|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Into
Production
Although
the seventies was a time of rapid technological growth in
the electronics industry, the first few years of the decade
saw Moog Music facing financial problems. After something
of a monopoly in the synthesizer market, Moog now had competition
from ARP and the fledgling Japanese manufacturers. Whilst
the Minimoog had undoubtedly become their bread and butter,
the company had a lot of inventory but little capital and
were running into trouble. In 1971, Bill Waytena took them
over, paying nothing but promising to secure their debts of
|
|
|
|
more
than $ 250,000. Waytena was a specialist in buying distressed
companies, building them back up and then selling them on
at a tidy profit). He immediately moved the company from Trumansburg
to Williamsville and it was here that Dave Luce was brought
in to develop the first Moog polysynth. The R&D cost for
the development of the Polymoog was high and still climbing
after two years but nonetheless, in mid 1975, Waytena was
in a position to sell Moog Music at a profit and found a new
buyer Norlin. One of the first things Norlin did was to relocate
the company yet again, this time to an ex gelatine factory
at Cheektowaga in the then rural outskirts of Buffalo (NY).
As
the earliest Apollo prototype evolved into the Polymoog concept,
it required the designing of a custom IC chip, (the Polycom
IC) which back then, in the infancy of integrated circuits
was horrendously expensive and landed the company with a hefty
bill of $ 100,000.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Walden Avenue, Cheektowaga (1976)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Cheektowaga Factory (1980) - Dave Luce's van
is parked on the right
|
|
|
|
Getting the prototypes to production involved 300 engineering changes.
The control panel configuration went through at least three
variants and the keyboard layout was also changed three times.
The prototypes, (not to be confused with the earliest 5 octave
Apollo design) had a 72 note C to B keyboard as seen in the
original Polymoog promo movie, (especially shot for the 1974
NAMM expo) and was the configuration used in the prototypes
given out to Chick Corea and Larry Fast amongst others. On
the pre-production model, the keyboard had been changed to
an F to E and many early promo photos were taken of this particular
model including those used in the owners manual (just to add
to the confusion). At very the last minute, (due to feedback
from the musicians who had been given prototypes) the keyboard
received a final change to a 71 note E to D in response to
requests for a bottom E to compete with guitarists! This involved
yet another expensive tooling change at the factory.
|
|
|
To
curb spiralling production costs, one of the first things
Norlin did was to push the Polymoog straight into production,
despite Dave Luce's reservations that it was still not ready.
This is the main reason why the first models coming off the
production line had such an appalling failure rate, (200%)
and irrevocably damaged the Polymoog's reputation. Perhaps
the other reason is that Luce's design was just too ambitious
for the technology available at that time and was simply not
capable of living up to his concept.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dave Luce & pre-production
F to E model (left) and with Tony Marchese (right)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|