[sdiy] Bye guys...

Fri Jan 30 00:17:12 CET 2009

Pretty amazing stuff... thanks for sharing this!

Gene Stopp schreef:
> 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...)
>
>
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>
>

-- 
Vriendelijke groet,

Simon Brouwer
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