[sdiy] More on Serge diagrams...

[Peter Grenader]

I think Grant speaks the truth here about Serge not retaining diagrams, but
I suspect the reason based on conversations I've had with some of the
players recently. 

Darrell Johanson, who as many know was pretty much Serge's design partner
during the late 70's/early 80's and I had a series of conversations when I
fixed the one he used to own, now resident at Cal Arts.  He told me that
Serge was emphatic about writing stuff down, although most of the schematics
that are available now  were drawn by Darrel himself.  The TBK is an
example, as are the Wave Multiplier and SSG, which D gave to me for
troubleshooting purposes and no, I can't distribute them, sorry.

So I think part of Darrel's  charge was to formalize them once the circuit
was released.  If nothing lese, I know Darrel was doing the PCB layouts - he
couldn't have done that without something to work from.

Now, from what I remember from the factory in Hollywood, as brilliant as a
guy that he is, Serge wasn't all that organized in the traditional sense of
keeping things (like papers) organized.  Neither am I, so I am speculating
this as a sign of sheer intellectual might (I'm making a joke with this in
regard to me, not so much in regard to S).  Anyway, his desk and work area
pretty much looked like the floor of the NYSE when the closing bell sounds.

When I heard that they were moving up North, I sympathetically chuckled to
myself thinking of the amount of work Darrel and Kevin Brehany were in for
getting it all packed up.  Something tells me a lot of those papers,
including the original diagrams ended up in an LA landfill instead of SF.

Yet, after Darrel left the company and moved to Arizona, when Serge informed
him he was handing the operations over to Rex, Darrel really tried to urge
Serge to publish the schematics - which makes me think that they in fact did
make the trek up North. Who knows.

- Peter