[sdiy] RE: how it all started

[The Old Crow]

  For me, this hobby is the result of several paths meeting: my cousin
taking me to a Virgil Fox concert in 1973, the start of piano lessons that
same year and all those electronic project kits I bought with allowance
money as a kid which was a bit of a relief to my folks as I would no
longer tear apart their clocks, radios, and so on..  I think seeing Virgil
perform was the first of the "oh-my-god-I-gotta-have-a-setup-like-that!"
epiphanies--but understand this was at the age of ten.

  I few years later, (1977) I had built a Cosmac ELF from the PE articles,
and that same year some regional band that was popular at junior high
assemblies was playing at my school, and the keyboardist, whose name I
still recall: 'Hoppy' Colvin, let me twiddle with the ARP Odyssey
(gold/black rev) and I knew I had to build or buy a synthesizer.  In 1979,
I was seeing adverts for the Paia P4700j (I had already built the Oz and
Gnome) and still even have their catalog from 1978 (somewhat tattered
these days).  Of course, seeing Michael Iceberg in April 1979 has yet
another intense injection of "wall of keybaords" desire, and one summer's
worth of high school-age teen jobs later (and my first official electronic
keyboard repair as I had to fix the junior high's old Farfisa EP which had
lost a master tone oscillator) I had enough money to order the P4700j kit
on 11/27/79.  It was delivered on 02/08/80.  THAT was an annoying 2 months
of waiting.  I had the ELF sequencing Gary Numann basslines 
through the Paia...I didn't know how to program a 6503 (Paia 8700), but 
already knew the 1802, you see.

  Well, two more months later, and having converted every flat surface in 
the house into workbench space, I had my assembled P4700j.  From that 
point on, it just got worse: the first Polysix in 1983, the DX7 in 1984 
and a whole crapload of stuff in 1986.  By then I was working part-time at 
an electronics assembly place and had the ability to make circuit boards, 
albeit the old-school way with Bishop Graphics cut tape, and making synth 
projects became very regular.

  Oh, and somewhere in there I got me EE degree.  Perhaps thats why I 
spend more time designing and build and repairing that playing the darned 
things...

Crow
/**/

  P.S.  I saw Virgil Fox play one more time in 1978 prior to his passing.  
He was a great concert artist.