -  "Expensive but totally worth it. A million times better experience with switches instead of buttons. Took less than an hour to install and looks damn near identical.". Pay it, get it.

So the temporary gross profit on a daily $40 item sale isn't spent at Chili's (not that I've spent money there once in 40 years, if even once then), it's returned to operating expense, design, and production of newer products, offsetting the net profits, resulting in more and more products added to the Synhouse catalog as the years go on, and it flourishes up and expands outward from there.

There are loads of examples of the many attempts of wannabes trying to get some of the business that Synhouse is enjoying, and they are losing every time and can't take a bite even when they are selling at 1/8th of the Synhouse price, but one easy example is someone coming in with a $4 item to compete with the same (same intended FUNCTION, anyway, but you could tell from a thousand yards in the fog that it's not the right part) item that Synhouse has for 30 or 40 dollars, yet the Synhouse outsells it 10:1 anyway.

And EASILY 1 out of 4 of those sold are sold to Synhouse competitors who---haven't you heard?---absolutely hate Synhouse. Sing it with me boys, "Hater, hater, twenty-seven years later!".

And Synhouse could make the same exact TRASH $4 item that guy does far more cheaply than he can (but Synhouse wouldn't sell that sort of trash, seriously, having such shabby crap on board hurts the price of everything else for sale here), even the exact same way they are doing it (with shameful fabrication methods) but it's the wrong way to do it and it's a, ahem, "replacement" part that doesn't look like the old one, and if you put that on the vintage machine that you think is worth $3,000 or $6,000, you ARE the village idiot. And anybody knows it, hence the "Synhouse outsells it 10:1".

This is completely free market enterprise on display here; People aren't buying these items because of this 7,800 word listing telling them they are stupid for believing the others, they are gritting their teeth and buying it anyway because, c'mon everyone, come in, hold hands like a couple of Democrats and we'll sing the line together, "SYNHOUSE  -  ALWAYS THE BEST AND THERE'S NOTHING ELSE".

1) The best products get the best price and 2) the gross profits go right back to develop and manufacture a wider range of those products and 3) even the competitors are feeding this process at Synhouse by buying$$$from$$$Synhouse, then 4) start again from the top and loop 1-4 for all eternity.

In a short word to the competitors, you're swimming upstream and all your base are belong to us.

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The thickness of the polycarbonate material of the overlay isn't anything to brag about. The difference in price between 10 and 15 mils of polycarbonate would be about 1/50th of the price that it costs to ship one of these overlays to a buyer in the USA. Synhouse uses any thickness desired, and like all of the items from Synhouse, it's the same as the old one without giving it any consideration. Synhouse was selling overlays in four consecutive years before ever even thinking to mention the overlay thickness, because it's just dumb.

But when that dumb question came one too many times, okay, it was time to call this out, too. The Synhouse overlays for E-mu are all 15 mils thick, and this can be seen very well from a side view in the Emax HD SE Rack and Emax keyboard overlay photo galleries.


7) "....these will outlast the original panel overlay...."

As above. This claim is unsupported by evidence, and it is collectively referring to two old ones that are themelves completely different from each other. One of those was the black 1990s SP1200 reissue overlay, and the one from that lame seller from 2014 will NOT last longer than the ones on any 1995 SP1200, and that is a fact. It is the same thing made the same way. Just that this moron did it wrong with weird little clear holes, etc. for the LEDs.


8) ".....The original was silk screen printed on the TOP of a polycarbonate sheet...."

This is another stupid statement. The guy saying this only had two overlays for E-mu, the SP-12 and the black 1990s SP1200 reissue (Synhouse has made 12 so far). It overly generalizes, so to respond with a generalization, well, it's a lie.

If said by a smarter person explaining that those two old overlays were made with a different process to each other, okay then, it's a complete lie on the black 1990s SP1200 reissue and a 97% lie on the SP-12.

Let's deal with the SP-12 overlay construction method: If anyone rips the overlay off of an Emulator II, SP-12, most of the earlier production run of the gray SP1200s, or any of the gray Emax, then flips it over, they can see multiple colors printed there, COMPLETELY covering the bottom side. Go on, scratch at it with a razor and see gray, blue, etc. stuff that looks like paint coming off.

It's NOT printed on the top side.

This is 97% of the overlay surface, and all of the base colors.

The white pinstripes (which can end up cracking, then breaking and falling off like little sticks), small black details, and probably the dark red colors are printed in a secondary silkscreening operation on the top side (yes I know why, no I'm not going to say, just that it was a bad decision to do it that way that resulted in the 100% guaranteed failure of all of those overlays, even on instruments that were never used, they just shed). More on this below.

Additionally, the gray areas on the SP-12 overlay came out better on the Synhouse than on the old one, and all of the other replacement SP-12 overlays as well probably had the same problem. This is because Synhouse does this better than the dummies that made them for E-mu. This is inarguable, so go cry to someone else about how mean I am; I wouldn't be making a living replacing their work if they'd done good work. NO ONE will be making a living 5-25 years from now replacing my work.

The problem is that the artwork and silkscreens were poorly designed, resulting in the single light gray color of the SP-12 turning out to be TWO colors, not just one, because of doing bad work, and that problem, even if hard to detect initially, becomes a huge difference decades later, making the old SP-12 overlays look as if they had TWO shades of gray (it's only one, folks, just badly done).

Synhouse uses a vastly superior process. If the normal overlay production (three figures of overlays in most cases) were set up and about to get started running on the fully automated equipment in the early afternoon, and I showed up with another even larger brick of money and said "Change of plans, make it 20,000 pieces.", they would say "okay" and be finished by the next day. The black/white/red/blue overlay behind the heater levers on major brand cars are made there, the 2-color rear panel nomenclature overlays for major brand TVs are made there, etc., and these generally come out with zero defects in 100,000 pieces on those very, very simple 2-4 color designs with huge text and almost no details, and more like 0-20 defects/bad ones per hundreds of giant Synhouse overlays with 6 colors, lots of details, all kinds of clear windows and shading, acres of TINY text, like the Emax HD SE Rack or Oberheim Matrix-12. Someone using the unpowered, manual 1970s custom T-shirt shop silkscreening process is going to have almost constant defects, and this is why we have seen those three loser sellers cherry picking pieces out of their "Another short run of our beautiful" lots, then selling the worst last for the least money.


9) "Ours use a different process. The print is reverse sub dyed printed to the back side of the 10mil polycarbonate (lexan) that has the texture on the top side. Thus providing a superior product."

Having a stroke? Failed ESL? There is no such thing as this super clever made up mega technical term meant NOT to be understood by the readers, "reverse sub dyed printed". Let's check the internet:

1.   We did not find results for: "reverse sub dyed printed". Check spelling or type a new query.

AGAIN, the guy saying this only had two overlays for E-mu, the SP-12 and the black 1990s SP1200 reissue. The method obfuscated here by trying to sound smart (fail on that) can be described here quite succinctly: Instead of printing on the top like a T-shirt, the art is reversed and printed on the bottom because the material is transparent, and this way the artwork can never get scratched off from the other side (top). Or just say "reverse sub dyed printed", your choice.

And that method is EXACTLY the same from materials to execution as the the method used to make the black 1990s SP1200 reissue (plus every other correctly made overlay in human history, because this is such a simply obvious way to do it. Does a butcher shop tape the papers with their specials on the OUTSIDE of the glass? No, on the inside, so it doesn't get rained on. Duh.

So "Ours use a different process." is a flat lie.

And "Thus providing a superior product.", superior to WHAT? It's EXACTLY the same as every GOOD overlay ever made back to '72 (Emulator II, SP-12, etc. were dog-shedding trash and anyone knows it). Or, heh-heh, it WOULD be exactly the same as the overlay from the black 1990s SP1200 reissue if not for the laughable attempt to pretend to have clear windows over the LEDs, and whatever other problems it may have had beyond that but no one smart would bother looking further because that one detail was an absolute deal breaker.

"Reverse sub dyed printed" = Moron


10) "Our goal is to offer everyone a top tier product that will look outstanding and offer you a replacement using the best materials and printing processes to date."

Finally, once and for all, this must be dealt with: All of the "we" and "our" and "ours" that two out of three of these absolute losers put in EVERY posting is just posturing cringe. Is there a mouse in your pocket? Then who is "we"?

All of these guys always refer to themselves as "we", yet have ONLY ever communicated alone from themselves on many platforms, there isn't ever even one person besides them posting anything.

From the beginning to the end---and the end comes soon at this level of loserdom---on every one of the 9789574898934 e-commerce platform listings and mailing list/forum/social media posts from these two failed overlay sellers, we only ever heard from the one guy from each seller account because both of them WERE just the one guy writing from his kitchen table after work (at a job that didn't involve electronic music, electronics, or music, one of them had two jobs), and while the one MIGHT have briefly formed a company entity of some sort (yet it still wasn't making his living), the other one might not have even been able to read the forms you have to fill out to register a company, much less actually get it done and have a company.

The other one managed to put "we" and "our" five times into three sentences. He was alone in this, and counting his boss at his job that paid to make their money losing products doesn't qualify for "we" and "our", this is dumb grandiosity.

This isn't unique to them, it's a little common in the electronics business. Doesn't make it less cringe, though.

On "Our goal is to offer everyone a top tier product", well, mission failed, soldier.

And on "a replacement using the......... best........printing processes to date.", O my brothers, that is a bridge too far. My sides are splitting from the laughter. None of those three overlay sellers ever used any manufacturing technique higher up on the food chain than the custom T-shirt shop silkscreening process I was watching being used in 1976 to make short runs of campaign shirts (I come from a family in politics), and I was playing with used silkscreens when I was a tiny kid, including Indian designs, etc..

The overlay manufacturing process used by even the best of those three 2013-2018 on their best day was totally antiquated compared to the manufacturing process used to make the black/white/red/blue overlay behind the heater levers on an '82 Toyota, which would have been an earlier version of the current fully enclosed automated computer controlled silkscreening process used by Synhouse.

This loser wasn't within rocket range of using the "best........printing processes to date.".

Oh, this one is so sadly Opie looking that I almost want to think that he's just really as dumb as he sounds, and his lies aren't actually lies, it's just him innocently being dumb as a post, speaking confidently about topics that he knows nothing about.

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Test Time: What grade did they get?

But seriously folks reading this, enough slams and lampooning for now, if you've made it this far down in the reading, you are a patient reader with a good attention span, so I can honestly review this product category and tell you how well these three did in it, as least as far as making an item "that will look outstanding and offer you a replacement using the best materials....".

Like a student on a school test, you can grade them with a) absolute grading or b) grade it on a curve.

a) In absolute grading, all three were total failures.

And this dark assessment isn't open to your review, this is a simple observation of economics: None of the three could feed themselves for five minutes doing this for a living. Because they are POOR at it.

Making stickers that look like older stickers is somewhat less difficult than achieving cold fusion; If you can't do it profitably, you shouldn't be running a business and you deserve the roasting this writing has given you.

The first two sellers were constantly claiming a level of perfection that even a casual examination of their items would show was not achieved. A level of quality/detail which would be FINE if it were low cost and offered modestly, instead of year after year of stupidly bombastic claims like "....they are dead on...." and "....they are perfect...." from the one guy, and the other guy saying "perfectly", "match each other perfectly", "they fit perfectly", "intensively color matched" (Intensively? Learn the language.), "they have  these  will beautify your beloved EII and increase it's value" (Seriously. Need to learn it. And those extra spaces in    there   were really in there. Halfwit.), "These labels took over 2 years to get right..." (Ed note: They aren't "right".), and "replicated and perfected" ("Perfected" my ***, there are 100+ points of error in it, my own efforts to point them out in a graphic meme ran out of space on the page, from fit to graphic detail size and location to overall look, it's trash.

The Synhouse overlay of the same model came out at one price and even after second productions of every piece have remained at that price, and if this trash were as "perfectly" made, "color matched", and "fit perfectly", well, at the well less than HALF the Synhouse price they were selling for (and at one point near the end only 1/8th the Synhouse price, $25 versus $191), you'd think they'd be selling in circles around the Synhouse, but no, they went begging in 2+ years of attempting to dump the last of their GARBAGE stock at ever-decreasing prices and bombastic blurts of "RARE!" and "Don't sleep!" and "Free USA shipping today only!" (made worse by a few of their idiot customers in Australia and other places trying in parallel to resell the ones they bought from this guy for a little less money, slowing the selling down for both of them), which is sad because the total production run they were from was only 25 the first time and maybe 15 the second time, so even at 1/5th the previous selling price, nobody would buy them..........because the Synhouse overlays had come out 2 years earlier, and as you can see, are still selling on this platform today with the items from the second production.

To put Synhouse into this absolute grading, I'd say that Synhouse got about 98% on the test.

This is 100% minus the unavoidable, 1) 1% lost because everyone wants a replacement overlay the exact same color as theirs and doesn't consider that other machines just like theirs have a different color overlay, there can't be 95 color shades to choose from, clearly even the old companies couldn't get the color the same twice in a row, and "Can you make one piece for me lighter like this, the way mine is?", NO, it's ONE color, and one production run from Synhouse is many times the size as all the production runs combined from everyone else that ever made replacement overlays, this is part of how the vastly superior quality is achieved, just to start the run on one day means pouring out at LEAST $650 worth of 2-part epoxy ink that will be rock hard after a few hours of curing so no I'm not going to spend a thousand chasing the $144 you are offering, and 2) 1% lost for the slight differences in the graphic design due to things being done in a different time and place.

I can explain #2 there: The supplier to E-mu got the drawing showing what logos/words/function menus had to be on the overlay and their comments about what 80s type styles and colors they wanted. This was easy, it WAS the 80s. The company did the design, E-mu approved it (even if it was twice wrong like the SP-12, too narrow [look at EVERY one of the initial press and ad photos, there's a 1/4" gap right and left] and having functions listed on it that no SP-12 ever had because the whole thing was a cut and paste off of the Emulator II overlay), and the company produced it, E-mu got the chassis and sheet metal from two of their other suppliers, and put the overlays on during the final assembly and test at E-mu Systems in Santa Cruz, California (for the Emulator through SP-12 and Emulator II, later nearby Scotts Valley, California for the Emax models through the Emulator III, sold to Asia, Proteus series, Emulator IV, and right on through to the end).

Compared to what Synhouse is doing now, their design job was EASY. Because if the replacement overlay design is done by Synhouse and the lettering style is different from the old one from 1984, nobody is going to want it (just look at that fake Moog Source membrane from "the EU", it looks like trash with totally generic lettering instead of the highly stylized type on the old one, Synhouse mocked it mercilessly and outsold it 10:1 or even worse, and that friends, was another loser knocked out).

In nearly all cases, the exact letter style used in 1984 is not going to be available in somebody's software now, so maybe the closest one will have to be modified a little on most letters (Synhouse regularly does this, not sure if any of the other three ever had the ability to do it) to get it as close as possible.

But the old supplier never had this "exact copy" constraint and couldn't have modified those letters! It's harder to make an exact reproduction piece by piece than it is to make any design you want freeform from your own imagination in the first place, leaving OTHERS to have to do the work of carefully duplicating it. Point is, it's harder on this side.

Synhouse is far and away the best manufacturer of replacement drum/synth overlays that has ever existed, but in this case, two of those sellers of crap overlays repeatedly said theirs were "spot on", "dead on", "perfect", etc., but in 21 different overlay models, Synhouse---the best their ever was---never made these claims!

So this is the best, claiming the least. And hitting all targets again and again. No one, NO ONE has been able to withstand Synhouse, just look at the current back and forth with Synhouse destroying the business of the other guy selling the Prophet-600 membrane button panels, dude was doing this in at least seven consecutive years, mostly at the price of $79, then Synhouse came in breaking things, now as this is being written dude is crawling on the floor begging for twenty-eight bucks for his well-established $79 product.

This is 2018 Emulator II Part 2 Electric Boogaloo, the same thing all over again, one unskilled hump with only ONE overlay product in their entire, ahem, "career", and Synhouse says, "Eh, yeah, go on and add this one to the Synhouse catalog, too.", and the other is destroyed, while the Synhouse model for the Prophet-600 is one of the top sellers in the Synhouse catalog.

Though it played out the same, this time was done for a different reason, it's because Synhouse is the one and only that makes the famous (the first was the Moog Source, released 3/15/2018) molded raised square button mechanical switch panels for the instruments that came out in the 1980s with GARBAGE membranes that should have NEVER been used by ANYONE.

And that product had to be selling into a very low end market of cheapskate buyers with Emax, Mirage, Prophet-600, etc.. Those people will accept something half as good just to get it for ten cents less. YES, they are really that cheap (Synhouse is the one that understands economics, manufacturing, stocking, sales, etc.).

So the superior mechanical button panel from Synhouse was bound to be outsold 3:1 or even 5:1 by a plain crap membrane (not that his version is especially crap any some reason, it's just that the whole membrane concept is crap made for crap products, it's low quality filth through and through right down to the terminating connectors, that's just how it is and once again Synhouse is the only one that's going to tell you the truth).

And that was an item that at least a few people have sold replacements for over the decades because any chimp can do it, especially since it's a dead simple design with only 2 colors instead of the 5 or 6 these Synhouse overlays usually have, so okay, Synhouse will be chimp #5, and Synhouse came out with the exact same membrane to be released/sell IN PARALLEL WITH the vastly superior Synhouse mechanical button panel which people will have to PAY FOR or step off, and due to the exquisite generosity of Synhouse, this identical plain membrane was initially priced at $39.50 which is HALF the well established price of the one that was selling in at least seven consecutive years at the price of $79.

That new Synhouse product blew away the longstanding $79 panel, and this was done ONLY to protect the superior Synhouse mechanical button panel, which it did, and it has sold fairly well. Sure, the Synhouse plain membranes sell twice as well or three times as well as the good ones, but nearly all of those plain membrane sales now go to Synhouse, too. Sorry dude, you don't matter and you were just collateral damage on this one. Now he's trying to seek refuge in reselling highly marked up Asian AC power cords on this platform. Godspeed.

Claiming Synhouse gets a score of 98/100 and is the best of all time isn't grandiosity, it's gravity: Who did the most work? Who invested the most money? Who took the most risk? Who spent the most time/money on shipping/travel? Who had the most gear (to use for examples/samples/testing) in the first place? Who owns (and has to warehouse) the most tooling? Who put the most into packing materials? Who took the most pictures and the best pictures? Who produced the most stock? Who warehoused/stocked the most product? Who kept them available 24 hours/day for 9 years and still counting instead of doing pre-orders again and again and being out of stock most of the time with people asking for it every two years at the end of dead threads on drum/synth forums?

It is Synhouse in all of those categories, so you'll more likely get struck by lightning than live to see someone pull in front of Synhouse. It would be like seeing the short bus win Le Mans.

b) To grade it on a curve, this is more interesting. Before Synhouse stepped in, without Synhouse, two of these three were about 75 or 80 out of a hundred, with all the others beyond those first three---mostly in the far past---being far below. And only 75 or 80 because you can't just do things wrong and lie about it and say it's "dead on", this is bad work and this is inarguable.........and the results they got---being dead and gone now---spell that out for you clearly. I'd be reticent to give 100 to a student who got many, many things wrong, even if it were graded on a curve and everyone else did it worse.

These two were using the same materials as the old overlays and more or less making them the same way as the old one, with moderately accurate artwork. But saying "dead on", "perfectly", and "....they are perfect...", no, no, that's the hole Synhouse will crowbar open to destruction after coming out with vastly superior products. Just showing the public their own photos of their own products and pointing out what BAD WORK can be seen there was enough to shut them down.  

But below that, there were at least a few makers/sellers of overlays that I don't even know about going back a few years, possibly decades.

These included just terrible attempts made on computer printers with people using sticker paper in a computer inkjet printer and putting clear sticky laminate over the top.

These were often discussed on the forums, as in, "I'm printing out an overlay for my SP1200, does anyone have the artwork?". Oh yes, sure, would you like the source code of Windows 95 to go with that? Good grief, these people are dumb. There's a lot more to it than download artwork>>>printer.

One of those that remained into the mid-2010s was one of the computer printer guys, Custom Synth UK, an absolute butcher telling you to cut out 80+ holes for the buttons, sliders, knobs, LEDs, and display using................a knife. Seriously. This is brain damaged.

So these two were at least making overlays the overlay way from overlay materials. Just not very well, and with absolutely NO concept of how manufacturing and business works.

Neither were even able to correctly and consistently set prices for their "products". And one was heard squealing many times online responding to people who said the prices are too high, just the typical loser stuff like "$125 GTFOHWTB! ;-)" and "the price is very steep", and that had him squirming around, nervously having a memory dump and stammering all sorts of things trying to justify the $160 price (And mentioning Dave Smith......seriously. These fanboys can't be helped.). Everyone on the forum was talking down to him like a ***** and he kept coming back to take it.............like a *****. Then after trying to defend his $160 trash product against those comments, he lowered it to $125 and came back trolling---unsuccessfully---lulz---to find buyers, and then lowered it to $99. Okay, on second thought, I guess those typical losers were right, he is a *****.

Go on, go on, say the Synhouse price is stupid and refer to "TB" and give your username alongside that comment and get an immediate lifetime 100% discount in the form of being banned for life. 500-1,000 of them on there now, but there's room left for you, too. That's what I thought.

And grading it on a curve, AFTER Synhouse stepped in, two of these three were basically 0 out of a hundred, with both just evaporating before your eyes then. Neither could withstand this competition on any level.

But I'm leaving the third poor overlay seller out of most of this because that one was different all the time, not just different from the other two, but different from himself in his own past. I suspect that there may have been an inkjet printer and sticker paper in his dark past, and the resulting quality of his items varied all over the place. He seemed to work hard, alone, and did a lot of things, but usually did whatever he did (Tried?) just briefly before doing something else, absolutely no staying power, and the end result was usually or probably always terrible because of the total lack of actual manufacturing processes being performed.

This guy was working hard (as a hobby) in a borderline third world country, trying to make the best of what he had, but what he had was drastically limited by his lack of willingness to spend any money on anything. He was one of these guys who always figures out another way, a shortcut, etc., he might sell you a product made of rancid fish heads if he thought he could make half a dollar doing it, and he'd never focus on one thing and try to get good, er, or at least BETTER, he'd just do one thing after another and any overlay he'd come out with would have just a few made and wouldn't even exist half a year later, as he was on to doing this and that and the other thing, and really believing that ANYTHING could be sold, at least if it were cheap enough, doing just embarrassingly bad parts made by 3D printing that looked like boogers rolled in an ant hill. Just using the absolute cheapest of everything for every part on everything he ever made.

His printed circuit board assemblies and included accessories had ONLY the cheapest components and materials he could find anywhere, without any exceptions whatsoever (this is a particular area of company focus, the Synhouse printed circuit board assemblies are of astounding quality and cleanliness, and the listings for those have memes in the photo gallery mocking the shockingly bad work done by the people selling against Synhouse).

Which is sad because Synhouse could get all of those cheap parts face to face from the factory for a third the price he was paying, but Synhouse wouldn't take those TRASH parts even if they were free. One Synhouse competitor was putting 15 cent and 16 cent parts on their $4,000 product, but Synhouse wouldn't take those parts for free. There is just no quality ethic out there...

The absolute red flag of a loser is when you see them trying to sell their crap product on IG or one of the other social media platforms, "Hey, just a few left, PM me if interested.", when you KNOW you have seen them in the past selling on the e-commerce platforms like this one.

It's because they lie, can't follow the rules, can't be trusted with money, can't keep commitments, etc.. I mean, what's easier than listing and selling on this platform? You just need to be honest. Geez, Synhouse built out the Synhouse platform with open source Minivend and SSL shopping cart functionality when it was still against the rules to use PP payments on this platform here. So listing/selling here is as easy as falling off a log compared to REALLY doing it from SCRATCH as Synhouse did from day one, becoming the first in the entire analog retro MIDI/CV retrofit business to have secure server shopping, and that was in the first year out over a quarter of a century ago.

ALL of those three overlay sellers were on this platform (help yourself to ask me what their usernames were, and what their fake usernames were, a good number of Synhouse competitors have a fake username they are using at the same time), and Synhouse has (at the time of this writing, and still counting) done 4,600+ feedback bearing transactions (including one bad feedback point coming from one of these three failed overlay LOSERS doing it using a fake account, which makes it at least the third account he used on the platform, this one to buy a Synhouse overlay, file a fake case against Synhouse [and he lost, I know, what a shock, the perennial loser loses yet again], and leave bad feedback) and Synhouse is not only still standing, but absolutely dominating. You are not going to see the Synhouse account go quiet here and start selling on IG or Snapchat instead with intentionally bad photos converted to black and white because stupid.

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The "I'm Important, Too!" Namedropping Strategy:

These guys couldn't seem to write anything without saying "Bob Moog" and/or "Dave Rossum" and/or "Dave Smith" in their writings, as if it somehow gave them some credibility/status by saying that. It doesn't, it only confirms that they are nobody and have to constantly name drop and try to raise their status by association, where there is, in fact, no association at all between any of them and any of those named people (conversely, Synhouse got four figures from that list of people being name-dropped, and Synhouse got another four figures FROM THOSE OVERLAY SELLERS THEMSELVES, and Synhouse got five figures now nearing six figures from dozens of other competitors combined because they all routinely depend on the Synhouse quality, detail, and the constant availability of this excellent supply and don't want to sign on to a "group buy" or "pre-order" to get a repair part).

This is just name dropping to make them sound like they are a part of something they so desperately want to be a part of but are not a part of.

Get to the bottom of it: If you're ever curious and want to do a quick litmus test that will often weed out the real ones from the fakes, ask yourself where do they live? Okay, they're not in the music business. Not from that location, they're not. It's all happening in the 2-1-3 yo.

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The Pre-Order Way of Having Your Own Business Without Paying For It:

All three of these overlay sellers were doing business by pre-order, or at least trying to (earlier on it was easier, later on not so much, it was a lot better in the old days when people hadn't seen their TRASH overlays yet), because they wouldn't pay the money to make their own products. Hey now, you don't hear me complaining, that incredibly dumb practice is one of the top 10,000 reasons Synhouse would outsell them 10:1 even if there were no other Synhouse advantages (like quality, detail, always in stock, etc.).

"Hi, I'm thinking about opening a grocery store because it's my dream even though I have no experience. If you'd like to buy some groceries, pay me for them and I'll have them available in 30 days."

Do I REALLY need to spend my time telling you that this is not how the world works?!?!

One of the three was a serial offender at the pre-order failed business model, sheepishly tried to act like he wasn't doing it, then did it, well, lulz, TRIED to do it, again and again in at least four consecutive years.

It went like, "If everyone would like to wait I'm completely fine with that...." and "I'm not pushing anyone to pre order, was only making it clear that this is a limited production run at this point." (not limited enough, they were later unsold and liquidated at 50% off so he could "re-coupe [sic] my loses [sic]" [Is that "coupe" a Ford or a Chevy?]), "I still have more than 10 of each in stock in case you're still wanting one." (Ed note: They're not. That's why you "still have more than 10 of each" after posting four times in a single forum, not counting double-posting to FB, this e-commerce platform, etc..), then someone says, "They are all out of the SP1200 overlays but last time I heard from them they need at least 10 people to interested to do another batch (Ed note: WOW. Ten. I'll loan you one of the two Synhouse forklifts if you need it to handle all that freight.). " (So I guess he wasn't "completely fine with that" after all!).

Then another said, "I emailed these guys back in april said they would have some coming soon I think we just have to round up 10 people......and just pre order....". Then, "I will do another production run if I can get 8-10 guys to fully commit and not tire kickers.", and got roasted by Synhouse for that one.

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The "It's WAY Better Than the Ones In the Past" Method of Selling TRASH:

As for others talking about the past, there is no specificity. There have been repeated claims in the recent past, I mean I have seen it DOZENS of times, "These are not thin cheap vinyl stickers like others have offered in the past.". What? Who? Why? Vinyl? Who did this?

This sounds like an imaginary, made-up, intentionally bad product held out to make their own TRASH seem good by comparison.

Synhouse is always the one always calling out the past with specificity, years, details, and often photos, quotes, and screenshots going back in some cases even more than a quarter of a century. And why is it "thin"? I mean, if vinyl is so cheap, they could make it thick and it would still be cheap, yet less criticized. This nonsense was offered along with the story of how thick the overlays from that seller were, so this was a claim that others were thinner, setting off a race and a topic of competition that doesn't make any sense.

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You Can Tell  -  Oh, You Can Tell:

Looking at the items from those other three overlay sellers, before even examining these closely and thinking about it, I was probably unconsciously aware of the lousy overlays from those three lame sellers, just by seeing people at that time selling their SP or Emulator II with an overlay from one of those three terrible overlay sellers recently installed on it.

This was because the Emulator II replacement just looked too black, because some people said the dark blue was too dark and not blue enough ("I do wish the blue was a brighter blue like the earlier version EIIs", also not matching, "The mod wheel overlay is just a bit darker than the main panel" said by someone who bought it and didn't want to install it and was selling it instead and wanted to, at the very least, be more honest about it than the original seller who'd made that trash---and is long gone now), but this isn't necessarily a criticism because the colors of the old Emulator II overlays were all over the place from one production to another, plus those were TERRIBLE overlays that faded badly as they shed the top off which itself turned yellow, making the overlay look even less blue.

As ever, only Synhouse has posted the full color 1985 E-mu company advertisement for it in the photo gallery so you can see yourself how it looked back then, and compare to the somewhat bluer blue of the Synhouse overlays for the Emulator II, Emulator II+, and Emulator II+ HD (and again, no one else but Synhouse ever had overlays for all of those models, all three of which went to a second production in later years after the first production). And you can see that the very bluish Synhouse looks a lot more like the old one did in 1985 before it faded (in the sun) or darkened (in a flight case) with age.

And the lousy Emulator II replacement from the out-of-business Synhouse competitor looked too dark because the artwork was so badly done, the light gray areas between the white pinstripes was too narrow, making this clearly two-tone design into more of a dark blue with gray stripes design, which looked bad. Looking at the new one next to the old one in real life will do it, but the error is so huge you don't even need it, you can see the huge gray area size difference right from the photos of it.

And the three dark blue/dark red pinstripes across the top don't even barely match from the main panel overlay to the small Moog wheels overlay (moronically called "tone wheels" in 100s of listings and relistings) after embarrassingly saying "Our main control label and mod wheel set (or "pitch wheel", changed from "tone wheels" after being lampooned by Synhouse) match each other without excuses.". It's just trash. One loser in Australia who bought one and tried to resell it couldn't dump it in two years.

And the SP-12 overlay from the last of those three was the worst, saddest fruity blue color. Another one even worse came out later looking about like Pokemon, but no one ever owned up and took responsibility for that one.

And the SP-1200 overlays from both of the other two sellers, or maybe just one of them, I don't know, in people's late 2010s listings trying to sell their SP1200s, you could just tell that the top was too dark and either too shiny or too reflective, it just looked wrong.

Look at the first/main photo in the Synhouse listing for the SP-12 overlay; This is the REAL correct vintage look with rich colors and textures. It LOOKS like you are looking at 40 years ago.

And on that topic, N O N E of this lame-o "retro" and "reissue" gear (synths and drum machines, often inexplicably made in a smaller size than the old one, as if someone out there wants that) looks vintage AT ALL. The materials are ALWAYS wrong, the finishes are ALWAYS wrong, the components/control parts are ALWAYS wrong, the look of the PCBs are ALWAYS wrong, etc.. A small corner of someone's room filled with that phony baloney "retro" crap just looks sad, and no one is going to want it in 10-25 years.

Look at anything from Synhouse, an easy to find example being the rack ears for the gray Emax Rack models and black Emax II Rack models, and look at the color and surface texture (not to mention the actual material and fabrication method as compared to the sad, SAD competitor on that item, Groundskeeper Willie), and compare to the old one. It is exactly the same.

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The "I'm So Good, Because It's So Hard To Do" Strategy:

One of those overlay sellers said hundreds of times that "these labels took over 2 years to get right" and "These labels took over 2 years to painfully manufacture", and one of the buyers trying to dump it unused reiterated this, "....if you followed the saga of their production on the Emulator forum you'll know the process is unlikely to be repeated (Ed note: It was repeated, and exceeded, by Synhouse, no once, not twice, but thrice, to wit Emulator II 2018, Emulator II+ 2021, and Emulator II+ HD 2021.), given the huge pain and cost involved......".

It took you two years to do this. Two years for a STICKER? That's not a flex, bro. That's an admission of total incompetency.

How long do you think it took the supplier to E-mu to make the design? Two years? If it did, they couldn't have afforded/justified paying for it. Because us REAL COMPANIES actually have to pay for the engineering, etc. that we are utilizing, we're not asking around on forums for someone who can "help". It probably took two DAYS of work back in 1984.

And at that moment, E-mu Systems was basically without operational cash or credit, closed down for a while, and had laid off just about all of the employees (something that happened again 4-1/2 years later, and just about happened again 4 years later before selling to Asia and getting toy store levels of project cash), and only reemerged after cleverly getting a very, very large prepaid order to get things paid. There was no question that the new product was good and hot, but a profoundly stupid release strategy (done again and again by a few of these electronic music companies) left them with almost no money coming in while spending a ton of money advertising, promoting, and even demonstrating a product they couldn't afford to produce, hadn't done the work on yet, and in fact did not really exist in the form in which it would be sold, so doing this was sort of like a K1ckstarter without the money.

At the time of this writing, Synhouse has 21 overlays in production/stock. If those had taken two years each to design, it would have taken 42 years to make all of those, and even Synhouse has "only" been around 27 years.

There were Synhouse 21 overlay productions completed---and this does not include the second productions of seven of them, nor different shaded versions, nor making the Emulator II wheels panel overlays again and again every time a new production of the main control panel overlays were done in order to use the same custom mixed 2-part epoxy ink on both pieces to ensure the color was the same---in the first 8-1/2 years, and this sometimes had 4 being done in parallel and sometimes none at all for two years.

And it also doesn't include project work and design work done on the overlays Synhouse hasn't completed yet---and there are a LOT of those, two of which will be the most expensive ever made (both on project funding and on unit selling price).

The actual time spent on the Synhouse overlay designs---and these are very expensive engineering/design time hours covered as quickly as possible---is usually about 2-3 days doing the basic design as well as possible, blocking it out, then 2-5 half days spent making improvements.

In one unfortunate case, on the very first overlay that was done completely twice because the first design was rejected, it had about 12 days of work in it, tops, but that work spanned 7 months because sometimes it wasn't even looked at for two months along the way, because there were so many other, more important Synhouse projects going at the time. This was before Synhouse was selling drum/synth overlays so there wasn't any pressure because no one in the public knew that Synhouse was moving into overlays, and there was no way of knowing how much of the Synhouse company sales would end up being overlay sales (it's known now, though, it's a fairly low percentage of total company revenues, but very high in the number of daily transactions), this was just started once Synhouse needed at least 25 overlays for Synhouse machines, and finally went back to all the previously seen 2013-2017 forum postings about people making/selling them, and with a close look, WOW, these were dumb ***** lying a lot to sell horribly detailed crappy products, and they were almost never available anyway, it was just some dip**** posting about a pre-order so he could get some money to make something he wanted to make without paying for it himself, making only 10-25 of them, then running off into the weeds after a closeout sale because he couldn't hold his **** and wanted his money back just a few months after putting it in, with people coming back onto the forum every 1-2 years saying, "Are these still available? I need one.", and getting no reply.

If these Synhouse overlays took even 15 full days of design work, they wouldn't be made at all, it would just be too much money. And not one of the competitors would pay for any of these Synhouse-level projects, not even 5 days of this.
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