Moog Music Forum

Found this pic from 1981. I was 18 then. I had almost completed my PAiA modular before I went gigging with it. That thing was responsible for getting me into engineering and into synthesis.

I used it until 1985, when I discovered a Moog Source and the PAiA went into storage. The case was dismantled years ago and the modules were lost to a flood back in 2006.

Cool picture! 2700 series, right? I've got a picture of my PAiA 4700 series somewhere I'll have to dig out and scan!

Those were the golden days of analogue i guess, I was only a year old.

MC archives lol.



Eric

My first were Paias also.
Gnome, OZ and 4700/S.
Started around 74 or 75, so I'd have been 12 or 13.
Bought a CAT SRM when I was 16 and a (new!) Polymoog a few years later.
Also had a chopped down L-102 Hammond with a built in MXR flanger.
Back then, if Tony Banks didn't use a Leslie, neither did I.

Hey, any of you other young lads at the time remember the PAiA catalog (or flyer?) that had a picture on the cover an extremely beautiful, probably teenage, girl in a wizard costume holding the Nome or OZ? I think it was John Simpton's daughter or???? Permanently etched into my young brain!

Sorry for the digression!

Nice strobe tuner and VOM you had there, MC!

EricK wrote:Those were the golden days of analogue i guess, I was only a year old.

Eric

I was -3 haha.

JohnLRice wrote:Cool picture! 2700 series, right? I've got a picture of my PAiA 4700 series somewhere I'll have to dig out and scan!

Nope, 4700 series. The case was my design. It wound up looking like an ARP ProSoloist even though I never laid eyes on one until 1994.

I remember the first time I gigged with it... pitch drifted like a hive of drunken honeybees. I quickly learned the foible of UNREGULATED power supplies

Gotta see your 4700 system... didja ever post a pic of you COTK/Moon system?

Hey, any of you other young lads at the time remember the PAiA catalog (or flyer?) that had a picture on the cover an extremely beautiful, probably teenage, girl in a wizard costume holding the Nome or OZ? I think it was John Simpton's daughter or???? Permanently etched into my young brain!

Sorry for the digression!

Still have my PAiA catalogs from back then, but I don't have that one!

Nice strobe tuner and VOM you had there, MC!

The VOM was Dad's, he had a bench full of tools and I learned to fix his model trains when I was a boy. That's also where I learned to curse when Dad's trains jumped the track

The strobe tuner belonged to a repair tech I was good friends with. I was tuning the PAiA and the Rhodes while I had it.

I don't miss that Panther combo organ to my right, what a POS that was. Gotta start with something, right?!?

Oh that box with sliders next to the VOM? An eight channel mixer I built from a Craig Anderton design.

It wasn't just the golden age of analog, it was the golden age of DIY!

Great pix, MC! I'm also diggin' the (typical for the times) giganto senior ring (hey, I was 18 in 81, too!). Got my synthesis start in the fall of 1980: saved up all the $$$ from the summer job and bought a Rickenbacker 4001 in Mapleglo ($700) and a Korg MS-20 ($500). Still have both of them! No one even knew what a Korg was back then; I went to the store expecting to buy an ARP Axxe, and the salesman talked me into the MS-20 (hundred bucks cheaper and the capabilities are WAY beyond the Axxe. The Axxe's functionality is pretty much replicated in my Doepfer MS-404 single space rack synth...). In 1981, I gave myself a Pro-One as a graduation present from high school. Took 3 months for Allied Music to get my order delivered. The thing was great sounding, but breaking down constantly (it got to the point where I had to calibrate it and clean the j-wires WEEKLY). Ended up selling it for rent money after Hurricane Katrina...

Hello!

I also built a gnome but never got the strip to work! So I then built their Sequencer but the Gnome wasn't stble enough for it. I also built a kit they had which you could fool arond with the stereo of recordings but can't recal the name. I wish Paia still produced the Gnome today.. I also built a wind and a surf synth from them as well as thing that you plugged in your stereo and would generate very soothing chords and swirl them around your speakers...I was a very happy kid at the time...

A couple of years ago I built a Fatman, but have found no use for it, so it's sotting there in the closet. I'm not a musician, I just like to experiment with sound synthesis and make weird sounds...

By the way, there's a Gnome in eBay today until 09/06/2009 but the seller says it needs to be repaired....

Thanks!

TRON

I actually built another Gnome about a year or two ago.
Someone had provided a completely untouched kit.
Everything still sealed in the bags.

But a weird thing happened- I found it was much more work than I originally recalled putting into it.
I thought with 30 odd years of experience under my belt it would be easier.
Not so... for me anyways.
There's a lot of work to do inside one of those things.

Btw, there was a Moog ad that once featured a girl on a stack of keyboards.
You can see a photo of it at the recent Moog exhibit here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22421713@N ... 187206644/

I personally don't recall the Paia ad in question, but it doesn't mean it didn't exist. With that said, I'd love to see it myself.
Even 30+ years later, I get a kind of magical feeling when I see a Paia catalog.
Receiving their catalog or my latest subscription to Synapse was always a high point for me as a teen.

Back around 1968 or 69, my Dad was taking some post graduate classes one of which was electronic music. The school had just gotten a Modular Moog either around that time or shortly before. I was only 7 or 8 at the time but I recall him saying it could make any sound you can think of. Being 7 or 8 I asked if it could reproduce such and such persons voice. I have a faint memory of going by the college to see it one day but the “lad” was in use so we couldn’t. I never really gave synths much more thought until 1974ish when the school he was teaching music at bought an EML 200. He brought it home one weekend and I spent most of it patching things up and twisting dials. Of course I hooked it up to a reel to reel tape recorder to capture what I was doing. And yes, I think I still have that tape.

I didn’t play with any synths again until I think the Winter of 1976. Dad was at another school and they bought an EML 101. He would bring it home on occasional weekend I would spend most of it exploring what sounds could be created. As luck would have it we had an assignment in 9th grade English to wither write a poem or song as it would be written in the year 2000 ( or something like that) I took this opportunity to do a three movement synth piece that was live to tape. No words at all since by that time we would all be able to communicate in bleep and bloops . Got an A on it fo creativity I think and NO one else came in with a synth recording on reel to reel no less . I think , I hope , I still have some where.
Over the next several years I continued to get to know the 101. One weekend the keyboard player in stage band who had a MiniMoog and a MaxiKorg came over and we had a synth jam. Lots of fun.

In January 1986 I picked up a brand new DX7, I played with programming it on the showroom floor because I wanted to be able to do a few things with S/H. after about 30 minutes of playing with it came home with me. The sales guy tried to talk me into a new fangled keyboard called the Mirage .
In late 1988 I added a used MemoryMoog, and from there things continued to grow to where the studio is today. In 92 I picked up a used Mini, in the mid 90’s I was lucky enough to acquire an EML101 so it’s kind of cool to have what I cut my teeth on in the collection.

First of all, gthose early dad moments are a great foray into this new avenue we call synthesis. I have a few of my own with the MicroMoog. And yea its nice to be able to still own the first synth we cut our teeth on and even better, its nice to know that we cut our teeth on Moogs.

Nice story!

Eric

I found a pic of my old set up when I was in my late teens:



Shown is a homemade sequencer, Mutron Bi-Phase, Cat SRM (w/added 3rd VCO), RE-301 Chorus Echo, Biamp mixer, Hammond L-102, a Polymoog and a Tama drum throne.
Not shown: BGW 100 and 250B amps, Biamp crossover, Carvin / JBL cabs

Kevin Lightner wrote:I found a pic of my old set up when I was in my late teens:



Shown is a homemade sequencer, Mutron Bi-Phase, Cat SRM (w/added 3rd VCO), RE-301 Chorus Echo, Biamp mixer, Hammond L-102, a Polymoog and a Tama drum throne.
Not shown: BGW 100 and 250B amps, Biamp crossover, Carvin / JBL cabs

daaaaamn... i wish i was as lucky as you when i was a teen haha.. i had a broken piano and shitty guitar.