Some sad news in via Grant of Music Technologies Group. It has come to his attention that Dennis Colin of ARP and Aires fame has passed away. There is a GoFundMe page set up to help his daughter with the funeral and travel costs. Click through for details.
Dennis Colin not only designed the ARP 2600 with Alan R. Pearlman, he also built the Aries Modular (see this post and this post for reference), and he later ran Colin Electronics.
The image to the left is from an article in Guitar World from this year, back on February 9. The following is a short excerpt:
"The short story goes like this: Dennis spent several years at the ARP company, creating the 2600 and other strange instruments. Eventually the company changed hands and he moved on to other work away from music.
Years after retiring, Dennis now lives alone in a small house somewhere in New England. He recently lost his wife and has been having a rough time. A chance meeting between his daughter and my guitar-building buddy, Ben "C.B. Gitty" Baker, led to my eventual visit to his house. I stood on his doorstep feeling like Ralphie about to meet Santa Claus.
A frail man at 71, Dennis has sharp mind of a teenager. Although he left ARP Synthesizers many years ago, he never left music and he enthusiastically showed me his secret lab upstairs in the house. There were oscilloscopes, strange strobe lights, a homemade 500-watt amp (!) and model airplanes scattered about. The dude lights his cigarettes from a Tesla coil! When he talked about music, he referenced everything from da Vinci to string theory.
Forget Ralphie...I was in the inner-sanctum of the musical Willie Wonka!"
A great man behind some great synths. He will be remembered. Be sure to see the GoFundMe page.
Update: Memorial Service to Be Held at the MIT Chapel on Friday, December 18th at 1PM.
I knew Dennis as a teenager growing up in Nutley NJ. He was a true genius, constantly figuring out how electronics worked. He was able to design and build transmitters and receivers from scratch (occasionally getting in trouble with the FCC), and was smart enough to get admitted to Cooper Union. Unfortunately, without financial support, he was unable to commute to Manhattan, work a nearly full working schedule and compete academically in such a rarefied environment. Subsequently, Dennis took a trip to Boston and met up with a friend who was attending MIT and met with a family who agreed to let Dennis a spare bedroom. He was accepted at Lowell Tech?, graduated near the top of his class with a EE degree while working full time and the rest is history.
ReplyDeleteRest in peace.