Service Bulletin 1207 “Reliability Improvements” pages 9 & 10 for Faratron and Moog power supply
http://www.retrosynth.com/~analoguediehard/studio/keyboards/moog_polymoog/moog_polymoog-sb-1207-09-faratron.jpg
http://www.retrosynth.com/~analoguediehard/studio/keyboards/moog_polymoog/moog_polymoog-sb-1207-10-faratron.jpg
Oh dear - you need the entire bulletin 
Will have to scan tomorrow, it’s bedtime
Great info, MC.
Thank you.
I can recall comparing Faratron and Moog PSUs once and couldn’t locate anything different.
I guess I was looking at a later, updated one.
I wonder what serial number they were at when they implemented these changes?
Mine was a later 8 button Polymoog in the 4000’s, I think.
It was made after a large number of design changes, some supposedly suggested by Rick Wakeman.
In the documents McNiff provided me, there’s a bunch of production notes.
I’m not sure they’re really all that valuable, but it was interesting to find handwritten internal Moog documents related to the PM.
I wish I had found more for other instruments.
Sorry to butt in here…how could Moog get away with such poor QC? Even in the days before the Internet was in nearly every house, wouldn’t word spread about something as expensive as a Poymoog being as reliable as a Yugo? Or worse? Check the pins for bad solder joints, cut this, put a jumper here…and it sold 3199 units with all these issues with the cost of a new Caddy attached? Moogers must have been more forgiving back then…no one on this forum would stand for such shenanigans! 
The service manual has conflicting information: serial numbers “below approximately 3677” had the Faratron, serial numbers “above approximately 3200” had the Moog supply 
Just found this “Ducati Electrolytic Capacitors located in the unregulated section of the power supply have exhibited a short life span” and this bulletin was published on 11/1979.
Service Bulletin #1207 “Reliability and Performance upgrade” is 42 freaking pages long!
Moog were owned by Norlin back then.
Norlin also owned Gibson guitars. Quality control took a dive during the Norlin years, guitars left the Gibson factory with defects that would never have gotten out back in the 1950s. That quality control unfortunately spilled over to Moog. And the Polymoog was such a difficult birth that Dave Luce was under high pressure to get it to production - it was a rush job.
Looking at the schematic, they are nearly identical. Different tranny’s and zeners. Faratron 723s were the can package, Moog were the DIP package. Trimpots and associated resistors were different values. On a functional block level they were identical.
BTW - Polymoog and Memorymoog power supply are exact same circuit board - current limiting resistors are only difference. Hi Doug 
That makes sense. Norlin was Chicago Musical Instruments before that, and they distributed Farfisa as well as Revere products. Though my 1963 Revere tape recorder still works and my Farfisa 611-R doesn’t. Did CMI also take a dive when they switched to Norlin?
It was not my intent to put any pressure. Next week, next month, won’t make much difference.
It may be that the whole Poly thing is well over my head. But now that all my other vintages are top shape, except for the CDX-0652, maybe the time has come.
I learned so much over the last 2 years. After rebuilding an MG-1 (in a very sorry state) from scratch, finding a permanent solution to the forever problematic keyboard connectors on the Opus 3 and various repairs on some other units, I feel more confident I can go some more distance in restoring the Poly, I guess.
The poly was my first vintage, it’s been hiding under the bed for almost two years now. I will power the beast later this week and see what I am up against.
Thanks.
Yup, Ted McCarthy of Gibson saw the transition of CMI to Norlin as a Very Bad Thing and that’s why he left Gibson. Ted had really good relations with the president of CMI whose son inherited the position and changed it to Norlin. Said son was a very snobbish MBA who thought that everybody west of the Hudson River NY was an idiot, and Ted saw no future with him.
The lesson learned from Norlin/Gibson/Moog and CBS/Fender: music, MBAs, and stockholders should not mix 
Ok, thanks. I still can’t believe that Norlin survived until the 90’s with such practices. They should have died with the original Moog. 
I remember calling up Moog in the mid 80’s and being told they were basically only a skeleton crew then.
No product development any longer, mostly selling parts and old stock they had along with some support.
One call even came from them too.. for Roland support.
But Moog had an awesome phone in the mid-80’s…that must have been developed during that post-Memorymoog period.
OK I uploaded all 42 pages of the service bulletin #1207. Rather than paste a page full of URLs just copy the text below, paste to your browser URL bar and replace “01” with the page number (IE page 2 = 02)
My service manual - volume I & II, service bulletin #1207 - was probably the last version as it is dated the last year of Polymoog production and I bought the set new from the factory back in 1985.
Thank you so much for this.
The good thing is that those files are not only going to end up on a USB storage device. They are already printed, the Poly’s been turned on and some sweet sounds coming out of it 
Since we’ve been speaking about Fred McNiff’s old stock, I’m selling the last NOS Polymoog right hand board I got from him on Ebay.
I don’t know if it works, but it’s complete and has never been installed. (NOS)
Has an entire Moog filter on it.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-NOS-Moog-Polymoog-Circuit-Board-/220947638713
Hummm … tempting, I am not an E-bay suscriber though, and I really don’t know if I am gonna need it down the road.
My poly came with a few replacement NOS parts too (notes card) and other stuff.
Anyway.. holler if it does not sell on E-bay. I’ll know more on my poly in a week or two.
Sounds like you are a pretty serious about getting your head under the hood of this box. So do you have a scope? If this was on my bench for a reported problem of no direct output, the first thing I would do is turn on my scope to warm up the CRT (old school test equipment here). Then I would orient myself to the correct pages of the manual and decide where I was going to put the scope probe to locate the signal interruption. Sometimes I start at the output jack and work backwards, and sometimes I’d start deeper inside and work out. If all the other outputs work OK, the problem is not too deep. I’m curious - what are you using the direct output for? I always wondered how often that feature was actually used on this box.
The direct output was provided by Moog/Norlin so we could use filters of our choice that sounded better than the wuss ladder filter they put in this thing It’s also handy for the Moogerfoogers esp the MIDI Murf.
I suppose that’s one take on why they included the direct output, MC.
In my opinion, it’s because it’s 180 degrees out of phase with their filter and can produce sounds from cancellations that are like a notch or bandpass filter.
Less Moogy and more like an Oberheim.
As for polycom boards, please consider taking the time to remove the polycom connector boards and inspecting/resoldering connections.
It’s very common for connections to break on any of those three boards.
Swapping Polycom boards can help to know if a socket has bad connections too.