KordBot state of play

KordBot
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As you’ve probably all already seen, we just released a very large firmware update for the S2400 today.

This has taken several months of development and we only have 2 developers.

We have many kordbots here in stock, but it wouldn’t be right of me to sell them due to the fact that the last fw update we released for the kordbot, while fixing and improving some things, broke others.

It just didn’t work out with the developer we took on to take care of KordBot and so I had to make the decision for our 2 best to be able to finish what they were doing (s2400) before they took on the project properly.

KordBot is in NO WAY abandoned, and I’m happy to say that we can now finally give it the attention it deserves. Once fixed, I will make KordBot available for sale again on the website.

You may wonder why on earth I would make the decision to develop another product while KordBot wasn’t finished.

Simply put, there would be no Isla Instruments if I didn’t.

Kordbot is not profitable enough on its own to maintain the company. If I had not done this, there would be no more development of KordBot at all. the S2400 keeps the company afloat.

My most sincere apologies, watch this space now over the coming weeks.

MAKE BEATS NOT WAR <3

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Much respect! I plan on buying a KordBot when made available.

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Yep, I’m defo up for a KordBot when they’re back in the shop. Fair call to focus on where the sustainable cashflow is, too. You’re a business, after all.

Also, for any anxious S2400 heads out there who might worry that a renewed focus on the KordBot will take away from S2400 development, Brad did say in the recent livestream that, of course, bug fixes for the latest firmware will still be given due attention. Also, there were enough mentions of future S2400 enhancements to reassure folk. In summary, no need to fret!

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The kordbot and some new drum kits were responsible for me getting back into it. I’m looking forward to this.

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Here’s my story Brad,

I first bought a Kordbot a few years ago after reading the good Sound on Sound review. As a violin player and not being good at playing the keyboard, at first I really loved Kordbot as a great inspiration tool for me to kickstart song structures. I believe many guitarists and other non-keyboard musicians also liked Kordbot for the same reason.

So it delivered the goods, so to say, at the time, and by buying into Kordbot I was implicitly accepting to see the “yet to be implemented” features pending.

Then months later I saw Isla developing S2400, whilst Kordbot was clearly not a finished product yet. As much as I understand you are running a small company and that Kordbot is not profitable enough for such small business, I think you have nevertheless lost some potential customers along the way, who are legitimate in believing they have been fooled.

Marketing 101 is about building confidence among your customer base. I guess you clearly show nowadays that your customer base is now the S2400.

As we all know, to date Kordbot is still lacking many missing promised features, starting with the sequencer, but more importantly it is not a stable enough product, even for its core features.

I am OK to live with the frustratingly poor quality of the Kordbot hardware : just my opinion here, maybe my hardware is from a bad batch but I’m finding myself having to repeat key presses on too many occasions. frustrating, but workable.

But more importantly, to me some of the core functionalities are just way too circumvoluted, for instance a simple thing like saving one’s work, for me, is a big turnoff factor preventing me to use Kordbot… such simple functionality should just stand max a couple of key presses away and instead, it’s hidden in a separate menu, which is not very user friendly for non-IT-minded musicians. The “file manager” menu might appeal to IT specialists (mounting/unmounting anyone? category/project ? wtf…), but I’m sorry it simply doesn’t work for musicians-alike. This file manager is the MAJOR turnoff factor for me. Since months Kordbot is just plain paper weight in my studio and I rather started learning playing actual chords on the Linnstrument set up as a violin in 7th .

So, going back to the S2400, while I was always a big fan of the SP1200 and 90s hip hop , early 2000 french house from the likes of Alan Braxe , initially I thought I would buy one of your S2400 .

But then the sour feelings I got from being a Kordbot beta customer (sorry there is no other word) took over my GAS for S2400 and made me decide to NOT buy a S2400… Maybe I was wrong as I see that most if not all of your efforts are now put into making S2400 customers happy, but as things stand Isla won’t one more penny coming from me…

until you get some action to get Kordbot a finished product.

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A little bit of good news here: Login • Instagram

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indeed. bring it on Brad :slight_smile:

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I must admit I am disappointed to have effectively been used to financially support another product and left with a deprecated product, I have had the device for so long now that the warranty has run out and it doesn’t have the sold functionality, like the sequencer. I can see the same reason being used again and again as you develop the next new product that has higher value to sustain the company.

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That is an interesting perspective since Brad has been pretty clear that part of the goal of the S2400s creation, outside of developing a kick ass old school sampler with modern functionality, was to help be able to sustain the company with an eye towards further kordbot development. Because without it the company and thus the Kordbot wouldn’t have survived.

Kordbot FW development is in process with more coming up for sale soon.

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I hope I am proved wrong but only time will tell. I am leaning towards that perspective because the time is measured in years since the purchase of my Kordbot and although Brad has responded I cannot see how any reasonable person would think that a reply after 3 years of the Kordbot purchase would constitute some kind of viable and timely answer to having a device that as yet remains incomplete function-wise. It really has not lived up to its expectation. I can’t really see how it will ever get back on track despite best efforts. Even worse I do believe that the original producers of the s2400 are recreating the device now. That will hurt Isla no doubt but I don’t wish that upon them as despite being disgruntled by the Kordbot issue I am also a human being.

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You mean the original producer of the SP1200? Dave Rossum? First the new SP1200 is a limited run of 3 batches as far as I understand and it’s $4,000 which priced quite a few people out including me. One of our beta testers bought one however. It also uses the same chip as the S2400 because the original chip used in the SP1200 isn’t available any longer. And functionally they really are different machines. That said I think Covid has been far worse than any competition could have been on shipping expense and supply chains. It’s been brutal for a lot of those creating electronic music devices across the board.

I can’t speak to anything regarding customer service on your end with the kordbot, all I can say is what is known through many posts and videos. Brad really couldn’t find a developer who could handle the Kordbot, several came and went and now that he has Mickey and the S2400 FW is matured and in a stable place he is working on the KB. It was never the intention of ISLA to leave the KB users hanging out to dry and abandon the product and I do know there will be more available for sale once the FW is in a good place and Brad feels comfortable selling them again due to that fact. That is all I can say about where things stand currently.

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genuine question here, actually curious, why not just open source it?

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That sounds interesting. At least, if this were done to S2400 I would consider contributing since I do not have a KB.

However, I don’t think it’s possible because it would probably imply releasing the schematics to public which I, personally, wouldn’t want to do if I were a part of the team. It’s certainly a big risk.

What if there’s only 2 people who express interest in making it open source and then they end up never contributing? This would make the whole codebase available to public without anything tangible done to the project. This would be a loss for the company.

People will have to get debugging probes too, which is a whole different problem due to development being baremetal.

Making it open source might change the project for the better but it can also make things a lot worse. The same applies to the way development has been done so far. Both models can have downsides. It’s a very difficult decision, too.

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