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No Proxima for U.S.?

Alan Sharkis

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A few days ago, I noticed a post on the Proxima Digital Accordion page at Facebook that Proxima said, in essence, that 25 Mias were built and sent to distributors in Europe, and that production was halted because of difficulties in obtaining electronic components. Nothing was said about any shipments of Mias to the US. Yesterday I noticed that Petosa Accordions, which was to be the sole distributor of Mias in North America re-designed their website to honor Petosa's 100 years in business.. Proxima was not among the brands listed as being stocked by Petosa.
 
I did not see post, but I can understand the difficulties. They need rather specialized electronic components and there is still a global shortage in component production. I really hope to be able to play a Proxima before I'm too old to play at all... Maybe they will have some to try by the time the 2025 World Music Festival in Innsbruck happens...? Who knows.
 
Nothing unexpected, the same thing happened when the EVO came out except that the first few went to Europe and the first several hundred after that went to Japan. The first North American units came here about 2 years later.

I hope you aren’t on a pre-order list.
 
Nothing unexpected, the same thing happened when the EVO came out except that the first few went to Europe and the first several hundred after that went to Japan. The first North American units came here about 2 years later.

I hope you aren’t on a pre-order list.
Me? No! Not with three accordions already in my house and no income derived from them. As i understand it, though, people who attended the 2020 IDEAS Symposium were offered a discount if they pre-orrdered from Petosa, and that could have been a sizable group.
 
there is a steep entry level for the USA that EVO chose not to do
(basically getting an electrical item UL certified)
because of the cost vs: expected sales

i suppose once they made a committed arrangement with an importer,
then they moved forward

since Petosa WAS committed (on website to 2023 inventory) they may have
avoided the extra delay (as per original agreement)

however

sadly it seems Proxima is the very definition of "Vaporwear"
and for their size and pricepoint, and considering the Italian parent company
is manufacturing the boards and electronics assemblies entirely in Italy,
then the excuse really sounds convenient to me, rather than legitimate

the page Petosa apparently removed had nothing but vague superlatives
that wanted to associate the proxima product somehow with the
digital accordions that had gone before it (implying an R&D link and lineage)
so i personally saw the page as deceptive marketing bullshit rather than
actual legit information anyway

"available for delivery in 2023" ....................... indeed

my condolences to the accordionists who were really, hopefully
looking forward to the Proxima with genuine relish and anticipation

i might suggest you redirect to the Cavognolo offering which has
apparently been quite improved from the initial Odyssee
 
I did not see post, but I can understand the difficulties. They need rather specialized electronic components and there is still a global shortage in component production. I really hope to be able to play a Proxima before I'm too old to play at all... Maybe they will have some to try by the time the 2025 World Music Festival in Innsbruck happens...? Who knows.
Paul, everything is in short supply around here. Without getting too political, I can tell you about trying to convince some people that shortages of material and inflation is a global problem, when all they want to do is blame the current head of state in whatever country they inhabit. But all of that aside, it’s tough enough to get the most common chips when one factory burns down. It’s even harder when, as you pointed out, to get the specialized ones. And as I understand it, the Proxima Mia is loaded with specialized chips.
 
but there is the rub

what specialized chips are used in an Accordion ?

as in Roland's case, the oriiginal chipset that included the core samples, the
sub silicon assemblies (like the FX circuitry and logic) and the specialized
re-write of some pre-used (from other roland instruments) operational programming

they made their own, of course, since it is unique to the line of products
(every Roland accordion ever built has used the same chipset.. different models
come about from the limitation of enabled features)

Proxima would have had a similar initial chipset they developed, which perhaps
did take a longer time to design (as they had a hill to climb, not having the
resources of Roland or other musical instrument manufacturers available

beyond that core, specialized chipset, you need a microprocessor, a bunch of Memory,
a selection of peripheral modules (like bluetooth/wireless component, or a MIDI soundset,
and some Digital Analog Convertors) and some simple analog audio processing

there are lots of places to source those commonalities, including European and Taiwanese
chipmakers

the shortage caused by dependence on China and Covid would be minimal for
a specialized project like a digital accordion

i mean. my God, you could do it entirely on the Auduino platform if you got desperate

seriously, their bodywork was a done deal what ? 5 years ago ? there should
be a storage room with 15,000 proxima accordion shells if you just made one per day
while you were waiting for R&D to finish the software and get it burned onto a chipset

the speakers? also can be sourced with an italian speaker maker... who needs the
Eminence China branch ?

so i remain "not convinced"
 
I have to admit that I was a little suspicious, even if I wanted Proxima to succeed. Maybe, knowing that they couldn’t give the large chip manufacturers a large enough order (think accordion demand vs. flat keyboard demand) Proxima was stuck with the smaller chip-makers who, in turn, were running into trouble. I don’t know. All I know is that I’m happy that I didn’t get pulled in and didn’t pre-order one.

Now, about Cavagnolo, I must say that I’ve always been fascinated by their digitals. I know one dealer that said that the company is hard to work with. How many people in the U. S. play one?
 
OK, so I took a look, as much as I can ind, on the web at the new Cavagnolo Air models. If we stick to piano treble keyboards, there are only two basic choices available -- a 37/96 and a 41/120. But within those two, there are different levels of flexibility, which implies, of course, complexity and cost. Again, I'd probably not buy one, but at least we have a company that's certainly not fly-by-night. I'd have to be much more fluent in French to learn more about them. And again, outside of Europe, who sells them and how large a player base exists?
 
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