
Tim sent me a link to
this Bode Vocoder up for auction along with a link to
Stephen St. Croix's website. I didn't realize who he was and that he had passed until I got to the bottom of
the gear page.
"Stephen St. Croix – aka Steven Marshall – professional rock-and-roll producer and guitarist, and inventor of equipment for the pro audio industry, died earlier this year of melanoma. Almost everyone has been exposed to his work through music or movie soundtracks in the course of his influential career in professional audio.
In the early 1970s, Stephen founded Marshall Electronic, under whose auspices he designed the Marshall Time Modulator, a cutting-edge audio effects device, which became a bestseller in the recording industry and was also used to create Darth Vader’s voice and many other movie special effects. He worked on numerous landmark recordings, including Stevie Wonder’s “Songs in the Key of Life” and “The Secret Life of Plants,” having invented the device used to record the sounds of plants. Stephen also invented the ‘Revectorization’ process that he used to restore the soundtracks for motion pictures including “Gone with The Wind,” “Wizard of Oz,” “Easter Parade,” and “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Furthermore, he re-mastered recordings of a number of the masters, including Bob Marley, Patsy Cline, and Jerry Lee Lewis, to name a few."
You can find more about his contributions at the bottom of his
gear page. It appears they are auctioning off
a number of items, and will be selling
more.
Bode Vocoder.
Update: Note the huge black synth over his left shoulder is a Black Oberheim Eight Voice.