Early EMU Modulars?

[Curtin, Steven D (Steven)]

Hi Romeo -

> Last weekend I was visiting a friend in Seattle.  During this visit, we
> visited
> another friend who had some old modulars that he had bought from a German
> guy in
> Florida over AOL.  
> 
> Did EMU sell kits to DIYers in the early days?  Does
> anyone know more about EMU's early modulars?  Oh, yeah, I nearly forgot to
> mention the soda pop can capacitors in the large cabinet.  Stick your
> tongue on
> that!
> 
E-Mu sold something they called the "Voice Demo Board" in 1979-1980 and that
system could be based on those.  These were quite different than the regular
E-Mu modular systems.  You could also buy "submodules" which were the
circuit boards for each module, the noise generator in my system is the
noise generator submodule hooked up to power and connectors.  It has
"white", "pink" and "red" which is a kind of 1/f type slow random signal.
Interestingly there's no noise transistor on this circuit- it's based on a
tapped digital shift register.

I bought a voice demo board about the same time and based the upper box of
the analog synth on it.  There's a picture of this on the web site below,
see http://www.emf.org/subscribers/curtin/synth.htm.  This had SSM chips in
it, number 2020, 2030, 2040 and 2050 to implement 2 VCO's, 2 VCA's, 2 ADSR's
and a VCF.   They were nice standard-issue modules, nothing special, having
two oscillators with sync was fun.  I've had to retire that whole board due
to the kind of inexperienced building practices you describe, and also
having to buy replacement SSM chips for mucho $$$ if they're available at
all.  I have the complete set of schematics for the board if your friend is
trying to repair it.

Some additional history- these boards or something similar was the basis for
the E-Mu Audity computer-controlled synth that was quickly cancelled once
the Emulator sampler took off.  The Audity apparently started out as a
custom project for former Tangerine Dream member Peter Bauman.    

Steve C

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Steven Curtin  
Lucent Technologies Microelectronics
ph: (732)949-4404   fax: (732)949-6711
http://www.emf.org/subscribers/curtin/
sdcurtin at lucent.com
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