It has been my long experience that 90% of musicians are virtually always strapped for cash. In fact, the reason I became a synth programmer and journalist in the first place was that I knew it was the only way I'd ever get to play with those amazing-looking collections of knobs and sliders I'd admired from afar. Ten years on, the price of electronic instruments has fallen dramatically (mostly at the expense of all those amazing-looking knobs and sliders which first drew me towards them, I'm afraid) and I mustn't grumble about the money I've made, nor the deals which kind-hearted manufacturers have from time to time seen fit to offer me on instruments with which I have fallen in love.

Yet even I, with no wife and kids, no mortgage, no vices, and no habits to support, still can't afford everything I want. When writing, I still try and bear in mind that the prices which some manufacturers, keyboard store salesmen and even some journalists describe as extremely 'affordable' would still have been completely out of my reach when I was playing in a band.

Consequently, I find it all the more worrying when some of the underlying realities of musical instrument design and marketing are brought home to me. I guess underneath I've always known that they were there, it's just that occasionally they're shoved in your face, and you can't kid yourself that it's not like that really! This has happened to me twice in my career, once several years back, and again at a recent American trade show, which stirred me from my apathy for long enough to pen this little diatribe.

Ten years ago, I took my first job with a local synthesizer company, who made a small yellow and black monosynth which sold in the tens of thousands. I soon realised that there was nobody in the current incarnation of the company who was capable of programming it, let alone designing it. I made programming my domain, and set out to find the designer. When I finally tracked him down (designing test equipment for a washing machine manufacturer), I met a modest chap clearly gifted beyond his background in multitrack servicing, and for the next five years we were inseparable.

To cut a long story short, between us we designed and marketed a new fully featured monosynth with a sequencer and programmable memories — just at the time when the world was going crazy for horribly stripped down polysynths. Nevertheless, it did pretty well over the next three years, selling over a thousand units and earning high praise from the likes of Ultravox, Geoff Downes, and Vangelis. All in all, over three years the instrument just about broke even. In other words, my friend could have made just as much money sitting at home doing nothing.

Many people said that if it hadn't looked so ugly, the synth could have sold in ten or twenty times the numbers that it did. Me, I thought it looked butch. But what do I know? Anyway, most people preferred to buy something in a beautiful moulded Japanese case, even if it sounded thin and nasty. To this day I am tortured by the thought that a pretty case might have made the last English synthesizer company a viable prospect. What an appalling thought: that an audio designer's fortunes depend on the visual appeal of a product.

Around the time that the monosynth came to the end of its product life, and a follow-up polyphonic instrument disappeared due to cashflow problems, I ran into a young DSP specialist who had some very interesting ideas for a PhD from the Fens Poly (as we Oxford graduates like to think of the competition). True, these were in a very primitive form (on a BBC model B computer as I remember), but something told me that down the road aways there was a world-beating product.

The design went through various incarnations, and now exists in several forms, variously disguised as a sampler, a hard disk recording system, and a forthcoming stand-alone multitrack recorder. I have been spending a lot of time recently presenting this product all over the world, and it was on the most recent of these trips that for the second time I had my nose rubbed in this appearance business.

Generally speaking, the unit has been well received everywhere. The press and the distributors love the features, and none of them can believe the price. For once, everyone seems to think it might even be too low. However, a Japanese distributor who I thought was all set to place a big order (he enthused about the sound quality and features for half an hour) suddenly did a major about-face and refused to order any at all. Why? Because it looked wrong.

"Even though it costs a fraction of the price of the competition and doesn't have as many limitations?", I enquired, baffled. "In Japan, appearance is very important", he replied. "It doesn't look as good as the competition, it must look the same"... even if that competition is four times the price, apparently. Eventually we came up with a scheme whereby he could buy the boards and case them himself. "It will make the product 50% more expensive," he said, "but that doesn't matter, I will still sell more!"

"Well," I thought, "Japan didn't get where it is today with that mentality, but if that's what he wants, fine! At least a British dealer would never come up with such a foolish idea." Wrong!

The very next visitor to the stand was a British store owner who loved everything about the product... except the look. He wanted it rehoused in a flash looking case even if it doubled the price: "I don't sell anything unless it looks the business." "Even if it doesn't do the business?", I retorted. He did not place an order.

Fortunately, other dealers and distributors were not so squeamish, and at present orders for the product outstrip manufacturing capacity (so I'm not worried that it will go the way of previous British designs), but as a result you still can't buy the product in British music stores, whereas it is already on sale in France, Germany, Italy, and the US. (Things will change in December as I have now found more sensible dealers in the UK.) But what I would really like to know is whether there are any other musicians out there who look for performance in their musical purchases. Or are these people right? Do the public buy with their eyes, not their ears and minds? I hope not.

Anyway, it's up to you now. If you go out and buy only pretty boxes, then the dealers will end up not ordering ugly innovative products, however great the features and however low the price. Is that really what you want? Consumer, vote with your cash.

Paul Wiffen is a synth programmer, journalist, and all-round hi-tech whizz-kid. As you can tell, he's mad as hell and he's not going to stand for it any more.