I was off-list so I missed the original thread about a year ago. In
checking it out, I've come across this announcemant from a couple of
days ago on the Violet site:

12.04.2006 - Baby Bottle patent cancelled
We would like to inform you, that patent No. D504,126 (regarding microphones - Baby Bottle and Bluebird) registered by "Baltic Latvian Universal Electronics" LLC is cancelled by U.S. Patent Trademark Office.

After this patent No. D504,126 cancellation "Baltic Latvian Universal Electronics" DOES NOT have any legal rights to distribute and manufacture SEVEN microphone models
(Blueberry, Mouse, Kiwi, Dragonfly, Cactus, Baby Bottle, Bluebird). All legal rights of designs of these microphones now belong only to Latvia company "Scruples" Ltd. Copy of letter approving cancellation of patent No. D504,126 attached.

Does anybody know what's really going on here?? Is EV still involved
in distributing BLUE?
I'm really confused...

-glenn

Does anybody know what's really going on here??

Apparently the factory in Latvia began using the proprietary
intellectual knowledge & designs from the American team (Skipper &
others?) to produce non-BLUE mics to sell on the side, in violation of
the contract between the factory & management. Skipper is now using
another source, I believe in the US, to build the BLUE mics.

Scott Fraser

geezer wrote:
Does anybody know what's really going on here?? Is EV still involved
in distributing BLUE?
I'm really confused...

As far as I can tell, EV is still distributing BLUE.

Violet is a company that used to make medical products, which did some
contract metalwork for BLUE but which has now decided that they can make
microphones better than BLUE. They may have done some of the exterior
design work for the BLUE microphones as well; I'm not sure if their claims
about that are true. They definitely had nothing to do with the electronics
and capsule designs, and the microphones that Violet is currently selling
appear to have similar capsules, but put together by some folks who do not
understand the physics and some of the more important manufacturing issues.

Violet is claiming ownership of the exterior design shapes, and trying to
get BLUE to stop manufacturing mikes in those shapes. It seems that they
are taking the attitude that the exterior design is the important part of
the microphone (and in the MI market that might be the case... certainly
fancy cases and packaging sell more products than good sound does).
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

In article . com,
"Scott Fraser" wrote:

Does anybody know what's really going on here??

Apparently the factory in Latvia began using the proprietary
intellectual knowledge & designs from the American team (Skipper &
others?) to produce non-BLUE mics to sell on the side, in violation of
the contract between the factory & management. Skipper is now using
another source, I believe in the US, to build the BLUE mics.

Scott Fraser

Way back in the day before mice and fruit mics, I met Skipper and a
Latvian man whose name I forget when they came to a big studio in town
showing their wares. They put on a nice presentation. I don't know if
this was the same Latvian man referred to in this thread, but he was
definitely the technical person behind the designs, and Skipper, a
singer, was spearheading the marketing side of things. I don't know how
things changed as time went on (I'm probably talking about 10 years ago
here), or who did what on the later mics, or if the original technical
guy from Latvia stayed involved, but in the beginning, there was a
pretty clear division between the technical and the marketing. Both
gentleman were were a pleasure to meet and the mics of the time,
including rebuilt 47s and the bottle mic, were enjoyable to use.

--
Jay Frigoletto
Mastersuite
www.promastering.com

Jay-atldigi wrote:

Way back in the day before mice and fruit mics, I met Skipper and a
Latvian man whose name I forget when they came to a big studio in town
showing their wares. They put on a nice presentation. I don't know if
this was the same Latvian man referred to in this thread, but he was
definitely the technical person behind the designs, and Skipper, a
singer, was spearheading the marketing side of things.

That was Martins Saulspurens, who was (and still is) a partner in BLUE
along with Skipper.

He's a good guy, and he is the guy who did the actual capsule and
electronics designs on the BLUE mikes.

He is unrelated to the fellow at Violet, who may have done the physical
case designs. (In the case of the suit, the word "designs" seems to mean
exterior appearance design.)

I don't know how
things changed as time went on (I'm probably talking about 10 years ago
here), or who did what on the later mics, or if the original technical
guy from Latvia stayed involved, but in the beginning, there was a
pretty clear division between the technical and the marketing. Both
gentleman were were a pleasure to meet and the mics of the time,
including rebuilt 47s and the bottle mic, were enjoyable to use.

They still are pleasures to meet, and they still make some mikes that
are enjoyable to use, too.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Jay-atldigi wrote:

Way back in the day before mice and fruit mics, I met Skipper and a
Latvian man whose name I forget when they came to a big studio in town
showing their wares. They put on a nice presentation. I don't know if
this was the same Latvian man referred to in this thread, but he was
definitely the technical person behind the designs

That was Martins Saulperens (? spelling), a very nice and knowledgable
guy. Skipper started out repairing mics and having new parts made for
them in Latvia. He always used to be around the booth at trade shows
(as did Skipper) but I haven't seen either of them around at the last
couple of shows. I expect that Skipper spends most of his time these
days (or those days, not sure what "these" days are) lining up new
dealers and schmoozing with his old dealers - which is what a marketing
person should be doing. Here they are in all their glory:
http://www.mtechmarketing.com/images...rtins_Blue.jpg

Ari (don't remember his last name) because the US technical support
guy, and now I see he's head of Red Mics, which I thought was a
subsidiary of Blue. Perhaps they split it off as a separate company to
avoid involvement in the "Purple" litigation.

Wish Shipper would drop around here now and then like he used to and
fill us in on the gory details. We love good dirt, even if it isn't in
our guitar tones.

In article ,
(Scott Dorsey) wrote:


That was Martins Saulspurens, who was (and still is) a partner in BLUE
along with Skipper.

He's a good guy, and he is the guy who did the actual capsule and
electronics designs on the BLUE mikes.

Thanks Mike and Scott. Yes, Martins, that's him. A bunch of us were
hanging out at Southern Tracks with Mike Clark who has a pretty
hellacious mic collection. We had some early Blues up with some crazy
vintage stuff and a few nice new mics too. Martins did this great
presentation with a slide show of making capsules and whatnot. Very cool.

--
Jay Frigoletto
Mastersuite
www.promastering.com