Help please from some of you more technical minded Moog fanatics out there…
I purchased a Moog Source last week; something that I had years ago but gave away when the touch pad went bad. I have always wanted another one. I purchased this “near mint” model on ebay, sold as is, but with a 3 day approval period.
Well, it arrived in perfect working order–not really near mint but in excellent condition at least. I played it and checked it thoroughly over the past weekend–Friday, Saturday, and Sunday it worked flawlessly. I reported that I was happy and that was the end of the transaction.
Naturally on Monday, it started to make a “crackling” sound, kind of like what would be expected with a bad output cord. It was infrequent enough that I thought that I might have only been overdriving my effects processor. It only did this a bit on Monday, but as of last night (Wednesday) it is doing it a lot.
Playing with it more as it displayed the problem more, it appears that it has something to do with the filter. Imagine a muted sound coming from the synth with the cutoff frequency turned down, and then instantly having the filter open up–thus the crackling noise.
Sometimes when I play even with the cutoff knob being turned all the way down (at 0) the sound still plays as if the filter is wide open. Other times with the filter turned down (and sounding appropriately) I can turn the incremental wheel up (and the filter acts correctly) and when I get to about half way up (50%) the filter suddenly starts popping wide open.
This seems to be getting worse–the synth was un-usable last night.
Anybody have an idea what is going on? Expensive to fix? My wife is already going to kill me for buying the thing, let alone getting it in the shop already.
Thanks for any suggestions.