Flying to Detroit? See a Real Moog

[theinmans at mindspring.com]

There I am with 20 minutes to kill in the Detroit Metro
Airport, so I'm walking and walking and walking and walking.
My mind begins to wander and I am walking and walking and...
all of the sudden, I stop.  What was THAT?  I turn around and
there, in a glass case, as part of some technology installation,
is a real Moog -- a detached keyboard and a couple of big wood
boxes with some silver and classic black metal Moog faceplates.
Only these were not pefectly finished.  The wood boxes look like
they were stained by a beginner.  They were not even well sanded.
And the faceplates looked like they were something right out of
the rack of, well, a beginner.  Knobs were in not quite the right 
places and some of the wording seems odd.  For example, three 
knobs on the keyboard read (left to right):  Sustain Height, 
Attack Height, Attack Duration.  Aren't those in the wrong 
order?  Hey, that looks just like the stuff I make!

As it turns out, the signs say, this is one of two prototype
(1964) modulars used by Walter Carlos (no mention of Wendy) for 
the Switched on Bach records. It includes the keyboard and 
two large boxes.  Some of it looks very "Moog."  For example, 
there is a Bandpass 904 module.  Some of the others are unfamiliar 
to me.  There were two VCOs and two VCAs.  However, the VCOs were
titled, "Generator Module."  There was also a white noise
generator. 

What was so cool about this Moog was the whole DIY look of it.
Different modules in different colors (black, silver).  Some
went across and some were up and down.  The wooden boxes that 
may have once looked better, but could never have been as slick 
as the minimoog.  The knobs in odd places, perhaps out of 
left-to-right order with odd names.  There is a lot of extra 
space on the faceplates and even the modules with more knobs 
and jacks are not as tightly laid out as later mass-production
Moogs -- an obvious lesson learned by anyone who has tried to 
jam too much into a physically small design.  This thing was 
the ultimate DIY synth.  In a real way, it made me feel much 
better about some of the things I have thrown together.

What it is doing in the Detroit Metro Airport, I have no idea.
I can't find anything on the Internet about the installation, so 
I can't say why it is there or how long it will be.  But, if you
have a few minutes to kill in the Detroir Metro Airport, the
installation is right where gates A-D and E-G break.  Have fun.

Elliot