360 Sysytems Slavedriver, Synapse 1977

360 Systems Slavedriver guitar synthesizer advertisement from page 2 of Synapse Magazine May/June 1977.

The Slavedriver was part of the first wave of guitar/synthesizer systems that allowed guitars to control synthesizers. I never really got into them, probably because I didn't have the talent or time required to learn to play a guitar. But I don't want to turn this blog post into a therapy session...

I really like this advertisement for a number of reasons. The first and second of which are the logos.

The '360 Systems' logo itself stands the test of time. It is a shame they still don't use that logo today. But then again, they are pretty much a totally different company today too.

And I have a love-hate relationship with the 'Slavedriver' logo (tipping towards the love side). Maybe I'm a bit sensitive about the stylized 'whip' that runs across the top of the logo - it's a bit too literal for me, but the Battlestar Galactica-like font used for the logo is fantastically futuristic.

I also really like the way the 'Slavedriver' logo blends in with another funky-font-tag-line that is cheeky enough to tell the bulk of the readers of this electronic music magazine (ie. keyboard players) to 'move over!'. Seriously - wouldn't most of the readers of this magazine be synthesizer fanatics? I'm sure many would have a synthesizer lying around, but also a guitar? Is this a good strategy in a Synapse ad?

The ad copy underneath the tag-line also directs a lot its attention towards guitarists. There are a few places where they kinda give equal billing to that smaller segment of readers that may own both synthesizers and guitars, but the copy as a whole should really have squarely targeted keyboard players. Or am I just reading into it because of my disgust at not learning to play guitar? This very well may be turning into a therapy session.

Could the logic of placing this ad in Synapse have been that synthesizers cost more than guitars, so it would be easier to make the case for a keyboard player to buy a relatively inexpensive guitar in order to get out to the front of the stage? But then why direct this ad at guitarists?

It also makes me wonder if 70s guitar magazines also had guitar-synth ads? I'd think so.

Sorry, I'm starting to ramble...

Pushing the audience argument aside, the ad-copy itself may be a bit crowded but the way it curves around the photo of the Slavedriver hardware really adds to the design and style of the ad.

Back in March I blogged about a brochure from another of the guitar-synths trying to make its way in the world. The ARP Avatar. The ARP Avatar brochure directed its attention towards guitar playerst too, and it too made a fatal error. It tried to tell egocentric rock-god guitar players that they could get more performance potential with synthesizer sounds. Probably the last thing a rock-god guitar player wants to hear.

So therein lies the problem. How do you market a guitar synthesizer back in the 70s when the majority of guitarists and synthesists may have been entrenched in two totally separate camps at the time? That's a tough sell. To me it's like bring matter and anti-matter together. Kaboom!

And maybe that is why Tom Mulhern's Web site includes a great article entitled 'The History of Guitar Synthesizers: Four Revolutions, No Clear Winner'. And he should know - he spent more than a decade at Guitar Player magazine.

Maybe I should contact him to ask about guitar-synthesizer ads in Guitar Player... hmm...

Oberheim OB-1, Contemporary Keyboard, Synapse, 1977

Oberheim OB-1 synthesizer advertisement from page 11 of Contemporary Keyboard November/December 1977.

This Oberheim advertisement introducing the OB-1 synthesizer ran intermittently in CK for around six months starting in November 1977 until April 1978. Interestingly, the OB-1 didn't appear in the Spec Section of CK until August 1978 - four months after this ad stopped running.

[Update from May 2, 2010: The advertisement also ran in Synapse Magazine: page 4 in November/December 1977 and page 3 in January/February 1978]

I really really really enjoy this advertisement. I like so much about it that I feel kind of like a prick for commenting first on the one thing lacking.

The first thing I noticed about this advertisement was that my eye couldn't quickly and easily identify the synthesizer being advertised. Usually the name of the synthesizer will be found at the top of the ad in big letters, in the tagline, or prominently displayed as part of the photo or imagery. For example, Moog would often included the name of the synthesizer at the top of the ad or at the bottom of the ad. ARP was more likely to add it to the tag line or have it noticable in the photo. I think Sequential Circuits did it best when incorporating the name into the imagery of their awesome Ear-Force advertisements.

I'm not saying this was always the case, but it was a good rule to live by. Looking now at this OB-1 advertisement, you can see that Oberheim doesn't even mention the name of the synthesizer until halfway through the ad-copy. Maybe because it was an introductory ad, Oberheim thought that showing the outline diagram of the synth would draw reader's curiosity in more than the name of a synthesizer no one had heard of yet.

Either way, the rest of this ad is great. I really enjoy the technical desktop imagery and the way the ad pokes a little fun at engineers (I'm pretty sure that the Engineering and Marketing employees at many companies were often at separate ends of the room during the office Christmas party - well, until the booze started to flow). The mostly white-coloured ad almost gets lost on the page, but the shadowing underneath the bottom corners of the diagram helps pull the ad together. If Oberheim had only had slapped a big 'OB-1' somewhere on it.... :o)

I've only played on an OB-1 once in my friend's basement a long time ago and I recall that there were two things that stood out when I was givin' 'er a spin:

1. The bass. It was *really fat*. F-A-T. FAT.

2. The memory select buttons. They were actually these metal dome-shaped touch-sensitive contact-type things. They were very unique and I remember that I had never come across anything like them before. While researching this post I was quite surprised at how long it took me to find someone else mention this unique feature. I finally found this post on MATRIXSYNTH that has a great photo of the touch contacts and also includes a comment describing how to store patches.

The OB-1 has the distinction of being known as the first commercial programmable synthesizer and it's architecture is based around the SEM module. You can find some more reference information on the OB-1 at Vintage Synth Explorer and everything2.com.

Looking at photos on Sequencer.de, it seemed to have come in two models (didn't know!) - a gray face panel and a black one. But I can't find much information about the differences between these two models besides the colour.

I'll keep digging.

Steiner-Parker Two-Voice Synthacon and Sequencer 151, Contemporary Keyboard and Synapse 1976

Steiner-Parker Two-Voice Synthacon synthesizer and Sequencer 151 advertisement from page 30 of Contemporary Keyboard Magazine and the back inside cover of Synapse Magazine November/December 1976.

I've included both the Contemporary Keyboard and Synapse version of the 'Free Sequencer' ads to help make the point that when you are giving away a sequencer with every synthesizer, a multi-publication advertising campaign is probably the right move - especially during the holiday season.

With a Synthacon synthesizer listing for $1395 in 1976, giving away $528 (and 32 cents...) in extras is going to make a bit of a dent in your bottom line. It was a bold and I would guess costly move by S-P to try and wedge their way into a world dominated by 'the big three'. I know I might have been convinced to choose a Synthacon over an Odyssey with an offer like this.

In fact, I'm actually quite surprised that more companies didn't take advantage of both publications simultaneously. More on this in future blog posts.

Looking at the S-P ad that appeared in Contemporary Keyboard, the company upgraded from their usual 1/4-page ad to a 1/2-page ad. The increase in cost was probably considerable, but one could argue that it probably helped get their promotion noticed in the back half of CK.

The third-person ad-copy "See your local dealer or contact the manufacturer" was obviously overlooked by S-P. In my last S-P post, I speculated that S-P was probably getting their ads designed by an outside firm. This text seems to support the theory.

Turning attention to the Synapse ad, I think S-P made a really smart move spending the cash to claim the full back inside cover. S-P had already tested Synapse's waters with a full page Synthasystem advertisement in the previous issue and probably got a good response from the magazine's highly targeted audience. It was probably a no-brainer to spend a few extra bucks to take the back inside cover for this promotion effort.

But there is something wrong with the balance of the Synapse ad. I included as much of the page in the scan as possible so you could see just how much extra white space there is. I'm torn between wanting to use that space to put more information about the sequencer in this ad, and being happy that S-P stayed on-message - buy a synthesizer, get a sequencer - even if it means including less text. A larger font would probably have solved this.

In the case of both ads, I'm also a little bummed out that the S-P waveform logo doesn't appear with the Steiner-Parker logo-text. We'll have to see if this becomes a common occurrence in future S-P advertisements.

Looking online, I couldn't find any reference information about the 151 Sequencer at the usual synthesizer reference sites. But, two on-line videos have become very popular with well known synthesizer Web sites such as MATRIXSYNTH. These two videos also dominate Google results if you do a search for 'Steiner-Parker 151 Sequencer'.

Both videos feature the Synthacon and the 151 Sequencer doin' their thang. You really get a good demonstration of the Synthacon and its sound (what's with all that reverb?!?).

One last observation - In an earlier Synthacon post I made the case that the actual name of the two-voice Synthacon is 'Synthacon II' based on findings in a 1975 dealer sheet. You will notice that in these scans, one ad refers to the synth as a 'two-voice Synthacon' while the other as a '2-voice Synthacon'. Using these names to describe the synthesizer more clearly to readers makes sense (some readers at the time may not know what the 'II' means). But the lower case lettering helps me cling to my belief that the actual name was the definitely cooler 'Synthacon II'. :o)

Steiner-Parker Synthasystem, Synapse 1976

Steiner-Parker Synthasystem modular synthesizer advertisement from page 7 of Synapse Magazine September/October 1976.

I recently found myself glancing through my Synapse collection more and more - and that's where I first started noticing Steiner-Parker advertisements. So, it is fitting that this S-P ad be first Synapse ad blogged about on Retrosynthads.

The first thing you notice about this full page advertisement is how *big* it is when compared to some of the Steiner-Parker 1/3-page square ads that appeared in Contemporary Keyboard Magazine around the same time period (Blogged: Synthacon II and EVI). Those CK ads had no choice but to look small in that confined space. Small photos.... small fonts... It can be hard to get a reader's attention with a small ad in the back half of any magazine.

But with Synapse, S-P obviously decided that bigger was better. And darn cute too with that "Cooper Black"-type font. But where's the logo with those nice little waveforms? I'm guessing that this ad was probably created by the in-house design staff rather than being supplied by S-P.

There can be no question that it made sense for S-P to spend their advertising dollars with big ads in this magazine. While Keyboard Magazine tried to appeal to a wide range of classic and contemporary artists and enthusiasts during this time period, the core audience of Synapse was obviously hard core synthesizer fans. Seriously, what other magazine in 1976 could you find an interview with Kraftwerk AND Tom Oberheim (not together, silly), schematics to hot-rod your Gnome with a seven stage frequency divider, and an article entitled "Playing Music With Calculators: It All Adds Up To Music" (lets just say it involves calculators, an AM radio, and a touch of dexterity - see link to the article below) ?

I would guess that smaller companies like S-P would have been happy to spend some highly-targeted advertising dollars in a magazine with this type of reader base.

And it also makes sense that a highly-targeted Steiner-Parker ad in Synapse magazine would include a really large photo of a Synthasystem modular synthesizer.

The Synthasystem was a compact, configurable modular synthesizer (thumbs up to carry-case handles) built during the last half of the '70s. According to Vintage Synth Explorer, it couldn't really compete with likes of Moog, ARP and EML, but was great for sound processing and design.

The classic Synthasystem photo in this advertisement can be found on many reference and forum sites, and synthmuseum.com's page has even included an information break-down of all the modules in the photo! The site also tells us that the top row (sequencer, frequency divider, and VC phaser) was optional and photos of the system with the blank top panel can be seen in early reference sheets also linked to from the page.

Synapse Magazine its a treasure chest of historical information - amazing articles and advertisements. I have no doubt that you'll be reading about more Synapse advertisements in the near future.

End note: Cynthia Webster, founder of Synapse and editor of the first few issues before Doug Lynner took over, currently builds Modcan and Serge compatible modules. She has posted scans of many of the magazine's pages on her Web site under the Goodies section. Definitely check the scans out for some great articles!

Especially the article by Craig Anderton on playing music with calculators. Gonna try this next weekend with some old calculators. :o)

Moog Interface newsletter, Vol. 1 Dec. 1980

[PDF version]

Moog Interface newsletter, Vol. 1 Dec. 1980.

Talk about luck! A Moog fan recently emailed a request to upload more of the company's '80s newsletters. AND it's been busy at work and I keep a couple of Moog newsletter scans on hand especially for those busy times. (Plus, for some reason I feel less guilty about blogging a bit less when I upload multi-page scans. :o)

Where do I begin...? Another classic Moog newsletter!

I created a 'Top-10' list when I blogged about the September 1980 Moog newsletter I uploaded back in February, so it seems fitting (and convenient) to keep the format consistent.

Top Ten reasons this newsletter is awesome

10. Ronnie Milsap playing a Moog Liberation on tour? Okay, time for me to rethink my whole music collection.

9. Announcement of the winner of the September 1980 newsletter's Moog satin flight jacket contest. And a new Moog satin flight jacket contest. Satin rocks.

8. 'Interface' font (yeah, it was #6 in my last top 10 - but you have to admit it is excellent. I used the same font for a bunch of gig posters in the mid-90s!

7. A photo of Rory Kaplan's Moog Modular. Larger photo next time please!

6. A price list of the Polymoog upgrade/modification kits available during this time period. Old price list reference information is even better than satin flight jackets.

5. Wire frame outline of the control panel of the Opus-3. I've recently blogged about how great wire frame outlines are. Moog included one with the Liberation article in the last newsletter, and has also included them in a few of their reference sheets that came out around the same time period, including the Minimoog sheet.

4. Cat/synth photo! Nothing is cuter than seeing a furry little feline curling up with some Taurus pedals. Well, except for a dog/synth photo. But that's just me. Still, the Catsynth blog would be proud.

3. Apparently the coolest music education program administrator ever is Bob Kruger at Northport High on Long Island. Who, in 1980, "soon hopes to be able to offer a course in the school which introduces the concepts of computer music". IN 1980!!!

2. A Devo photo makes another appearance in this newsletter (this time in the input/output section) after they appeared on The Midnight Special. Of course it was Bob 2 playing the Liberation. Geez.

1. 'Everything eventually fails' - David Luce (then Vice President of Engineering for about seven or eight years) makes good on his promise of following up his September 1980 article 'Synthesizers Sense and Sensibility' with more information on quality, reliability, and servicing with an article entitled 'The Battle of Cost vs. Quality'. The article makes up the main guts of this newsletter and does an excellent job of explaining why everything does...

eventually...

fail.

Like the original battery in my 909 finally did last weekend. Now that is quality!