Cars - Gary Numan on YouTube

Title link takes you there. Makes me want a Polymoog...

A Little Disney History

Title link takes you to a post on Craigslist for the Moog Polymoog used in the Disneyland Electric Light Parade. Kind of interesting to me in that I grew up in Hollywood and used to go to Disneyland all the time. I remember pulling an all nighter there with all the goths during one of their special events (I looked the part, but I never was a goth!). : ) I actually had a black crow try to pick one of my hairs thinking it was branch. Another story for another time. I forget what the event was for, but I do remember passing out on a bench and having a great time. What's odd is I've probably heard this exact synth serveral times. This one via Brian Comnes. Thanks for the flashback Brian! : )

Moog Polymoog and Oberheim OB8 Schematics

More scans from ChristianH. I previously posted his Memorymoog scans. He added a scan of the Polymoog and OB-8. Notes below. If you can help, feel free to post a comment.

Udate: Looks like Jordan Gibson on the AH list came through. He ran a full scan of the Polymoog Service Manuel and Brandon Daniel is hosting the whopping 180M file on fdisk.com.



"Hi all,

I finally spent some time and did some joyous 30 year anniversary
Polymoog scanning to acompany the Memorymoog schematics scans I did the
other day.
This is the complete Service Manual, Volume II (schematics).
Some of the sheets are pretty large, but luckily I have access to large
format scanners at work :-)
Considering that some of the original manual sheets are some kind of
ancient 70s blue prints, which have severely yellowed background
(actually the paper deteriorated to a hot red in some areas), the end
result looks quite nice after some heavy processing, you all know the
routine - EQing, noise gating, compressing, and a tad of Exciter to
improve sharpness:
http://www.chrismusic.de/synth/schematics/polymoog.zip
12 MB ZIP file, but by today's download standards, this isn't that large
anymore.
All missing page numbers are blank pages, nothing has been omitted for
scanning.

I NEED YOUR HELP: Now, if some kind soul would do the same for Volume I,
I simply don't have that one. I assume, it contains calibration info and
circuit descriptions, and thus should be more suitable for small format
scanners. I'd be glad to host Vol.I on my site as well.

And maybe the additional "Polymoog Keyboard" filter board schematics
would fit in here nicely, if anybody has them available.


And while I was at it, there's an almost legible scan of the OB8 voice
board component layout:
http://www.chrismusic.de/synth/schematics/OB-8-voice-board-600dpi.tif
On all scans I found before, the component designator numbers were
pretty hard to decypher, which makes locating measurement points on the
boards quite tedious.
This one comes from an original service manual. Not on the light side,
at 600 dpi grey scale - a whopping 4MB for one page.

cheers
Christian


P.S.: maybe a little long-shot, I'd be glad to do a similar scanning job
with the giant CS-80 schematics diagram.
The one to be found on the net is a godsend nevertheless, but due to
small format scanning, the pieces won't really fit together.
If someone could lend the schematics to me for scanning, that would be
great.
If there is a CS-80 owner in the western Germany/Netherlands/Belgium area,
I'd even opt for a personal pickup (and maybe some synth geek talk as
well... ;-)"

Mitchell Sigman - Celebutante and Berlin

Mitchell Sigman, keyboard player for Berlin, sent me some shots. Pretty cool as I grew up on Berlin, specifically Pleasure Victim, with Metro being my favorite track. The year was 1982.

Mitchell also has his own project, called Celebutante. Check out this video for some ARP Odyssey, Moog Polymoog, and green on black retro monitor action - gotta like that. Mitchell Sigman is on guitar and vocals. The video features both beauties on the left. Who is that btw? I sent Mitchell an email asking, but haven't heard back yet. Update: Her name is Diana Dencker. She's done a few commercials.

Title link takes you to Mitchell's My Space site. Make sure to check it out. I'm listening to the track Electrolux as I type this and there is some good Polymoog action happening on that track. BTW, definitely flattered Mitchell lurks on my site. Pretty cool... Thanks Mitchell. : )


Update: Udpate via Mitchell in the comments:
"Actually every synth in that song is either Logic Audio's ES2 or Native Instruments Pro-53 (except for the little square wave lead after the chorus which is Logic ES1). I swear it's true. If I fooled everyone with the Polymoog, well, cool, that was the idea (the strings are all ES2)." Nice. That definitely sounded like a Polymoog to me.

Links:
www.myspace.com/celebutantemusic
www.celebutantemusic.com
www.berlinpage.com
shots

Sonoric Instruments

Interesting. Title link takes you there. There are samples and some images. Note the site is still under construction and is missing a bit of content. This is your first look at what might be coming from them.



Update: According to this post on Sonic State, the Sonoric synths might actually be based on the Anadigm chipset. You might remember this post on Anadigm using the Andromeda A6 in there graphics as well as this one on Retro Thing speculating how Anadigm chips could be used in a low cost Polymoog.

Some notes from the thread:
"It's a synth that was built with a analog modular synth in mind for the first time, controlled digitally by software on a PC. In time, he realized that for start it would be better to have "scenes", rather than making it completly modular. I don't think he droped the idea, but right now he will make some default "scenes", this means that if you need for example Korg MS10 or 20 architecture you can have it. Or maybe Arp 2600, or Minimoog, or anything...I don't know what it would be, really. Of course it will not sound exactly like the original, but at least it will sound analog, not like a digital emulation. As you can easily hear on the website it's really fat. Or phat;) The cool thing is that the character of the filter can be changed from software.

The oscillators and multimode filters are analogue, the modulations digital (lfo's, env's). You can have a lot of filters and oscillators. 16 if I remember well. "

Moog Exhibit - Vancouver BC

In via Lorne on AH (title link takes you to Royal BC site - click here for pdf of exhibit):

"If you drop in to the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria BC between
now and January 30th to see the Linda McCartney's excellent 60s photography
exhibit, you will also find a companion exhibit about three other important
contributions of the 1960s: the rebirth of the poster in Haight-Ashbury's
Avalon Ballroom,focusing on the artists hired by Chet Helms: twenty-five
photographs taken of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's bed-in event in Montreal in
1969 where media used to promote peace; and two cases in memory of Robert
Moog, talking about his contributions, from modular recordings to the
Polymoog and onwards. The Polymoog showed the limits of analog compression
into smaller polyphonic packages and provided the analog model for the
digital revolution. The second case shows the history of the Minimoog and
its players, focus on Wakeman and Jan Hammer, with an 1130 drum controller
(Billy Cobham was a big user) and an Oberheim minisequencer #010.
Thursday/Friday/Saturday the Imax of the Stones Steel Wheels tour is
showing. This Saturday at 1:30 a tour with the photographer of the bed-in
takes place and at 1:30 Sunday a talk on the history of psychedelic poster
will be presented. John Lennon's handpainted Rolls Royce is in the lobby so
you'll know your in the right place."

Polymoog Shot

Just a nice close up shot of a Moog Polymoog sent to me by Heath. Also looks like his site has been updated since I was last there. Title link takes you there. Thanks Heath!

Arp Odyssey and Moog Polymoog track

Update: Martin ('Liquidscreamer') did the track.

Very cool Odyssey and Polymoog track. Man I miss that sound. If Billy Currie of Ultravox and Gary Numan where morphed together, this is what it would sound like. Via Jordan Gibson on AH (track is by Jordan's mate). Enjoy.

Yamaha CS50 Synth Shots

Title link takes you to some nice shots of the Yamaha CS50 from Heath who also has it up for sale in the Boston area. More below including a Polymoog up for sale as well.



For local pick up only:

--Yamaha CS-50: It's in excellent shape, tolex is great, Lid,
everything works great. -$450. This is less than I paid for it.

Pictures: http://www.heathfinnie.com/cs.htm

--Moog Polymoog 203A with stand and polypedal. - $450

I'd say 95% functional. Which is very high given the polymoog's
history ;) I don't want to sell it, but I need to make room asap.
Serial number is 3811.

It comes with the polypedal and original stand. It's in great cosmetic
condition. The only issues with it are a few keys sit a little higher
due to needing new bushings, but they all work. It also needs one
voice card as the last note on the synth does not work quite right.
All slider caps are present. Also the attack/keyboard dynamics need to
be calibrated, but it still works fine.

For pictures I'm going to link to my Craigslist ad:

http://boston.craigslist.org/msg/106650611.html

I need to sell these ASAP which is why I'm lowering the prices. If
you're interested in both I'd sell both together for $850. I'm really
looking to sell in the next day or two. Again these are too big to
ship.

SCI Prophet 5 Shots

Title link takes you to a few great shots of the Prophet 5. Heath gave me the ok to post these. This one is actually for sale in the Boston area. You can email Heath at hfinnie at gmail.com if interested.



> Well I have a chance to buy a Prophet-10 in excellent condition so I
> must see the Prophet 5 to pay for it. It is in excellent shape. All of
> the keyboard bushings have been replaced so the keyboard feels like
> new. It also has a new battery and has been recentley serviced. Great
> cosmetic shape and all knobs are present and work great. Original
> factory sounds have been loaded into it too. This prophet 5 does not
> have midi, but it is an easy retrofit. Serial number is 3373. I'm
> asking for $1800 as thats about what I see them go for on Ebay and
> plus the cost of the parts, bushings, etc. A lot of work has gone into
> it. I would keep it if it wasn't for the fact I was getting a P-10.
>
> I would really want to avoid shipping this as it could get damaged in
> shipping. I'm in Boston.

Update from Heath:

"I lowered the price to $1500 in case anyone is interested. Again, I
really want to avoid shipping this because of all the UPS horror
stories...I'm in Somerville, MA.

By the way, if anyone wants both this and the polymoog/polypedal/stand
I have for sale I would sell both together for $2000, as that would
make things very easy doing one transaction."

Coffee Table

MC's Polymoog coffee table via AH. Oh yeah baby.



via Retrosynth

Polymoog w/ Blue LEDs

Some pics of a super clean Polymoog with blue LEDs in via AH. I can hear the lead synth string to Numan's Cars in my head now. I've never seen a Polymoog that clean before. Beatiful synth.

http://www.minimoog.plus.com/polymoog.htm