arp axxe

YouTube via vaskuryandex.

The Hartmann Hohner Adam

via sequencer.de. You can find more info on this synth on the Hohner ADAM page on sequencer.de. BTW, Moogulator recently added a number of items to the synth db on sequencer.de. You can see the full list here.

Update via swissdoc via the comments:
"More details here. Stefan Stenzel from Waldorf wrote the software for the ADAM."

Moog synthesizer collaborator Herbert Deutsch at IMAC

"One of the most radical shifts in music began in 1961 with a hobbyist magazine article on how to build a theremin and a jazz musician from Baldwin named Herbert Deutsch.

The theremin, an electronic device that generates sound using radio frequencies, had been around for a while, but Deutsch found the Electronics World article interesting enough to pick up the issue and follow the instructions. When he couldn't get his gizmo to work, he phoned the article's author, an engineer, who gladly mailed out an easy-to-assemble kit for $49.95.

Two years later, Deutsch spotted the engineer selling his kits at a music trade show upstate in Rochester, and the two fell into conversation. They discussed a relatively recent invention called the Mark II synthesizer, which made music by sucking up rolls of key-punched paper and etching the results with a lathe onto a shellac record. It was intriguing, but you couldn't exactly 'play' the thing like a piano or guitar, or even a theremin.

'Wouldn't it be exciting,' Deutsch told the engineer, if there were smaller synthesizers 'that a performer could own, or a composer could own? Something you could have in your home?'"

The engineer? Bob Moog of course. Title link takes you to the full article.

Serge Modular

Three panels up for auction. Panel links below take you to the corresponding auctions.

Panel 2
"8X2 sequencer, the quantizer (TKB), analog shift register, dual transient generator, /N comp, and 5 preamp modules."

Panel 1
"touch activated keyboard sequencer."



Panel 3
"The rack case is new from sound transform systems. this third panel has the wave multiplier, 2 precision VCOs, and one NTO new timbral oscillator and the very rare gentle electric pitch and envelope follower!"

Formula Filter Array 24 Update

In case you missed the update to this post, apparently the filter was actually made by Bob Moog for Patrick Gleeson and it was the only one made. Comments in this post disabled to keep them with the previous post.

Eight of the CEM3340 VCOs

flickr by Yotsuba&!.

click here for the full size shot.

Roland Jupiter-6

Title link takes you to more.

Nieuwe Binnenweg, Rotterdam

flickr by Antan.

synth graffiti

click here for the full size shot.

Solid State Musical Tesla Coil

YouTube via thegeekgroup.
"Joe DiPrima and Duck demonstrate the Solid State Musical Tesla Coil"
Don't miss the ending after the credits. Also check out these Tesla Coil posts for more.

AELITA

Click here for shots via this auction.
"Synth was made in 80's years in USSR. Aelita is rare synthesizer actually much more rare than well known polyvox soviet synth. Aelita's sound can be very organic, mellow and very fat, agressive also. Synthesizer has very original "transformer" design with removing main operation panel. It is the soviet version of famous minimoog synth. It is big and fat sounding synth. One of the best analog mashines prodused by soviet music industry.

Aelita has three oscillators with square, pulse and saw waveforms.There is LFO with triangle,square,saw and ramp waveforms.Every oscillator can be independently detuned in one octave range. We have possibilities in any chord playing here.You can switch oscillators from 32' to 2' registers.Every oscillator has it's own level slider in mixer section.Oscillator's pitch can be modulated by LFO and first oscillator can be modulated by third oscillator.Than we have nice sounding moog type 24db lowpass filter with screaming resonanse and fat low end.Filter has it's own ADS envelope, keyboard tracking and can be modulated by LFO.VCA has it's own ADS envelope with release switch.There is unussual unison mode when you can get signal of all oscillators in 4 registers in one time. Dimensions: 310x350x920 mm. Weight: 18 kg."

Formula Filter Array 24

Update: be sure to check out the comments for more. This was actually made by Bob Moog.

Title link takes you to shots, including some of the inside, via this auction.

"This auction is for one vintage Formula Sound Multiple Resonance Filter Array. This is a USA-made fixed filterbank / string filter from the 1970s that was (according to the engraved faceplate) custom made for San Francisco musician and producer Patrick Gleeson. Gleeson made some excellent albums on his own, but was better known as a session musician and producer/engineer who worked with artists as diverse and influential as Herbie Hancock and Devo. Though this model was advertised by Formula Sound in some magazines back in the 70s (see picture), this is the only actual unit I have ever seen or heard of. Since the faceplate says it was custom made for Gleeson, I believe it is the only one in existence. In theory it is similar to Moog String Filter but with greatly expanded and more tweakable facilities, but generally it excels at allowing you to electronically simulate the natural resonances of an acoustic chamber (like a violin or other stringed instrument).
This is also presumably somewhat of an inspiration for the Moog MURF pedal, as they seem to have taken the name from this unit (MURF stands for MUltiple Resonance Filter). Unit runs on 110V voltage and comes with a standard IEC power cord.

This piece is generally in very good cosmetic and functional condition, but has a few warts that I will be more explicit about in the following paragraph. All of the functions should be fairly self-explanatory... a mono signal goes to the input of the unit and is fed through 24 steep bandpass filters at various fixed frequencies, each of which can be assigned to one or both of the output channels via bus switches on the front panel. When all the sliders are down the unit is fully attenuated (silent).... as various frequency sliders are raised, that frequency becomes audible. There is a resonance shift rotary switch that allows you to change the overall harmonic tone of the selected frequencies and a drive knob which seems to have a compressor circuit built-in and sounds more like a tone control than a harmonic clipper.
In addition, there is a rotary switch that selects the overall mode---bypass (dry signal only), direct (unit engaged, frequencies sent directly to selected output bus), x-fade and x-pan (both similar in theory but different sounding). There are also 1/4" jacks for CV (control voltage) access so that you can integrate it into your modular system... one is a VCA input jack and the other is a modulation output jack that allows you to send the internal modulation LFO out to external equipment for coordinating sweep times. This is a very full featured unit that allows you to radically alter a sound, though it sounds very different and in a lot of ways a lot less radical than a standard lowpass filter.

Everything generally works as expected with a few exceptions, so I'll be pretty explicit here about everything that isn't quite perfect.
---The Drive pot is very scratchy.
---The Resonance Shift rotary switch is very loud and emits a loud thump through the outputs when switching, though this seems to be more by design than by a defective switch.
---The output Bus Selector switch for the 372 Hz frequency is wobbly and doesn't click into place like the others but it selects the output bus just fine.
---In Direct mode, in which is acts as a standard fixed filter bank, the B output bus is noticably quieter (about 15 db or so) than the A output when all frequencies are assigned to both buses. The overall volume difference, however, seems to depend on the drive level, input level and resonance shift amount. At certain settings the output levels are much closer to each other, though. I overcame this by running the 2 outputs into different hard-panned mono channels on my mixer and using the input gain pot to make up the difference.
---In X-fade mode it is the same as Direct mode---one channel is louder than the other. This is very noticable when using the 2 hard-panned mixer channel trick that is described above.
---In X-pan mode the output channels are pretty much equal volume and this mode sounds very similar to the X-fade mode, so I just used this mode instead.
---The front panels is very clean but there are numerous scratches and wear on the top, bottom and sides of the unit. There are some small paint marks that someone added to the selector switches and on one of the frequency slider caps.

This thing is built like a tank. All of the frequency sliders have very attractive machined aluminum tips. It does have some wear, but looks very good both inside and out, especially for a 30-plus year old unit. I've owned it for close to 10 years and I just had it serviced by analog guru Phil Cirocco in fall 2006 to fix a dead output channel. Though I don't have any schematics for the unit, any competent tech should be able to service it as the filter cards are modular (12, with 2 frequencies per channel) and all of the other stuff (VCAs, etc) are on breadboards and the circuits are clear and easily traceable. As you can see by the high quality parts and tons of circuitry, building something like this at today's prices would cost many, many thousands of dollars."