1985 Doepfer Sound-Sampler German Ad

via synthmuseum.de

This is the ad for the Doepfer CV/Gate controlled modular sound sampler featured here.  That one went up for auction back in 2007.  You'll find some additional details in the post.  The system was meant to be used with the Commodore 64 (C64).

Note this ad is from roughly 30 years ago.  Doepfer's first ad was from the year before in 1984, also for the Sound-Sampling system, featured on synthemuseum.de here (previously posted here). I reached out to Dieter Doepfer asking him if this was the first eurorack module. He replied:

"Yes and no. The dimensions of the frontpanels of the Sound Sampler and the VMS (Voice Modular System) were already the same as what is now called eurorack. But the bus was different. Each pcb had a fixed dimension (100x160 mm) with a 64 pin edge connector. I realized that this standard would waste a lot of needless pcb space and the connectors were very expensive. Not to mention the costs for the bus board (about US$250-300 for each 84 HP bus board). So I developed another idea:

variable pcb space (i.e. only the required area of pcb space)
16 pin bus
variable length of the connection between module and bus by using a 16 pin ribbon cable (later also 10 pin if +5V, CV and Gate are not required)

The sound sampler was available also as a book published by ELEKTOR (with schematics, pcb and front panel layout, software for C64 and so on). ELEKTOR is the same publisher who published the FORMANT synthesizer."

Dieter Doepfer stated he still has a working version of the original Sound-Samplers.

For a timeline of Doepfer products, see here.