Memorymoog

[Barry L Klein]

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From: 	WeAreAs1 at aol.com[SMTP:WeAreAs1 at aol.com]
Sent: 	Sunday, April 25, 1999 1:29 PM
To: 	synth-diy at mailhost.bpa.nl
Subject: 	Memorymoog

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.


I am working on one right now.  It is the first Memorymoog I have ever seen yet alone
opened up and worked on.  I do not work on synths as an income source - just a hobby -
when I see one for sale not working but cheap, I buy it and spend my evening hours working
on it.  I think the design of the Memorymoog is beautiful, the implementation could've
been better.  It does need gold plated contacts in the IC sockets and connectors.  And
different types of connectors would be better.  But to do what this unit does with
the state of technology of the time - its as good as you could hope for.  Say you put
everything on one pcb and eliminated the cables and connectors - the board would be HUGE!

So.... if you have any of these (or P5's) acting as doorstops, let  me know.  I want
another one to work on after this one's working.

If you work on these for a living you want to be paid for the work you do at a minimum -
by the hour.  So far on this one I'd imagine
I've got 30 hours into it!!  Next one I'll know a lot more starting off and be better at
it.  Still, I wouldn't want to pressure of working on someone else's synth.  If its mine I
can take my time.  Professionally, I'd suggest someone make a diagnostic box that plugs in
where the Z80 goes.  Then you could run routines to check the various peripheral hardware
- switches latches etc.  It'd be much faster then to go through it and find bad
parts/connections.  Then you're left with tuning the thing and that - looks to be time
consuming, period.


Barry