Despite this instrument being moved from truck to truck and sent all over the place regardless of position, dropping it and even opening it (they snipped all the wire ties), it arrived in great condition.
Here’s the email I received today from the Moog’s owner.
Sorry if this sounds like me flaunting myself, but I had very real doubts it would arrive in good condition and the client had been nothing but a pleasure to work for. I was very worried it would arrive at all, let alone in decent condition.
Here is a slightly edited version of an email he me sent today:
Kevin
.. It is stunningly gorgeous and seems to be working perfectly. I have followed your checkup protocol to the letter. Nothing was loose inside. I took off the back panel to check everything. I switched on the power. All lights are working, no burning smells or other problems.
The oscillators that I have tested seem to be perfectly calibrated over all available octaves!!!
Amazing! It’s not even warm yet. You’re a magician Kevin!!!
I have now powered it for 60 minutes and tested it and everything seems to work like a charm. Perfect tuning and calibration.
Thanks Kevin. It’s a beautiful synth. I love it.
So I still don’t trust FedEx Ground and wouldn’t recommend them to anyone, but in this case they did finally come through and the client received his instrument in one piece and apparently working well.
Relief all round, of course. But this whole episode still seems to indicate the need for a more reliable courier service - or perhaps for the tech to travel to the instrument and not vice versa.
If I had a Moog modular I think I’d be either saying to a tech “can I bring it to you for calibration/repair/whatever?” or “would you like to come up and calibrate it/repair it/whatever” depending how much work was involved. As it is, if I needed work doing on any of my smaller and more manageable synths I’d be looking at putting the synth in my car and transporting it myself. I know Britain is much smaller than America, but that still seems the best option to me.
On the face of it, this is a great idea.
But it’s only realistic for smaller synths or ones with very few adjustments.
This machine had 7 921 VCOs (6 921B, 1 921).
Each one has about 14 trimmers inside.
That’s almost 100 trimmers and if you throw in the two 921A’s necessary, it’s 104.
This doesn’t even include all the other modules or the most important single one, the power supply (which has about a dozen itself!)
Each trim adjustment requires a different setup on a scope or at least one meter.
Some procedures require that you change 2 or more trims in a back and forth or rotational pattern until a certain criteria is achieved.
There’s adjustments for waveforms, tuning, tracking, offset.. on and on. Some quite involved and taking a lot of time.
All the while, the adjustments you’re working on may be old, finicky or unable to remain where set.
You may even have to make a dead stop, power the entire system down, remove a module and repair it right there and then.
Then afterward, reinstall it, power it up, wait a certain period and start all over again, hoping whatever you operated on was a success.
This is hard to do and takes a long time even in one’s own shop.
Doing it in front of the owner in his home would be quite a challenge in many ways.
One tool or part not brought and it could make it impossible too.
I think a tech could make minor house-calls and maybe tune up a Minimoog or Arp Odyssey on location, but calibrating many other vintage synths would be very difficult.
I just bought a minimoog voyager lunar impact from Nova musik and drove hours to Milwaukee to pick it up… damn that! Fedex sucks and I worked for ups a while back when I was in college … heheh, man, no one but I should handle my expensive items. I feel your plight!
Hey bunnyman, hows it goin? We talked a bit on the hartmann neuron forum… my name there was xthewoodx.
I too sold my neuron… it’s time had come I suppose.
