via alka"I recently borrowed my friend's half-working Realistic Moog MG 1and decided to clean it up for him. Upon opening, I was greeted with about a pound of hair (cat and human), bits of paper, an army figure and a horribly decomposing "foam" dust guard. As I'm not too familiar with this synth, I am unaware if this is a common problem or if something was perhaps spilled into this machine at one point. My friend that owns the board said he purchased it from a coffee shop and that it never did work correctly." Click here for more shots.
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ReplyDeleteNO, sorry. It has nothing to do with lubricants. That kind of urethane foam was designed to be extra-soft, so it contains plasticizers that break down after 20 years. Speaker surrounds were made of the same stuff--it's a major reason why so many 1970s hifi speakers died, while more "primitive" speakers from the 1950s survived. I've seen a lot of JBL, Cerwin-Vega, and Advent speakers from the 70s, and they ALL had ruined woofer surrounds. Same foam.
ReplyDeleteoh yes, I've cleaned one Rogue and one Taurus 2 of that same crap...
ReplyDeleteelectronically yours, jesper
I gotta ask, was this a coffee shop in New Jersey? I used to to go to one near Mt. Holly, (before turning 21) and the owner had all of this old synth gear, and even a hammond organ. But I distinctly remember he had a MG1 that was in questionable condition. I wonder...
ReplyDeleteThis foam break down is in a lot of flight cases too. Nasty stuff and no it has nothing to do with lube from pots obviously.
ReplyDeleteHello.... bryan here, Yes the coffee shop was in New Jersey and it may have been Mt. Holly, I'll have to ask my friend to be sure.
ReplyDeleteand the word "tar" is a very good description of this gloop.. it stained everything it touched and had the consistency of a very thick fudge brownie...
I wonder what other synth manufacturers used this foam and on what gear?
Yeah, that foam is horrible. I've cleaned it out of a Liberation, an MG-1, and an Opus. I just went ahead and replaced the Lib and Opus pots; now they're like silk compared to my still sticky MG-1 sliders.
ReplyDeleteIn contrast I removed the foam from around the sliders of two Roland Juno106s, and they weren't gooey at all, just dry and crispy.
I don't know that I'd characterize the Lib as a 'cheap Syntar knock off', as that insults both manufacturers, George M and Moog electronics. I agree that Moog lifted the Keytar concept from George, but the Lib shares much of it's core voice with the Prodigy (similar oscs, same filter), which I'll bet is very different than the Syntar (haven't seen those schematics, though).
Funniest thing I've found inside of a synth was a small plastic GI Joe pistol...
Finally, how many coffee shops have synthesizers?!
i have a roland sh 101.. should i worry about the foam guard??
ReplyDeleteupdate for everyone.. the coffee shop was called "down to earth" and it was in Mt. Holly, NJ.
ReplyDelete