Will new Model D parts be available to vintage Mini owners?

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noddyspuncture
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Re: Will new Model D parts be available to vintage Mini owne

Post by noddyspuncture » Wed Jun 01, 2016 7:33 pm

eric coleridge wrote:Naturally it's cheaper to use modern off-the-shelf equivalents for obsolete parts, but it's not like it's impossible or even particularly difficult to re-manufacture parts today. Much smaller companies than Moog do all the time.
Why re-manufacture a vintage metal & bakelite 6-way selector switch when many electronics suppliers have the modern cheapo plastic versions readily available, off-the-shelf...? Of course you can also fit one of those into a vintage Minimoog and it will work, but purists will want the original unit. I have serviced many of the rotary switches in Minimoogs. They are 'modular' by design - they dismantle and can be serviced. You can't say the same for the modern sealed plastic equivalents.

I'd suggest you remove your original rocker switches and service them...!

Cheers
Tom

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MC
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Re: Will new Model D parts be available to vintage Mini owne

Post by MC » Wed Jun 01, 2016 8:06 pm

eric coleridge wrote:I also read a quote that suggests Moog is re-manufacturing UA726s for this project.
Well that quote was wrong. I'm an EE and have been under the hood of my own Minimoog, which is equipped with the 3046-based oscillator board. I can spot 726 and 3046 and discrete boards a mile away, and they are cloning the 3046 board. You can still purchase parts for that board. No one is cloning the UA726-based board.
It's really not that difficult to re-manufacture old parts anymore
Famous last words. You are not an EE and know nothing of integrated circuit fabrication lines, how fast previous fab technology becomes obsolete, and the work and money involved to transform a twenty year old substrate design to modern fab lines is prohibitive. The design process alone is six digits, and fab lines demand up-front payment for a minimum 100,000 pieces before they even tool up. By then you're up to half a million dollars. As a Minimoog would use 3 UA726s per unit, the math tells us that Moog would have to sell 33,333 Minimoogs to use up all those UA726s. They barely sold over 10,000 by 1981 when the original production ended. Math sucks, but so does reality.
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noddyspuncture
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Re: Will new Model D parts be available to vintage Mini owne

Post by noddyspuncture » Wed Jun 01, 2016 9:00 pm

eric coleridge wrote:I also read a quote that suggests Moog is re-manufacturing UA726s for this project.
Actually, Moog never did manufacture the UA726 in the first place...!

eric coleridge
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Re: Will new Model D parts be available to vintage Mini owne

Post by eric coleridge » Wed Jun 01, 2016 10:49 pm

MC wrote:
eric coleridge wrote:I also read a quote that suggests Moog is re-manufacturing UA726s for this project.
Well that quote was wrong. I'm an EE and have been under the hood of my own Minimoog, which is equipped with the 3046-based oscillator board. I can spot 726 and 3046 and discrete boards a mile away, and they are cloning the 3046 board. You can still purchase parts for that board. No one is cloning the UA726-based board.
Perhaps they were talking about the having the CA3046s made. Or perhaps the quote was ambiguous or even misleading, or maybe I just plain misunderstood. I'll try to find the reference.


MC wrote:
It's really not that difficult to re-manufacture old parts anymore
Famous last words. You are not an EE and know nothing of integrated circuit fabrication lines, how fast previous fab technology becomes obsolete, and the work and money involved to transform a twenty year old substrate design to modern fab lines is prohibitive. The design process alone is six digits, and fab lines demand up-front payment for a minimum 100,000 pieces before they even tool up. By then you're up to half a million dollars. As a Minimoog would use 3 UA726s per unit, the math tells us that Moog would have to sell 33,333 Minimoogs to use up all those UA726s. They barely sold over 10,000 by 1981 when the original production ended. Math sucks, but so does reality.
I also happened to be talking about hardware parts, like switches for instance. I don't believe hardware parts are so prohibitively expensive to fabricate these days that Moog couldn't use them if they so desired.

But for the sake of argument---in the past several years, I've noticed a ton of ICs that had previously been been difficult to source, all of a sudden becoming newly available and relatively inexpensive again from Chinese distributors. I'm sure you've noticed this too.

Perhaps a company like Moog that may have an interest in sourcing obsolete ICs wouldn't necessarily have to take on the full expenses you're talking about (as they would have years ago), when there are Chinese firms already doing this sort of work, and already making it possible to get old chips newly manufactured at a cost that's non-prohibitive. This is simply the conjecture that I made when I heard Moog was having obsolete ICs newly fabricated. Is this foolish conjecture?

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Re: Will new Model D parts be available to vintage Mini owne

Post by eric coleridge » Wed Jun 01, 2016 10:55 pm

noddyspuncture wrote:
eric coleridge wrote:I also read a quote that suggests Moog is re-manufacturing UA726s for this project.
Actually, Moog never did manufacture the UA726 in the first place...!
who said they did?

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Re: Will new Model D parts be available to vintage Mini owne

Post by eric coleridge » Wed Jun 01, 2016 11:40 pm

noddyspuncture wrote: I'd suggest you remove your original rocker switches and service them...!
Cheers
Tom
I'd love to Tom, but I'm not aware of any particular remedy to this problem. It's like they're worn down, and too loose to make a solid click; although they still mechanically switch. You know what I mean?

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Re: Will new Model D parts be available to vintage Mini owne

Post by EricK » Thu Jun 02, 2016 1:01 am

Eric,

There are two videos, one with TJ Mills and the other with Nick Montoya.

TJ Mills
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAi4aEePdkM
3:12


Nick Montoya
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC-sAAtxuDQ#t=13
0:47 but particularly after 1:07 referring to the filter transistors.

They did have some obsolete parts remanufactured.
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Re: Will new Model D parts be available to vintage Mini owne

Post by noddyspuncture » Thu Jun 02, 2016 7:59 am

eric coleridge wrote:
I also happened to be talking about hardware parts, like switches for instance. I don't believe hardware parts are so prohibitively expensive to fabricate these days that Moog couldn't use them if they so desired.

But for the sake of argument---in the past several years, I've noticed a ton of ICs that had previously been been difficult to source, all of a sudden becoming newly available and relatively inexpensive again from Chinese distributors. I'm sure you've noticed this too.
Moog were already using similar rocker switches for the Voyager and also the Moogerfooger range... so remanufacturing the exact same switches as used in the vintage Minimoog's wouldn't make good business sense. They might as well use (and probably are using) those same modern equivalents in the new Mini.

As for the Chinese IC's... more often than not they are 'fakes'... you take a big chance buying them. I have been stung with Chinese components before. The odds are pretty high that you're not getting what you pay for from these Chinese distributors you mention...!

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Re: Will new Model D parts be available to vintage Mini owne

Post by latigid on » Thu Jun 02, 2016 9:52 am

On the silicon side, 3046 is (barely) still available, at least in SOIC or some other SMT package. u726s are basically unobtainium, but there is a guy on MuffWiggler looking at getting some vactrols (full of naughty cadmium) and perhaps u726s after. The French Minimoog clone has a dual FET (LS3954), which is remarkably available from a UK firm called Micross. Dual transistor pairs (AS394) are freshly made in Latvia by a special process:
I visited a plant - it's a fusion of space technologies with innovative diy test equipment that outperform similar aparatus produced in France, and some stuff from 70-ties. Each IC is shooted from pneumatic gun at acceleration of 3000G, then heated and cooled for days in extreme conditions so that only the best ICs survive

So, never say never!

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Re: Will new Model D parts be available to vintage Mini owne

Post by MC » Thu Jun 02, 2016 12:47 pm

eric coleridge wrote:But for the sake of argument---in the past several years, I've noticed a ton of ICs that had previously been been difficult to source, all of a sudden becoming newly available and relatively inexpensive again from Chinese distributors. I'm sure you've noticed this too.
Sure I have noticed. These Chinese distributors have proven to be illegitimate because the ICs turn out to be counterfeits. The counterfeitors scavenge discarded PC boards, pull the ICs, and re-label them. For currently manufactured parts, the OEMs simply obsolete the part number, assign a new number, and pass on the info to their customers. For parts out of production, the rest of us have to separate the crooks and we don't have the time or $$$ to do that.

These counterfeit parts are also finding their way into the domestic low quantity supply chains and ebay auctions. The authorities in China are rather indifferent about penalizing the counterfeitors, in fact they seem to encourage the practice.
Perhaps a company like Moog that may have an interest in sourcing obsolete ICs wouldn't necessarily have to take on the full expenses you're talking about (as they would have years ago), when there are Chinese firms already doing this sort of work, and already making it possible to get old chips newly manufactured at a cost that's non-prohibitive. This is simply the conjecture that I made when I heard Moog was having obsolete ICs newly fabricated. Is this foolish conjecture?
I work in the electronics field and I can tell you that China isn't re-issuing any obsolete ICs.
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Re: Will new Model D parts be available to vintage Mini owne

Post by eric coleridge » Fri Jun 03, 2016 11:37 am

noddyspuncture wrote:
eric coleridge wrote:
As for the Chinese IC's... more often than not they are 'fakes'... you take a big chance buying them. I have been stung with Chinese components before. The odds are pretty high that you're not getting what you pay for from these Chinese distributors you mention...!
Everything is from China. The odds of getting ripped off by Chinese part suppliers are pretty low in my experience, and just about the same as with any other distributor from anywhere else. I've had mislabeled parts from Mouser too.

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Re: Will new Model D parts be available to vintage Mini owne

Post by eric coleridge » Fri Jun 03, 2016 11:57 am

But anyway this argument is ridiculous. The two of you are a couple goof balls and will obviously argue this minutia to your deaths in order to maintain your king nerd status in the Moog forums.

All I'm saying is,

1. It was stated in a video that some parts are being re-manufactured. I don't know why this is so far-fetched, I see old parts re-fabricated frequently these days.

2. If it happened to be switches, however unlikely, I respectfully submit a request to buy some replacements for my Mini

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Re: Will new Model D parts be available to vintage Mini owne

Post by MC » Fri Jun 03, 2016 12:25 pm

eric coleridge wrote:But anyway this argument is ridiculous. The two of you are a couple goof balls and will obviously argue this minutia to your deaths in order to maintain your king nerd status in the Moog forums.
Using shaming language and names to discredit people because you don't like their views or their expertise. How lame and manipulative.
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Re: Will new Model D parts be available to vintage Mini owne

Post by MC » Fri Jun 03, 2016 12:28 pm

eric coleridge wrote:Everything is from China. The odds of getting ripped off by Chinese part suppliers are pretty low in my experience, and just about the same as with any other distributor from anywhere else. I've had mislabeled parts from Mouser too.
You are grouping the legitimate suppliers with the counterfeiters to lend a false legitimacy to your argument. Fail. Read my comments carefully.
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Re: Will new Model D parts be available to vintage Mini owne

Post by eric coleridge » Fri Jun 03, 2016 3:50 pm

MC wrote:Using shaming language and names to discredit people because you don't like their views or their expertise. How lame and manipulative.
Forgive me; I just assumed from the high condescending tone in these posts that one of you must be the reigning king nerd.


But seriously MC, you obviously meant to shut down any notion that I may have had about this new MiniMoog sharing any interchangeable parts with the 'old' MiniMoog. It seems to me that you're not happy about this MiniMoog "reissue". Is that fair to say?

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