Mini mooog

[Mark Pulver]

>All of you who can remember STAGE electronics
>SE1 minimoog in a rack..

I know quite a bit about this story... It's not pretty; kinda' "Don
Martinesque" in a lot of ways, but the end is cleaner in that trhere is
one.

Here's the original marketing literature:

    http://shoga.wwa.com/~mpulver/sei.html


>It reminds me that STUDIO electronics minimoog in a rack
>looks more or less the same???
>It even have the same name "SE1"..

The name of the STUDIO machine is SE-1 (the number "one"), the STAGE
machine was stamped SEI ("the letter "i").


Stage was started by an ex-Moog engineer, Jim Sucorra (sp?) in about 1992.
Jim had great intentions and actually had a great design going (check the
web page). But, Jim had an issue with funding.

None-the-less, Jim was destined to show the machine at the 1993 (I may be a
year off) Winter NAMM show (January), he got a couple of cases and panels
stamped up, silkscreened, and _some_ (key word) electronics running. Jim
wasn't much of a marketeer, and hired a man by the name of Vincent Michaels
to act as front man for the NAMM show.

Yes, this is the same Vincent Michaels that you may of seen pop up on the
Internet lately; he's around.

Anyway... Vincent had been with the company for less than two months when
the NAMM show hit. Vincent had a _large_ background in synthesis (for
example, he was an Oberheim dealer selling 4 and 8 voices amung other
things, and is quite a player) and was quite into the project as Jim had
presented it.

So, Jim and Vincent put on suits and headed off to Anaheim for the NAMM
show. That's where I met them. One of the funny things here is that Stage
was only two small aisles away from Studio at that show. :)

I spent 3 days at the show that year, and spent a lot of time talking to
both of the guys. Jim had a great vision, and great hopes to make a great
product. But, as it turns out, Jim was talking a bit beyond his production
capabilites. Jim had no cash to finish the development, and in the hopes of
generating funding, rumors started spreading about Keith Emerson having a
working prototype, Herbie Hancock had been by and placed an order, etc.

There's also talk of Vincent having been asked to accept orders at the
show, including deposit checks, and that they would cash the checks after
the show.

This was basically the end of Stage. Vincent refused to do this and ended
up leaving the firm. Jim was left basically with no funding, and not a lot
of hope of getting any.

The stories about Keith and all were false. Keith did in fact come by the
booth that year with Will Alexander (his tech for those that don't know the
name), and they were excited, but ... a working machine was never built.
The boxes that were shown at NAMM were only shells with pots and knobs on
them. The control panel _did_ have power but was only running a simple demo
program that had a message on the LCD and blinked the LEDs in succession.

The end of the story is that Stage faded into the distance. There are
_rumors_ that Jim actually took off with a large amount of cash as
deposits, but I don't know if that's true.

There are other tidbits here and there, but basically, that's the history
of Stage Electronics.


Mark

___________________________________________________________________________
 Mark Pulver - http://shoga.wwa.com/~mpulver    The "Son of The MIDI Wall"
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