From: wbf@aluxpo.att.com Date: Tue, 4 May 93 14:24:56 EDT Original-From: aluxpo!wbf (William Fox) Subject: Re: My Moog Sonic Six If Scott's Sonic Six is anything like my micromoogs or my multimoog, then there is a procedure that adjusts the oscillator(s) so that the octaves are in tune. Scott: Do you have OSC RANGE, OSC SCALE, OSC OCT, and OSC HI trim pots in the back of your beastie? Foxy Date: Tue, 4 May 93 14:22:44 EDT From: I've been stolen by a gypsy. 04-May-1993 1419 Cc: analogue@ranger.enet.dec.com, eirikur@ranger.enet.dec.com Subject: RE: My Moog Sonic Six I have one, too, but mine seems to stay in reasonable tuning calibration. I love the output mixer, where I can instantly listen to each oscillator, or the ring modulator output, by just turning up a knob. I like the fact that it isn't wedged into being a keyboard instrument. You can set up sound sculptures on it, and even disable the keyboard entirely. I'd love to have a manual and schematic..... My old and dusty rumor on the Sonic Six was that it was originally a development project at a company that was bought out by the holding company that owned Moog at the time. A very weak guess makes that Musonics, and Gibson as the holding company. The filter sounds really good, though I don't have much experience with the Moog filter. I expect that that area saw some Moog engineering, but I don't know. Supporting the non-Moog origin theory is the front panel and general cosmetics of the beast--not like anything Moog ever did. Eirikur From: dacc@cmp-rt.music.uiuc.edu (Andrew C. Crowell) Subject: Re: My Moog Sonic Six Date: Tue, 4 May 93 12:59:49 CDT Previously, Scott Bodarky wrote: > > Several years ago I picked up a Moog Sonic Six at an auction for $100. > It didn't work, so I opened it up and found that a board inside had > become unseated. I reseated it and it worked fine. I still have it > to this day, and was recently set to wondering: what is this beast? > It looks like it might have been a prototype for the minimoog. > Although I have no intention of selling it, I am curious to know if it > has collector's value. It's something of a classic, really...you got very lucky on that $100 price, IMHO... > > It isn't the most useful instrument in the world. I generally leave > it off, and even once it's warmed up it is a bitch to produce sound > from it. I consider myself reasonably logical and try to follow the > schematics on the front panels, but a session nevertheless frequently > degenerates into random knob twiddling. Even once the thing is > actually squawking, it is impossible to get it chromatically tuned > over a span larger than an octave. So it is basically a conversation > piece (like the turnstyle in my living room), primarily used to dilate > the eyes of synth-heads on their first visit to my studio. > > I'm curious to see if anyone out there can add a new perspective to > the matter. What sounds like the problem might be is that the instrument is desperately out of calibration. If you can find a set of docs for this device, you'll have a very nice vintage synth. My suggestion is to get in touch with Bob Moog at Big Briar (Rt. 3, Box 115A1, Dept. E, Leicester, NC, 28748 - phone 704-683-9085) and see if he can get a set of docs or has a line on where some might be had. Bob may even be able to bring the Sonic-6 back into factory calibration specs, too, if you feel like shipping the instrument and paying the costs for that. Good luck! D.A.C. Crowell Computer Music Project/School of Music University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign (dacc@cmp-rt.music.uiuc.edu) Date: Tue, 4 May 93 13:18:01 EDT From: bodarky@cme.nist.gov (Scott Bodarky) Subject: My Moog Sonic Six Hello all---this is my first post to this mailing list. Several years ago I picked up a Moog Sonic Six at an auction for $100. It didn't work, so I opened it up and found that a board inside had become unseated. I reseated it and it worked fine. I still have it to this day, and was recently set to wondering: what is this beast? It looks like it might have been a prototype for the minimoog. Although I have no intention of selling it, I am curious to know if it has collector's value. It isn't the most useful instrument in the world. I generally leave it off, and even once it's warmed up it is a bitch to produce sound from it. I consider myself reasonably logical and try to follow the schematics on the front panels, but a session nevertheless frequently degenerates into random knob twiddling. Even once the thing is actually squawking, it is impossible to get it chromatically tuned over a span larger than an octave. So it is basically a conversation piece (like the turnstyle in my living room), primarily used to dilate the eyes of synth-heads on their first visit to my studio. I'm curious to see if anyone out there can add a new perspective to the matter. -Scott (bodarky@cme.nist.gov)| "[A computer is] like an Old Testament god, | with a lot of rules and no mercy." The National Institute | of Standards & Technology | -Joseph Campbell (5.65c/IDA-1.5 for ); Wed, 5 May 1993 14:42:38 -0700 Date: Wed, 5 May 1993 14:42:33 -0700 From: Chris Meyer Subject: Re: My Moog Sonic Six The Sonic Isx (I have one, and the service manual for it) was to be an education synth for music labs. It is the follow-up to the Sonic Five which was produced by whatever company had just bought Moog at the time (this was pre-Norlin, maybe?). A noise maker more than what today is commonly defined as a "musical instrument" (but this group is one to stretch those definitions...) - CM From gstopp@fibermux.com Sat Oct 28 11:30:23 1995 28 Oct 95 14:30:17 +0500 27 Oct 95 12:19:25 +0500 1: 36 -0700 From: gstopp@fibermux.com Date: Fri, 27 Oct 95 09:09:31 PDT Encoding: 67 Text Subject: Re: Re: Sonic Six X-Pmflags: 33554560 One good thing about email message logs is that you can go back and cut-n-paste easier than logging into an archive.... From a couple weeks ago: ********************************************************************* About the Sonic Six: The thing looks like a gee-tar case. When you open it there's a 4-octave keyboard in the lower half and the control panel in the lid. The panel is laid out, left to right, as follows: Generator X/Y Tone A/B Mixer VCF plus Contour Articulator Speaker Apparently this machine was intended for use as a portable educational tool for teaching the principles of music synthesis (yeah right). Notice how somebody got the bright idea to use names for the sythesizer functions that were "easier to understand" than the cryptic terminology that those snobby rocket-scientist synthesists use: LFO X/Y VCO A/B Mixer VCF plus Envelope Generator VCA Speaker The thing is way under-enveloped, having only a single AD/AR (switchable) that is shared by everything. I could go into extreme detail but suffice it to say that among the less common features are: * Voltage-controlled LFO's * Duophonic keyboard * Microtonal scaling adjustment for VCO tracking of the keyboard * Real (not EXOR gate) ring modulator with mic pre-amp * Direct output mixer so the VCOs and ring mod can bypass everything And for the circuit-mongers out there: * Elevated chip temperature exponential VCO's * Moog ladder filter (3046-based) * 3080 VCA's (2 in series, 1 for envelope, 1 for final out ala Minimoog) * Moog hi-frequency oscillator resistor divider keyboard (ala Micro, Multimoog) The two adjectives I usually use when talking about the Sonic Six are "interesting" and "goofy". Gotta love it. - Gene gstopp@fibermux.com ********************************************************************** The LFO's can be summed together and then their CV's can be linked to a single master rate pot, which makes for some cool modulation effects that you can speed up or slow down without changing the mod pattern. There are CV and gate inputs (traditional Moog 1V/octave and S-trig) as well as inputs for VCF cutoff, master volume, and an external audio signal (with built-in pre-amp). This unit is probably best used for processing external signals or sitting there in drone mode making spacey noises.