{"id":416,"date":"2016-08-16T11:35:18","date_gmt":"2016-08-16T15:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/wordpress\/?p=416"},"modified":"2022-07-25T10:52:01","modified_gmt":"2022-07-25T14:52:01","slug":"moog-polymoog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/?p=416","title":{"rendered":"Moog Polymoog"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, I guess it&#8217;s time to post this. It was around 1979 when I was first getting interested in synthesizers that I first heard about the Polymoog. I always thought it was an interesting synth and a very cool looking keyboard so, of course, I always wanted one. A LOT! Well that day has finally arrived&#8230; sorta.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday July 18, 2016 I won a Polymoog auction on ebay! At first I didn&#8217;t think I would try to win. I wanted to bid fairly low just as a weak try, just sort of symbolically I guess. But as the final hour approached I felt like it was time to get this off my chest and decided to bid high. The bidding was very quick in the last 15 seconds but in the end I won! I still haven&#8217;t figured this out, but I was, as usual, really nervous over the last 15 minutes or so. In fact, for most of the day I felt a bit sick with fear. I don&#8217;t know why  auctions do that to me but they do.<\/p>\n<p>And on July 17th it arrived! <\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/scotteh\/28517371021\/in\/photostream\" title=\"Moog Polymoog, Yamaha CS-10 and Me\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/8724\/28517371021_65868bd28b_z.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" alt=\"Moog Polymoog, Yamaha CS-10 and Me\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>And it was quite dead, as most Polymoogs tend to be! I knew that in advance and felt this would be a good project to learn a lot more about electronics and boy, was I right. It is now August 16th and I am still trying to trace down a few problems. Luckily I was able to get some sound out of it fairly quickly. After rebuilding the power supply I discovered a short in an old capacitor on the top right circuit board and quickly had that resolved. But there are a lot of other problems to deal with as well. Luckily the serial number is in the 4000s so it is one of the better, later model units.<\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/scotteh\/29024890885\/in\/dateposted-public\/\" title=\"Polymoog Internal\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/8421\/29024890885_7eacb0701c_z.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"590\" alt=\"Polymoog Internal\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>At this point I have it mostly working but the remaining problems definitely need to be dealt with before I can put it back together and hear it for the first time in my studio. The biggest problem is the lack of decay and release in the loudness contour (envelope). I have a could of suspected chips in mind and will try replacing them soon.<\/p>\n<p>Once I get that worked out I have to track down a strange glitch in the oscillators, get the VCF envelope working again (it worked briefly at one point), and then replace 4 dead divider chips. There may be a few more things to fix, I&#8217;m not sure yet, but those are the biggest problems and once they are resolved I hope to set it up&#8230; somewhere.. and get back to making music.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m also shooting video as I go and hope to do a complete video about the restoration so others can find information, the little I&#8217;ll have, to help with fixing their own Polymoogs.<\/p>\n<p>I do have to say though that this instrument is nowhere near as bad as it&#8217;s reputation. There really isn&#8217;t as much electronics inside as I&#8217;d been lead to believe. Yes, there are 71 Polycom cards plugged into three motherboards (along with 3 balance cards that need to be in the right slots!) but they are not really a big concern and other than cleaning and reseating the cards and connectors they can be mostly ignored.<\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/scotteh\/29024979355\/in\/dateposted-public\/\" title=\"Polymoog Polycom Cards and Balance Card\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/8505\/29024979355_03e486f560_z.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" alt=\"Polymoog Polycom Cards and Balance Card\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Other than those there are 3 large boards sitting over the motherboards, a master oscillator board on the back plugged into the divider board, and 2 front panel boards (3, counting the small board with the preset switches and the LED display). That&#8217;s it. It&#8217;s not nearly as bad as you would think based on the complaining you&#8217;ll find all over the internet. In fact, my Yamaha CS-40m which is also waiting for repair actually has significantly more electronics than the Polymoog and it is only duophonic!<\/p>\n<p>So the journey continues! Hopefully I&#8217;ll get it working and find many uses for it in my music. There isn&#8217;t much left on my list. Maybe an Oberheim 4 voice, which would be VERY costly, or maybe a newer OB-6. But as usual, the thing I need most is time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, I guess it&#8217;s time to post this. It was around 1979 when I was first getting interested in synthesizers that I first heard about the Polymoog. I always thought it was an interesting synth and a very cool looking keyboard so, of course, I always wanted one. A LOT! Well that day has finally &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=416"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":610,"href":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions\/610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scottfromcanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}