Dude, I'm going to try to let this thread die a peaceful death. Was I taking "personal cracks at your personality"? I don't think so. For starters, it somehow seems that would be redundant. All I was saying is that when you boldly say "I'm entitled to any opinion I want to have", you are 1000 percent correct. It just doesn't mean that the opinion in question is well-reasoned.

SOLD OUT! SOLD OUT! Well, that seems like a pretty harsh, upper-case accusation on your part. I just don't see it. Try something like "They made the best decisions they could given market conditions". Hell, maybe they even made a big mistake. I know, YOU would have persevered and developed the product while living on bread and water whilst holed up in some rat-infested garret, eh? (You ARE developing an Empeg Mark 3 clone I'm told.) Alternatively, YOU would have sold the operation to the multimedia conglomerate that was GUARANTEED to develop Empeg iterations Mark 4, 5, and 6.

Don't get me wrong, man. I'm not exactly thrilled. OK, OK, I only spent $1400 or so, but that ain't chump change. OK, OK, so Hugo is perhaps a bit more sympathetic to your/our plight. Rob has fielded a million questions on this BBS with what I would consider accuracy, openess, and good grace. OK, so he didn't swab your brow with a damp cloth. He is, after all, British. What's all this "SOLD OUT" [censored], though??

I hope that both you and I enjoy our Empegs for many months to come. Failing that, if you find that you twist and turn every night and just can't get a good 8 hours of winkie, my buy-out offer still stands.

Jim