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.

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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.

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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

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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 Polymoog Synthesizer reference sheet, 1980

Moog Polymoog Synthesizer reference sheet from 1980.

Someone asked me if I had any type of reference sheet for the Polymoog Synthesizer. I love requests! :o) This one is part of a large family of reference sheets that Moog printed in 1980.

I've seen scans of the front of this reference sheet on the Web in a few places, including dubsounds.com and isaotomita.net, but the back of the sheet is harder to come by. Sure, the front of this reference sheet has a beautiful photo of a Polymoog Synthesizer, but it is the back of this sheet that provides all the juicy reference information you have ever needed. All in one location.

If the saying 'more than the sum of its parts' is true, then the Polymoog must be one hell of an instrument. Of particular interest to me, and apparently a few others, is the very very unique Resonator section (section 13 in the reference sheet).

Ken Elhardt describes it as a "3-band 'Resonator' section that allows Formant-Filtering in addition to its dynamic Filters". And he should know. He took the Resonator section out of his Polymoog (Gaah!) to create a stand-alone unit. And although it hurts me plenty to see the guts ripped out of any synthesizer, his Youtube video is a great demonstration of a disembodied Resonator in action.

Jürgen Haible went one step further and created a printed circuit board that recreated the Resonator circuit. The page also includes an audio sample he made with his prototype. Check out some of his other projects (PCBs, synthesizers and music!) on his Web site.

So, you may be asking - what did Ken do to the rest of that Polymoog once the guts were ripped out and sold off? Well, Ken made it into a coffee table.

No, seriously. It even has drawers. You can find more links to pictures of it on MATRIXSYNTH.

I just don't know if I find this beautiful or horrific. Probably both. My crafty-blogger girlfriend described it as an excellent example of 'down-cycling'. :o)

Moog Polymoog Synthesizer, Contemporary Keyboard 1977

Moog Polymoog Synthesizer ad from page 5 of Contemporary Keyboard Magazine June 1977.

This is the second Polymoog ad to show up in CK, running in a few issues between June and September 1977, during the time that Moog had a monopoly on page 5 (which was most of 1977). Great real estate if you can get it - right across from the "Letters" section. I scanned and uploaded the first ad back in June of last year. That post also included the description of the machine from the Spec Sheet section of CK.

While recently speaking with an acquaintance at my local music store hang-out, we got onto the topic of the Polymoog. How cool it was that the Polymoog was *fully* polyphonic and had a touch sensitive keyboard. But when we started talking about the editing features, I soon realized we were talking about two totally different instruments. When I asked him to clarify whether we were talking about the Polymoog Synthesizer or the Polymoog Keyboard, he looked at me with a blank face.

We took over one of the audio editing demo computers and started surfing around so I could show him the differences.

Wikipedia's Polymoog page is quite good for some basic info (compared to some of Wikipedia's other synthesizer pages) and pretty much sums it up. Basically, the name Polymoog can either refer to the original Polymoog Synthesizer or the largely pre-set Polymoog Keyboard. The latter was basically a stripped-down version of the first, similar in appearance and sharing the same case and keyboard.

You can compare the image of the Polymoog Synthesizer from this ad and the one on Wikipedia with an image of the Polymoog Keyboard from this blog post. You can definitely tell there are quite a few differences.

In short, the big differences I found on the Web are:

Model number:
Polymoog Synthesizer - 203a
Polymoog Keyboard - 280a

Release date:
Synthesizer- 1976 (some sites say 1975).
Keyboard- 1978.

Price:
Synthesizer: $5295.00 US
Keyboard: $3995.00 US
*According to synthfool.com's 1979 Moog price list.

Pre-sets:
Synthesizer- Eight: strings, piano, organ, harpsichord, funk, clav, vibes, and brass.
Keyboard- Fourteen: vox humana, string 1, string 2, electric piano, piano, honky tonky, clav, harpsi, brass, chorus brass, pipe organ, rock organ, vibes, and funk.

Controls - right side of panel
Looking at the right-side of the front panel, the Synthesizer had a full section of controls that the Keyboard was missing. This included extensive controls for loudness contour, resonators (low, medium and high controls) and voltage controlled filter (cutoff, Q, modulation and envelope controls).

Controls - left side of panel
The left-side of the front panel had a few controls in common. Both had pitch and beat controls, as well as octave balance (volume for low, middle, and high octaves of keyboard). But that is where the similarities ended.

The Synthesizer had a host of other editing controls in the right-hand side: external keyboard glide control, master gain controls, and extensive oscillator modulation sections that included controls for sawtooth FM/rectangular FM/PM, rectangular (pulse width) shape/mod, and sawtooth levels.

The Keyboard version only had some simple hi-pass filtering, attack rate, and basic modulation controls.

There are a number of Web sites out there with some good basic information, including Vintage Synth Explorer and synthmuseum.com.

But the *best* Polymoog site I have ever found has got to be Dubsounds Polymoog Owners Club, "dedicated to owners and enthusiasts of Moog Polymoog 203a and 280a synthesizers". It has the most comprehensive history of the Polymoog that I've seen anywhere, a great scan of the manual, and much more.

Definitely check it out.

Bob Moog - a blunt and totally biased view point, May 1977

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Update: Michelle Moog-Koussa from The Bob Moog Foundation has posted an excellent commentary on this ad on MATRIXSYNTH. From the comment:

"This is indeed a very cool ad on the face of it, but I can tell you for sure that this was not written by Bob Moog. To those of us who knew him well, this is evident in so many ways." ... "This ad has a slick marketing department's fingerprints all over it, not Bob's".

It explains why this ad is so different from other Moog ads that appeared before it and provides us with an insider's perspective... Seriously - read the whole comment.

Ms. Moog-Koussa - no disrespect to the Moog name intended. It was indeed a slick marketing department.

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Moog ad from page 26 and 27 of Contemporary Keyboard Magazine May 1977.

This rare 2-page centerfold advertisement from Bob Moog only ran once or twice, but it brings to light what I think was happening in the synthesizer market at the time: as synthesizer technology became more affordable and new companies and products started coming to market, competition was heating up.

Moog was, in no uncertain terms, defending their turf from the Axxes, Odysseys, CATs, and other synthesizers that were starting to pop up. Like any good leader in a turf war, or like me when I play the game Risk, Moog decided the best defense is a good offense.

And as any good Risk player knows, the best offense takes a multi-prong approach:

Name dropping: If you've read my blog in the past, you are aware that I've crowned ARP the king of name-dropping. In this ad, Moog hits back with a few heavy-weights of their own - including Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Jan Hammer and Walter (now Wendy) Carlos.

Promotion of their technology: Moog bluntly reminds readers not just that they started it all in 1964, but they were first with a number of technologies including:

• multiple waveform voltage controlled oscillator
• the balanced, voltage controlled amplifier
• keyboard with memory and glide
• four-part ADSR envelope generator
• polyphonic synthesizer
  

Promotion of their creative design: I've pointed out in a few posts that ARP was fond of the term 'human engineering' around this time period. Throughout this ad, Moog takes aim squarely at ARP by using the term 'musical engineering' multiple times.

Attacking rumors: I'm not sure when this pots vs sliders debate started bubbling to the surface - maybe there was ongoing rumors or debates in music stores or some of the industry mags at the time - but in this ad, Moog wanted to make it clear to readers that their engineers knew best. And is it just me, or does Moog throw a punch directly at ARP with the line "Just try to accurately tune and all-slider instrument!" ?

Reading this ad in 2009, Moog may come off as arrogant to some, but I think they got the tone just right. The ad starts off with a humorous tone but still lets you know right off the bat that this is Bob Moog's opinion [Update: the company's opinion]. Also, although Moog knows that they were the bee's knees of the synthesizer world, they take the high road and never actually mention any competitor's names in the ad.

That's class!

Moog Polymoog, Contemporary Keyboard 1976

Moog Polymoog from inside cover of Contemporary Keyboard Magazine November/December 1976.

This ad ran in September/October and November/December 1976 issues of CK, right after the magazine announced the Polymoog synthesizer in the Spec Sheet section of the July/August 1976 issue. That Spec Sheet announcement provides a great description of the machine:

"The Polymoog utilizes 72 micro-ships that enable the performer to play 72 synthesized notes simultaneously. Each chip holds two VCAs, one VCF, and one contour generator, thus providing each key with its own volume, attack, and brightness response. Two oscillators provide the basic patches. Programming is done in two ways: 1) With eight preset modes - piano, strings, harpsichord, organ, vibes, funk, brass, and clav.; 2) From scratch, as in the standard monophonic synthesizers. Control voltages are supplied by an LFO that produces sawtooth and pulse waves, and the keyboard may be split for getting separate effects in the bass and treble registers."

That pretty much sums it up!

End note: Did you catch the error in the description? It says that there are 72 chips for the 72 notes. There are actually 71 keys on a Polymoog (E to D), but the prototypes given out to famous Moog users such as Chick Corea had 72 keys. They must have used the prototype description for the Spec Sheet copy. Find out more about the note changes on dubsounds.com's Polymoog pages.