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Was it really that unreliable and overly complex? Bob Moog himself described Dave Luce as a
"highly intelligent, technically trained person who gravitated toward
complicated, sophisticated, tricky, convoluted things" and
"...who liked complicated solutions to seemingly simple
problems". Reading into Moog's statement, it could be construed that
perhaps Luce was indeed a boffin who may well have taken the longest route
to get there.
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Certainly, the Polymoog was complicated and a challenge to service.
Even today it is very difficult to find a technician who is prepared to
take one on! It should be borne in mind that back in 1975, there wasn't any
large scale use of IC's (integrated circuits) or DSP (digital signal
processors). In Luce's defence, Norlin did step up the pressure on him to
release the machine before he considered it to be finished, leaving the
company attempting to rush to close the gate after the horse had bolted
but… yes, it was certainly overly complex. The reliability issues, whilst
they cannot be denied, do seem to have been exaggerated. What didn't help was
the fact that the earliest models to leave the production line, (the ones
the press and the rock elite focussed on) were breaking down and with good
reason. Some were being returned from shops as non-working before the
customers turned up to collect them. Most of these problems were corrected
and revisions were issued by the factory to address them. By then however,
irrevocable damage had already been done to the Polymoog's reputation.
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