[sdiy] Chris Franke's modular

[Kevin Lightner]

>At 18:05 25/03/2005, DWa2898572 at aol.com wrote:
>>I've been a TD fan since 1971, and looking at CF's Synth brought 
>>back some really good memories, especially seeing them at Avery 
>>Fisher Hall on the first US tour, 4/5/77 was the date, a reference 
>>for you young's! I taped the show, and traded it to fans all over 
>>the world!
>
>It's not that modular. So far as I know CF sold the original 70s era 
>modular - extended with some PPG and Project Elektronic modules - in 
>the mid 80s. I think it ended up with Hans Zimmer, who used it on 
>the Video Killed the Radio Star sessions and subsequently expanded 
>it further into the Moog Wall of Doom.
>
>http://www.synthfool.com/zimmoog.html
>
>which I believe Kevin may also have had something to do with. :)

Yes and no. :)
An interview once stated that "Chris gave Hans his Moog" and many 
have concluded that all of Hans' Moog came from Chris. In fact, only 
a few PPG, PE and possibly Moog modules are in Hans' system that 
definitely came from Chris.
One IIIp system did come from England and this may have originally 
come from Chris.
I can't say, but it certainly wasn't much compared to what the system became.
Most of the Moog came from private parties. In fact, one system came 
from the UCLA music dept, where some of the vco modules were custom 
made by, then student, JL Cooper.
The silkscreens on the board said "Moog via JLC"
I spoke to Jim Cooper about them and got "Omg! You have those? They 
were a class project!"

While I was assembling Hans' Moog, more and more IIIp's, 15's, etc 
came to my door to be included.
He was buying the stuff as I was working on it. The power supply 
design changed many times ;-)
The PE modules in fact, came almost a year later to my shop.

There's been many misquotes by magazines on Hans' stuff.
The funniest was probably when the Roland User's Group (RUG) magazine 
published a photo of his 130 module System100m - backwards!


>
>I actually did some work on the Zimmer modular back in 1988, when it 
>was (literally) off the wall and in pieces. The story is the 
>original keyboard tech who was working on it killed himself (!) so 
>Zimmer got someone called Roy Gwyn, who was a tech for Ultravox and 
>Warren Cann, to sort it out. At some point I was drafted in to help, 
>although to be honest I didn't do much more than cleaning, wiring 
>and testing. Roy did the majority of the work on it, including 
>adding some interesting mods - which unfortunately I can't remember 
>in detail - to help keep the 901s in tune.

If they were some of the temp compensation chips added, I removed 'em ;-)
But Hans had nowhere close to what his Moog was then.
I started on the project around 1991 and most of the stuff hadn't 
been purchased up until then.


>
>The current CF modular seems to be a rather stylised recreation of 
>what he had with TD, built not long after he went solo. My 
>impression was there was a period when CF was lacking a modular at 
>all, and this was built to remedy that.

Hmmm... Chris said he toured with it, so unless he did solo tours, I 
can't say what the truth is.

-- 
Regards,
Kevin Lightner

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