Hi,
I bought a Model D around 8 months ago from a pawn shop (no it wasn’t cheap). Serial is #7604. I’m curious about 2 modifications it has. Its my first Model D, so I wasn’t completely hip to exactly what came standard on it & whatnot. I haven’t sent this in for servicing yet, so I haven’t asked a tech yet. Wondering if anyone has seen these mods before & know what they’re for? I can’t seem to get consistent results from pushing the red buttons, due to other malfunctionings in the synth clouding a clear view of the situation. The jacks in the back? I haven’t tested these at all.
Hi Danny.
I’ve got two Minis, one heavily modded, but I haven’t seen the red buttons before.
You say you get inconsistent results. Can you describe what happens, including red button presses and the other malfunctions?
The other jacks could be almost anything. Maybe even related to the red buttons. You could open it up and describe where wires are connected and that would solve the mystery pretty quickly.
I would bet my head, the red knobs are “ON”-knobs. Set a certain amount of “Decay” or “Glide”, put both white toggle-switches in “off”-position and press and hold one or both red buttons and play on the keyboard simultanously. If I’m right, you’ll hear then “Decay” and/or “Glide” 'till you let off the red buttons. Do this repeatedly.
The red buttons are almost certainly “momentary” switches for the decay and glide. I have an RA model and it came with these, although they’re round buttons and a little smaller. I’ve read somewhere that Moog still made these available as an option for a while after they went to the pedal jacks.
The buttons that came with your Mini (Michael) are momentary Switchcraft types.
High quality buttons that are still made today. (available in black and red, fwiw)
The buttons shown in the photo above look very much like the cheap types that Radio Shack and others have offered for years.
They come in both momentary and push on/push off styles.
So it’s hard to say quite what the original poster has or what they do.
If push on/push off, they might change CV and Gate from the keyboard to those added jacks in the back.
Hard to say until it visits a tech.
The jacks they replaced are not 1/4" though and may be difficult to find if he’s returning it to stock.
Moog used smaller diameter jacks for their footpedals and footswitches.
On a stock Mini, it was actually possible to vary the glide rate using a Moog foot pedal.
Unfortunately it used a special pot in that pedal (5 meg audio taper) and a normal volume pedal today won’t work.
