ARP / Mu-tron price lists, 1980

ARP / Mu-tron price lists from January 1, 1980.

Given that I'm a HUGE fan of price lists, you'd think that I would have pushed this out the door a lot sooner, but I just never got around to it.  Even more surprising, I'm not gonna focus on the prices at all*.

* I reserve the right to change my mind

Instead, when I looked back at these scans I became more curious to the relationship between Musitronics and ARP, and quickly found that the history isn't remotely close to being as bright and rosy as I had wanted it to be. 

TO summarize... according to Wikipedia, Mu-tron, short for Musitronics, was a musical effects company founded by Mike Beigel and Aaron Newman in 1972. Beigel was an engineer who had been working on a synth project at Guild Guitar Company when the president of the company was killed in an accident. The new president wasn't as interesting in synths (what the heck?!?!) so Beigel and another former engineer new Newman from GGC, pulled the envelope filter outta that synth and called it the Mu-Tron III. 

By 1979 Musitronics had 35 employees and was churning out a number of effects units out of a retrofitted chicken coop. Eventually, they decided to sell to ARP Instruments on a royalty basis, but unfortunately ARP folded in 1980, before they could collect any money. 

Okay, I summarized a lot. 

But even if my severely summarized ditty isn't bumming you out enough already, Musitronics tried to keep going as Gizmo Incorporated, but it ended when Aaron Newman suffered a heart attack.

FACK.

I hate everything about this story. But the connect between these two companies is important history, the details of which we don't hear much about. So, here are two scans to help keep those companies connected just a little bit longer.

Okay - let's end this on a happy note - LOOK AT THOSE ARP SYNTHS.

There - much better. 

Roland "The Roland Rack" catalog, May 1980

Roland "The Roland Rack" eight page catalog including SPA-240, SPA-120, SIP-300 and SIP-301 amplifiers, SDD-320 Dimension D, SBF-325 stereo flanger, SVC-350 vocoder, SPV-355 pitch-to-voltage synthesizer, SRE-555 chorus echo, SMX-880 line mixer, SST-120 sound system, and SEQ-315 and SEQ-331 equalizers from May 1980.

Oh man... after scanning that last Roland catalog, I just couldn't stop. I became a whirlwind of scanning... and this one got caught up in the tornado. Okay - a glass or two of wine might have helped too.

Point is - the result is another excellent Roland catalog for the blog!

As a teen I always ran into these racks in pawn shops. They looked awesome but I just couldn't afford them. That's not exactly true... I did end up finding a SVC-350 locally back in the 90s. Snapped it up immediately and its never left the studio. But there is just so many other racks from this series that I want. Unfortunately prices have gone through the roof on most of 'em, so it's just a fantasy to find them all now.

For me, the centre of that fantasy is that lovely KS-300 display stand! You'll find it on the last inside page in the bottom left. Take a look... I'll wait...

See... what I tell ya. Wouldn't that thing look great filled with all those rack units?!?! I've expressed it before, but it can't be said enough. I. LOVE. ACCESSORIES. And this Roland Rack is on the top of my "want" list.

I have never seen one of these in someone's gear shot or in an advertisement. But I want to.

If you have one of these, please snap a photo and send it to me! I will add it to the post with a link back to your page/bandcamp/wherever!

Please!   :)

End note: Did you find the System 100 synthesizer?

Rivera Music Services Engineering Brief and Photo Sheet for Minimoog Modifications, 1980

Rivera Music Services 12-page Engineering Brief and Photo Sheet for Minimoog Modifications from January 3, 1980.

Engineering brief also available as a PDF (4MB).

It's a lot of text, sure, but if you are a Minimoog modding freak or just a modding addict in general it's well worth the read!

These scans all began (that rhymed!) when someone in the Moog Fan Club Facebook group asked if anyone had a close-up photo of the Rivera Music Services (RMS) Chromatic Transpose Minimoog mod. I knew I had a glossy photo sheet of a fully modded RMS Minimoog somewhere that I could get a sweet close-up scan from, so I went digging and in the same sleeve was this engineering brief as well.

And what do you know... it comes with a price sheet. That's some historical gold, right there. And a good reason to scan everything and post. :)

A lot of the content of the engineering brief actually appears in the "RMS Modified Minimoog" brochure that I posted about a year and a half ago. But there's a lot that's different too, including prices!

So, it made sense to do a small comparison between the two docs... and I guess readers of the blog are coming along for the ride.

For a start, the engineering brief contains a whole new first section of mods called "Updates" that RMS said would increase the stability and reliability of a stock Minimoog. This included options for:

• New stabilized oscillator board - $320
• Octave range buffers - $70
• Power supply updates I - $80 and II  - $40
• service check $55

*None* of those are listed in the brochure! Excellent stuff.

The next section in the brief is called "Custom Features", with an array of options that "provide new and unique sounds, functions, and control capabilities". This includes a number of features also found in the brochure I posted earlier. I've included prices for each feature with brochure prices in brackets for comparison:

• Fine tune control:
  Osc 2 - $40  (brochure: $55)
  Osc 3 - $40  (brochure: $55)
  Master tune  - $40  (not in brochure)
• Beat tune  - $105 ($89)
• Ribbon controller with pitch wheel reassignment  - $190 (not in brochure)
• Chromatic transpose with assignment switches  - $185  (brochure: $189)
• Preamp mode - $35 (brochure:  $29.50)
• Distortion - $50 (brochure: $49.50)
• Sync (Osc 2 and 3) - $170 (brochure $174.95)
• Contour (Osc 2 and 3) - $100 (brochure $79.50)
• LFO 4 - $150 / $180 with LED (brochure $149 includes LED)
• Modulation pedal  - $90 (not in brochure)
• Keyboard trigger  - $125 (brochure $129)

The final section in the brief is called the "Interface Capabilities" which added features to allow your Mini to "patches involving other synthesizers, controllers, processors and studio equipment. Again, most of these were available at the time the brochure came out as well:

• External CV assignment - $90 (brochure $129.50)
• Oscillators, filter, and keyboard CV and date outputs - $200 (brochure $124.50)
• V-trig to S-trig conversion cable - $40 (brochure has built this into the Mini as a V-trig input jack  - $49.50)
• Separation of keyboard and console - $250 (not in brochure)

I originally estimated the date of the brochure at 1981, and I was hoping I could compare prices to this engineering brief dated January 1980 to get a better date estimate. I figured if prices in the brochure were higher, then an '81 date would still make sense. If prices were lower, then I'd probably date the brochure a bit earlier... maybe 1979 or even 1978 

But they aren't uniformly more or less when compared! For example, the Fine Tune Control mod costs less in the brief than in the brochure, but Beat Tune mod costs more in the brief than in the brochure. Gah! 

It's also interesting to note a few features from the brief don't appear at all in that brochure - the whole service section, but also the modulation pedal, keyboard separation, and the ribbon controller. The pedal and ribbon controller are just external hardware I believe, no real "modding required", so I can see those being left out just to give more space to actual mods. 

And the separation of the keyboard from the synth is not really a mod - its more a massacre of sorts and probably couldn't really be done by your friendly neighbourhood tech. So that, and all those service mods could probably be excluded from the brochure without too much worry too. 

But still... I like consistency. Maybe some future RMS docs will help me out. 

Moog Liberation keytar / synthesizer reference sheet, 1980

Moog Liberation keytar / synthesizer reference sheet from 1980.

What do we have here? It's another member of the Moog 1980 reference sheet family!

And nope - it's still not the last one. There's even more in the series.  The others in the series that I have already posted include those scans below for the Polymoog, Opus 3, Minimoog, Micromoog, Prodigy and Multimoog. Click on the images to go to their respective blog posts!

    

    

These should really be re-printed as collector cards. Just sayin'.

Not sure why it took me so long to post the Liberation sheet - I'm a bit of a keytar freak. If I had been born in the 18th century, I probably would have been hangin' around with Beethoven and had an Orphica strapped around my neck.

But as much as I would have wanted to have had my own Liberation to riff with, it's never happened. The closest I've come is having a Poly-800 or a CZ-101 strung over my shoulder - and technically they're not even keytars because they don't have necks. Hrumph.


I love everything about that front photo. The way the Liberation seems to just be floating there (including the shoulder strap!) and the subtle shadows on that warm red background. So gorgeous.

But if there is one photo of the Moog Liberation I love more than the one in that reference sheet, its this classic photo of Devo holding FIVE Liberations (photo taken from Club Devo - go visit and become a member!).

Fun fact - according to the Liberation wiki page, Devo actually never used the instrument live or in recordings. It does say they used them in music videos... but I don't recall any off the top of my head, so I'll be trying to track one down as soon as I'm done this blog post. If you know of one, email me the link! ( retrosynthads[AT]gmail.com )

And, well, although the question of whether they used the Liberation specifically may be up for debate, it is well-known that Mark Mothersbaugh does love Moogs.  :)

Back to the reference sheet - after admiring that lovely photo, its just natural to flip the page over to read about all those yummy specs. And everything you need to know is there. Including the date of printing of the sheet itself!

But for me, the most curious of the specs is that "Burn in (aging)" section.

"Before final calibration, units are burned in for 72 hours at ambient of 72 F"

Similar info also appears on the back of the Prodigy reference sheet and I commented briefly about it in that blog post too. Interestingly, I'm pretty sure that info isn't referenced in the other sheets in this series. Just those two. Which kinda makes a sense since according to Wikipedia, the Liberation is most closely related to the Prodigy. But I wonder why they note that burn-in time for those two specifically.

Anyways, that's it for now. Time to go down that Devo video rabbit hole!

Moog Retail Price List, June 28, 1980

Moog 2-page fold out Retail Price List from June 28, 1980.

What isn't to love about this price sheet?

A list of awesome Moog synths? Check!  Retail prices for those synth history buffs like me? Yup!  And last but definitely not least, Tom Schuman from Spyro Gyra. No wonder he is smiling, by the time this price list came out, the guy was still barely into his twenties and already had three albums under his belt.

AND he's playing a Moog Liberation keytar. That would definitely make me smile too.

click image for more info

If this photo of Tom appears familiar, it probably means you are old.

Or a fan of vintage synth ads.

Or both.

Because a full colour version appeared in a July 1980 Moog Liberation advertisement, around the same time this price list did. As mentioned in the blog post for that ad, 1980 really was the year that the Keytar broke out.

Which makes it a good year indeed.

As mentioned above, as a synth history buff, I love to see prices listed. Most ads don't include prices and its like a puzzle missing one of the most important pieces.  I've posted a few other Moog price lists (with more to come!) and its fun (and a little terrifying) to watch inflation unfold.

click image for more info

For example, The July 1, 1974 Moog Retail Price List contains some of the same products, and I've included a few of those below for comparison. 

Minimoog:
1974 - $1,595.00
1980 - $1,995.00

Percussion Controller:
1974 - $249.00 
1980 - $350.00

Ribbon Controller:
1974 - $295.00
1980 - $$395.00

click image for more info

Also, the March 1, 1976 Moog Professional Systems Price List gives us a good comparison for their modular systems.

System 15:
1976 - $3,845.00
1980 - $4,960.00

System 35:
1976 - $5,935
1980 - $7,980

System 55:
1976 - $9,675
1980 - $12,000

Time to look for more Keytar ads.

Moog Multimoog synthesizer reference sheet, 1980

Moog Multimoog synthesizer reference sheet from 1980.

I  reference info. The more data the better. And this, and the other reference sheets deliver. Gorgeous photo on one side. Gorgeous info on the other. Yum.

While recently flipping through old blog posts I noticed I never finished off my 1980 Moog reference sheet family. Well, time to fix that!

For someone who gets distracted as easily as I do, I'm surprised I had already managed to get five of them up there, including, in no particular order (click on the images to go to their respective blog posts):

  

  

The Multimoog is probably the Moog synthesizer I'm least familiar with. And at first glance, I had mistaken it for its baby brother - the Micromoog. Looking at the two reference sheets its easy to see why.

And those similarities are not just cosmetic - as noted in the November 1978 Spec Sheet write-up for the Multimoog:

"Moog synthesizer: The Multimoog features two audio oscillators, an LFO, fully variable waveshaping, a 3.5 octave keyboard, switchable single or multiple triggering, a pitchbend ribbon and a modulation wheel. The keyboard also has a force sensor in it, the output of which can be used to control pitch, LFO speed, volume, etc. The Multimoog is basically an expanded version of the Micromoog and features many more open-system features not included on the Micro, such as glide output voltage on-off, ribbon control voltage routing, and keyboard triggering control. Norlin Music. 7373 N. Cicero Ave., Lincolnwood, IL. 60646."

I have to say, I love the variable waveshaping on the Micromoog (waveform control knob that moves gradually from saw through square through narrow pulse waveforms rather than clicking to each individual waveform), and its looks like its implemented the same on the Multi.  Sweet.

One other feature mentioned in the spec sheet got my attention: the "... more open-system features...". A few Google searches later and I'm on Muff Wigglers reading:

"Multimoogs can be chained together. The back panel has a generous I/O system which lets a synth be a master or a slave unit."

Whaaaaaat? Chaining Multimoogs? That's awesome. The back page of the reference sheet does list the jaw-dropping number of in's and out's the Multimoog ha, but unfortunately I couldn't find any videos of two Multimoog's joined together. Dang.

But I think anyone who has been hanging around vintage Moog forums and Web sites will agree its most outstanding feature is it's "force-sensitive" keyboard, now more commonly known as pressure sensitivity. A nice - and rare - feature for a late 1970s synthesizer.

As such, the Multimoog's pressure sensitivity played prominently in the Multimoog's advertising campaigns. Chick Corea called it "a very expressive addition". And the

There are a number of Multimoog video demos on Youtube that show off it's pressure sensitivity nicely. I'll end the blog post with this one. What a lovely growl that Moog filter creates...

Yum!

Roland SVC-350 "Have a say in your sound" ad, International Musician and Recording World, 1980

Roland SVC-350 vocoder "Have a say in your sound" full colour advertisement from page 91 in the July 1980 issue of International Musician and Recording World.

No offense to my first love - Keyboard Magazine - but lately I've been spending a bit of free time flipping through some of my other magazine archives. That's how I came across that CR-68/78 ad I posted earlier in August.  And now I've got this lovely vocoder ad.

This ad doesn't have the same sense of humour as the previous one I posted, but I gotta say I find it just as interesting. Full disclosure - I own an SVC-350 and *love it*. So, you may wanna take my interest with a grain of salt.

So, one of the most interesting things about this ad is summed up in that ol' saying: "You can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep". In this ad, Roland has chosen a photo of the SVC-350 pulled out of a rack that includes some of their other rack gear - a guitar pre-amplifier, stereo flanger, pitch-to-voltage synthesizer, digital delay and Dimension D. Together, Roland has named these and a number of their other effects, the "Roland Rack" system. I hadn't heard this term used to officially describe their rack gear before.

The word "system" was a buzz word that appeared in many gear-related ads during the 70's and 80's. For example, Korg used it in their 1984 "The Korg MIDI System" ad that included their Poly 800 and EX800 synthesizers, RK 100 remote keyboard, KMS-30 synchronizer (a personal favourite) and computer software.

Oberheim used the term "The System" in a 1982 ad to describe the proprietary multi-pin technology used to get their OB-Xa/OB-SX/DMX/DSX gear to work together. They continued using it in 1983 when they swapped out the synths for their OB-8.

Even earlier sightings can be seen in a 1978 ad where the Oberheim SEM teamed up with 360 Systems' Slavedriver to create their own "The System". And it wasn't just in ads - just look at the name of some of Roland's early synthesizers like the System 100, 100m and 700. Or Moog's System I, II and III modulars.

One more thing I noticed. After reading the ad-copy over a few times, something was nagging at me and I couldn't figure it out for the longest time. Then it hit me. At no point does Roland mention the model number of their vocoder in the ad-copy. Its always just referred to as the Roland Vocoder.  It would be like calling your synthesizer "Roland Synthesizer" in the ad-copy of a JX-8p ad.

I checked the ad for the pre-amplifier that is part of the rack system which ran prior to this one, and its model name - SIP-300 -  is referred to multiple times. Maybe because there are other Roland preamps but only one vocoder?

Curious. Probably just to me. :)

Sequential Circuits Prophet-15 spec sheet, 1980

Sequential Circuits Inc. Prophet-15 spec sheet from 1980.

Dang! There are few things I like more than a good ol' fashion spec sheet. And this one takes its rightful place as leader of the Prophets - specifically the Prophet-5 and Prophet-10. I posted those spec sheets just a little while back.

There's no date on the actual spec sheet, but I'm guessing its from around 1980 since a Prophet-15 "Three Prophets are better than one!" advertisement appeared in the April 1980 issue of Keyboard Magazine (right). It caused quite a stir in the letter section of the May and June issues as musician unions were worried that each Prophet-15 would replace three musicians in studios and at live events.  That worry was soon put to bed as few non-unionized musicians arms were long enough to reach the top controls on the front panel of the Prophet-15.

The SCI Prophet-15 is the type of mythical beast that no one has ever played on, but everyone talks about how they *know a guy who knows a guy* that's played on one. Heck, there are at least three people on GearSlutz that have said they've seen one gathering dust in the back of the rental department at the Long and McQuade music store in Regina, Saskatchewan. But apparently the rental/tech guy won't let anyone touch it until Dave Smith's personal tech has tuned it up so he can put it back into rental circulation. And the hype around the Prophet-15 on GearSluts recently became so intense that Uli Behringer had to put out an official announcement that he wouldn't be cloning this particular piece, leading to multiple synth memes to appear on Facebook both defending and attacking the decision.

The SCI Prophet-15 is built on the same tech as its younger sibling - the dual keyboard Prophet-10 - adding a third keyboard as well as an additional five sweet sweet voices. And it was those extra voices that Jimmy "Triple Ace" Douglas was looking for when he produced Star Cruiser's third album "Super Prism". He brings up the Prophet-15 in particular during an interview that appeared in the April 1980 issue of Synthesizers For Fun and Profit magazine.

"I had the Prophet-15 shipped to the studio halfway through the production of the Star Cruiser album. It was at great expense - the thing weighs a ton. But we needed a particularly complicated twinkly sound behind the main rhythm of 'That's not a gun in my pocket', and I knew it would take three different parts from the Prophet to really bring that song together.    Mission accomplished." 

According to synth expert Marcus Vole's book My Favourite Vintage Synthesizers and How To Identify Them, the Prophet-15 kept pace with the Prophet-10's production figures with as many as 11 units being sold to larger studios in the US and Europe, as well as to one community college in northern Saskatchewan that filed for bankruptcy soon after due to the large debt incurred through its unauthorized purchase by a young Star Cruiser fan that worked in the purchasing department. I'm guessing that's how one of these rare beasts turned up at that Long and McQuade in Regina.

The jump in synthesizer technology that came about with the Prophet-15 created a domino effect in the synthesizer manufacturing industry, as Roland soon after announced plans for their three-keyboard Jupiter 24, and Korg quickly debuted their Poly-18.

To this day, scientists at Yamaha are still working on their fully analog three-mini-keyboard CS-03.