Dismayed In China
I doubt that you have seventeen minutes of your life to spend watching the above video, but it's an outstanding tutorial on how to sell a product: Demonstrate the capabilities in short bursts with a little bit of explanation, keep the pace up. It helps that this fellow has some chops and can easily copy the riffs for which each patch is designed.
The nice people at Hello Music put the Eventide H9 Max on sale yesterday, and it was possible to stack one discount on top of another, so after listening to the seventeen-minute demo (twice, in the background, while I worked on my day job) I ordered the H9 MAX. I figured it would be worth it for the ability to easily duplicate the Allman Brothers harmony solo lines --- something my Digitech Whammy is theoretically capable of doing but in practice can't accomplish.
There's just one little problem, for me in particular and for America in general.
The H9MAX has an astounding list of capabilities. It's a counterpart of sorts to my AdrenaLinn III, but the focus is on well-known effects and combinations instead of unique and new arpeggiations. While it's far from cheap, it effectively replaces about $2000 worth of dedicated effects boxes and offers capabilities you wouldn't get with those boxes over and above.
There's just one little problem, one I didn't realize until I started reading forums: the H9, like all other modern Eventide stompboxes, is made in China. This is kind of a problem for me. I don't own a single made-in-China effects device and the one made-in-China guitar I have is a rather unique item that I bought from TTAC's Ronnie Schreiber. Knowing that the H9 is made overseas significantly decreases my desire to own it.
With that said, the bulk of the H9 product is made in the US --- because the H9 is fundamentally a computer with a very long list of musician-developed patches. The H9 "Core", which is mechanically identical but has just a few algorithms, costs half as much as an H9 MAX. So I'm paying most of the money for the American content, the same way you might get a Chinese-made guitar case with the low-end Gibsons and Fenders.
The opinion of the Internet is that Eventide's decision to make the H9 in China is bullshit because Strymon makes their very well-regarded digital effects boxes in the US. I agree, but I'm concerned that the H9's complexity and processing power makes building it in the United States effectively impossible. The only places where you can build serious-business electronics in the USA are defense contractors and billion-dollar showcases like the new Apple facility. China today is what California was in the Seventies: the place where you could get all the electronics knowledge and chip supply cheap and local. I doubt that will change any time soon, which is depressing.
I could cancel my order, but I think I'll give the H9 a chance. And I'll send Eventide a letter telling them that, regardless of the H9's excellence, I'll be buying American next time.