[sdiy] Bye guys...

[Gene Stopp]

Sure I can do that... I posted this a year ago when we were talking
about who was the oldest person on the list:

*******************

My dad listened to classical music a lot, so that's etched in my brain.
My mom bought Switched On Bach when it came out, then the Well Tempered
Synthesizer, then Snowflakes Are Dancing. I ate it up. I always liked
rock music with organs in it - Paul Revere & the Raiders, the Animals,
the Doors, Deep Purple - I liked the "good parts" of songs. Like "here
comes the good part" and "this is the good part" and "there goes the
good part". Then AM radio started playing songs with synthesizers in it,
like PFM and ELP. That caught my ear. Then one night I was at a
sleepover at a friend's house, and we were lying in the living room in
sleeping bags, and "In Concert" came on the TV with the Mahavishnu
Orchestra playing Birds of Fire. At that moment I realized that there
was music out there that was *all* good parts.

Me and a friend used to ride our bikes to a music store in Northridge
and play with the synthesizers. They had a MiniKorg and a Synthacon.
That settled it - I needed one. Problem - no money! I still needed one.
A friend at school said he would lend me this newsletter called
"Electronotes". As soon as I saw that, I realized what I had to do -
learn electronics. I found out that CA3080s in the plastic DIP explode
and fling shrapnel all over the place if you hook them up wrong. I found
out that pots smoke if you connect the power supply voltages to the
wrong pins. I told my mom that her Hammond S6 chord organ was a basket
case and I needed to scavenge it for the keyboard. I learned about the
perils of drilling plexiglass, and that ferric chloride stains, and how
to use rub-on lettering. I could sit and listen to what a
sample-and-hold could do for hours. I built an ENS-73 and put it in a
case that looked vaguely like a Moog 35.

I built digital delays and spring reverbs and more little modulars. The
DX7 came out, but I didn't want one. I bought up a bunch of analog
synths from the Recycler for ridiculously low prices, along with Hammond
Organs and Mellotrons. Nobody wanted that stuff any more. I built some
more modulars. I met people in the music biz and made some friends. My
analog experience got exposed and I was a roadie for ELP, after helping
to restore the big Moog. I took a girl to one of the shows and ended up
marrying her. Kids came along. I did the ASM-1 project. My list of
keyboards is huge. Finally I found a Synthacon, completing the circle.

*******************

I can add to that:

My Electronotes exposure was in 1974 and so was my first modular. I
graduated high school in 1976 and my first job was a truck driver for an
auto parts company. I started junior college and futzed around for a
couple years until I had the bright idea of taking some electronics
courses. I sat through the first semester and got the basic math figured
out (I didn't know that part, my DIY stuff was copied from schematics
and not designed by me). It clicked in my head and when I got to op-amps
I could practically teach the class. The instructor said I could just
show up for the lab classes and if I would be his lab assistant, I could
skip the lecture classes. I took the entire last year credit by exam and
graduated.

While I was still in college I had a friend who one day went up to the
instructor and asked if he knew of any students who wanted a job at an
electronics company. I overheard this and said "hello, what about me?"
so I applied and got the job. Goodbye auto parts, hello data
communications.

I was a system test technician, then a module test technician, a module
repair technician, a test engineer, a marketing product specialist, and
a customer service engineer. All these years I was building synthesizers
and effects and jamming with friends. One of the friends was from work,
where he did design engineering in firmware. Him and another guy and me
would sit around and talk about using the same MIDI channels for the
same kinds of sounds and the same patch numbers for the same types of
instruments (like a primitive general MIDI). The two of them decided to
start a company to make MIDI routing switches and patch translators over
fiber optics. The guy had a dog named Wolf, so the company was called
Lone Wolf.

It was pretty flashy stuff (like if you added a box with later code to
an existing fiber network, it would automatically update all the other
boxes) and we started to get some pretty high-end interest. Herbie
Hancock wanted a network (he had to have the latest everything) so his
engineer came over to pick it up. I was chose to go help set it up at
Herbie's house, so we did that. I got to talking with the engineer and
he turned out to be good friends with Keith Emerson. I said that I spent
all my spare time in modular synth electronics and knew lots about it.
He said "good, I need a helper to rebuild Keith's Moog". That Moog was
legendary amongst us analog types so I had said "OK", trying not to pass
out...

We spent 1990-1991 rebuilding it in Santa Monica. During this time I was
told that there was going to be an ELP reunion tour and did I want to be
a tech on the road? Again, I said OK.

In the mean time Lone Wolf ran out of funds and so would I if I didn't
get another job, so back into Data Communications it was. I got a job at
a place called Fibermux, where we made LAN hubs and fiber-optic TDM's.
That's where I got all my PC and Ethernet experience (and lots of other
datacomm protocols). Email was starting to take over from BBS's and
networks were taking over from modems. I found the Synth-DIY list and
subscribed, probably in 1995.

In 1996 Fibermux announced that they were going to close their doors in
June of '97 to give us all fair warning. They chose to go with FDDI
instead of Ethernet Switches (the natural progression from hubs) and
started to sink. They were going to transition the technology to a
sister company in Oregon but people started to bail right and left. They
then offered certain people a year's severance if they stayed to the
last day. I was one of them. We did the transfer with time to kill, so I
was elected to clean out the labs. What to do with all these drawers of
parts and scopes and function generators? We just had to clock in and
clock out every day, so I decided to create a complete basic synthesizer
circuit board for my hobby. I thought it might be a good idea to make a
bunch and sell them on sdiy - hence, the ASM-1.

I wouldn't call it bragging, I'd call it just having fun over the years
with a few lucky breaks here and there!
 
Best Regards,
 
- Gene
 

Gene,
Thanks for the blog link! Nice lookin' bug.

Before you go, can you leave us a parting story? Something about 
working on Emo's Moog, maybe, or a little "my history with 
synthesizers/SDIY", or... whatever! Brag a little to the young-uns. ;-)

Cheers,
John

(You could always blog it...)