Memorymoog

[R]

>

   Mike you have managed to capture a fragment of my biography and
my Memorymoog "adventure". I was 21 when I spent my life savings
on a Memorymoog. It wouldn't even tune in the store but I had to
have it. I needed a synth to play all that late seventies and early eighties
rock.
I managed to do all the service updates myself and installed the Plus option.
After this, I took it on the road and it worked reliably every night.
Then it was stolen. Now I have a friends stock version that has every problem
known and unknown. I'll have to block out a lot of hours to fix it and
find a decent chiropractor to get me through the tuning process.
For a true DIYer I think there is more fun to be had building a synth or
module out of the voice cards. $200 x 6 = $1200. Might be worth it.

Russ L
askeyman at earthlink.net

> I was a factory-authorized Moog service technician in the Mid-1980's, during
> the heyday of the Memorymoog.  I was also an authorized service technician
> for every other major brand at the time.  Memorymoogs were the absolute worst
> synthesizers that any service person would ever have to work on.  Go ahead,
> ask any tech who was active at the time, "What synth was the worst to work
> on?", and "Which synth was the most unreliable?".  Both answers will ALWAYS
> be "Memorymoog", without fail, and without hesitation.
>
> The owners were very unhappy about the situation, as well.  Everybody loved
> the sound (when they worked), but most were dismayed at how often the units
> would need to return for service, and many simply regretted spending their
> money on such an expensive, totally unreliable piece of equipment.  I
> especially felt bad for the entry-level guys who had painstakingly saved
> their money so they could buy their first big professional polyphonic synth,
> only to have it turn into a service nightmare.  Fer Chrissakes, they could
> have bought a Prophet V or an OB-8, and they'd actually be out somewhere,
> PLAYING, instead of sitting at home, wringing their hands.  Touring groups
> who were brave enough to take a MM on the road soon found out that they
> needed to keep a backup unit handy (although the backup units were
> potentailly just as flaky).
>
> Leon Fialkowski, who was at that time the national service manager for Moog
> Music, told me that Moog had an over 100% failure rate on Memorymoogs!  This
> means that they had to handle more Memorymoog warranty service claims than
> the number of Memorymoogs they had actually made.  There were many units that
> were returned to the factory that could not only not be repaired by field
> service people, but were unrepairable even by Moog factory technicians.
> These units were simply replaced with entire new ones.  Obviously, this
> additional expense on service put a great financial load on Moog Music, and
> certainly contributed to their eventual demise.  Do you think that Moog's
> service manager would "overstate" the unreliability of a product from which
> he earned his own livelihood?  If anything, he was probably understating it.
>
> It wasn't just a matter of installing a few clever "service updates" to bring
> them up to speed.  The factory service updates did help a bit, but I saw just
> as many failures with fully updated machines as with unmodified ones.
>
> I'm not suggesting, as Fenatic said, that the Memorymoog is a "lemon".  That
> would imply, wrongly, that there are "good" ones and there are "bad" ones.
> No, I'm flatly stating that it is a badly designed synthesizer.  I'm sure
> that most of the people who worked at Moog from 1983 to 1987 would completely
> agree with me.
>
> These opinions are driven neither by "sour grapes" nor a desire to devalue
> the Memorymoog.  I've owned lots of Moog gear (more than 12 Minimoogs since
> 1974, many other models as well), and have had many opportunities to buy
> Memorymoogs at very attractive prices.  I have a gear collection that would
> make most musicians at least a little envious.  Sour grapes just doesn't
> figure.  I don't wish to devalue the selling price of anybody's gear - In
> fact, I am pleased with the fact that old synth prices keep rising.  This is
> as it should be, and for some reason, I haven't had any difficulty finding
> good deals when I need them, nor should any other resourceful person.  No, my
> opinions about the Memorymoog are based in hard-earned experience and
> technical knowledge.  I really do wish that they were more reliable, because
> for some things, they sound incredibly good.  The sad truth, however, is that
> a working Memorymoog is worth LESS than the Curtis chips that it contains
> (the chips are worth somewhere over $1600, at current street prices).  As an
> avid DIY'er, I'd rather have the chips.
>
> Michael Bacich
>
> P.S.  -  Kevin Lightner, one of the top Moog technicians on the planet,
> simply refuses to work on Memorymoogs anymore.  He tells me he values his
> sanity too much for it.