How did they pay for all that expensive hardware?!

[rcarlberg]

Wait a sec...those are the guys who went from prog to disco exactly one album (a year later) after their self-titled debut! (Neither's ever been released on CD, IIRC.)

Follow the money.

[Progbear]

Another thing is, sometimes musicians did invest a lot in expensive gear and wound up using the hell out of it to justify the purchase. It sure explains Todd Rundgren going absolutely bonkers on that RMI Keyboard Computer on Initiation. It became a defining element of his sound up until he supplanted it with his Fairlight.

I suppose that also explains why Rick Wakeman wound up splashing his Polymoog everywhere on Tormato. Though I can think of no less than two keyboardists (Tony Banks and Richard Tandy) who upgraded from Polymoog to Yamaha CS80 after one album. I think that says it all.

[Baribrotzer]

I suppose that also explains why Rick Wakeman wound up splashing his Polymoog everywhere on Tormato. Though I can think of no less than two keyboardists (Tony Banks and Richard Tandy) who upgraded from Polymoog to Yamaha CS80 after one album. I think that says it all.

The Polymoog was a technical outlier - its layout could best be described as a really complicated combo organ. Because of that, its tone was thin. Although that also let it be played like a piano - which couldn't really be done on a number of other polys. It wasn't terribly road-worthy, that being a common problem of such instruments.

Pretty much all other poly-synths of the time used a different arrangement, like a more integrated Oberheim 8-voice: They had five to eight identical modules - complete small monophonic synthesizers - which were driven by a digital scanning keyboard. That scanning keyboard was invented by E-mu, who at one point sued a number of other synth-makers to force them to pay licensing fees. Finally, the CS-80 used no less than 16 modules, arranged in pairs to give an effective count of 8; it was the largest, heaviest, and most expensive of the common analog polys, and also had roadability problems.

[GuitarGeek]

Another thing is, sometimes musicians did invest a lot in expensive gear and wound up using the hell out of it to justify the purchase. It sure explains Todd Rundgren going absolutely bonkers on that RMI Keyboard Computer on Initiation. It became a defining element of his sound up until he supplanted it with his Fairlight.

I suppose that also explains why Rick Wakeman wound up splashing his Polymoog everywhere on Tormato. Though I can think of no less than two keyboardists (Tony Banks and Richard Tandy) who upgraded from Polymoog to Yamaha CS80 after one album. I think that says it all.

Wakeman also invested a lot of money in the whole Birotron debacle.

As for Banks, he went from using the Polymoog and the ARP 2600 to using the ARP Quadra, Yamaha CS-80 and the Prophet-5. In the case of Richard Tandy, I believe he also used an ARP Quadra, and I get the impression Oberheim gear was used pretty extensively on Secret Messages.

[GuitarGeek]

The Polymoog was a technical outlier - its layout could best be described as a really complicated combo organ. Because of that, its tone was thin. Although that also let it be played like a piano - which couldn't really be done on a number of other polys. It wasn't terribly road-worthy, that being a common problem of such instruments.

Tony Banks was interviewed in Contemporary Keyboard magazine in 78, and at one point, he was asked if he carried any spares for any of his instruments. He said the only one he had a spare for was the Polymoog, because he had heard how unreliable it was. But he said his main Polymoog, the first one he got, worked fine, never came him any trouble. It was the backup Polymoog that packed up!

Pretty much all other poly-synths of the time used a different arrangement, like a more integrated Oberheim 8-voice: They had five to eight identical modules - complete small monophonic synthesizers - which were driven by a digital scanning keyboard.

Two to eight identical modules, actually. You're forgetting the Two Voice synth (which also had an onboard sequencer). And of course, there was the SEM, the Sound Expansion Module, which is the monophonic synth that all the "white elephant" Oberheims, as I like to call them, were based on. The SEM was actually introduced because people who bought the first Oberheim sequencer complained that they wanted to play their Mini-Moog or ARP Odyssey or whatever they were using, while the sequencer was running. So the SEM was introduced as a synth that was basically meant to be interfaced with the sequencer. I think it was only later that they started linking several of them to a keyboard.

One of the interesting things about those early Oberheim polys, was that for each voice on the keyboard, you literally had a separate synth, each with it's own set of controls. The Oberheim Eight Voice (as used by Geddy Lee, Patrick Moraz, Edgar Froese and others) was literally individual monophonic synths linked to one keyboard. And as such, each synth/voice had it's own controls. And if you were trying to set up a patch where you could play chords with a single sound, like say a string synth or filter sweep pad or whatever, you could never get the controls on any two modules into the exact same spot. Thus, there was subtle differences in timbre from voice to voice, which is considered one of the defining things that made the Oberheim polys. Of course, when later polyphonic synths (including the subsequent Oberheim models) went to having just one set of controls, you lost that effect: every voice had exactly the same timbre. (shrug)

Finally, the CS-80 used no less than 16 modules, arranged in pairs to give an effective count of 8; it was the largest, heaviest, and most expensive of the common analog polys, and also had roadability problems.

Tony Banks said he liked using the CS-80 in the studio, but he couldn't take it on the road because it was too heavy to set on top of anything, and you couldn't set anything on top of it, either. And he was the kind of keyboardist who liekd having a relatively onstage setup. I remember in that Contemporary Keyboard interview, he said he was using five keyboards onstage, "which is four too many, as far as I'm concerned". I thikn as technology got to where he could get away with just a couple keyboards onstage, that was the direction he went in. At any rate, he wasn ever interested in having a rig like that ridiculous rig that Geoff Downes used on the first couple Asia tours (the keyboard riser sat behind the rest of the band and ran almost the full length of the "front line" part of the stage, with Downes playing virtually the entire show with his back to the audience...he even managed to carry two different remote keyboards, ya know the so called "keytar" things).

[Progbear]

Pretty much all other poly-synths of the time used a different arrangement, like a more integrated Oberheim 8-voice: They had five to eight identical modules - complete small monophonic synthesizers - which were driven by a digital scanning keyboard. That scanning keyboard was invented by E-mu, who at one point sued a number of other synth-makers to force them to pay licensing fees. Finally, the CS-80 used no less than 16 modules, arranged in pairs to give an effective count of 8; it was the largest, heaviest, and most expensive of the common analog polys, and also had roadability problems.

There was also Korg’s PS-3300, which I guess you could say was the polyphonic version of their MS-20, as it similarly had a patchbay to the right of the knobs. Like the Polymoog, it used divide-down circuitry, but it got around the “paraphonic, not polyphonic” issue by having separate articulators for each key! It was not the only Korg instrument that did this, the ES50 Lambda Polyphonic Ensemble used a similar architecture. The PS-3300 (and its kid brothers, the PS-3100 and 3200) was nicknamed the “space heater” on account of a) its appearance and b) the amount of heat it put out when turned on.

[GuitarGeek]

Just remember that in they days when a Mood Modular, Fairlight, or Synclavier cost as much as a house or McMansion, it was possible to make loads of money just by selling records.

Yeah, but my impression was you had to sell a lot of records, or be a highly successful producer or run a highly successful to pay for some of that stuff. Like I said, I could see someone like Quincy Jones or Darryl Hall paying for such gear with the monies they acquired in that fashion, but I was wondering how someone like Holdsworth or Corea, both of whom sold respectably for their genre but perhaps not enough to pay for something like a Synthaxe or Synclavier, managed to pull it off.

BTW, another one I remember reading was that Suzanne Ciani paid for hrt Buchla modular synth by working in the Buchla factory in the early 70's.

[rcarlberg]

[Baribrotzer]

There was also Korg’s PS-3300. Like the Polymoog, it used divide-down circuitry, but it got around the “paraphonic, not polyphonic” issue by having separate articulators for each key!

So did the top model of Polymoog - the circuit for each key included a special, custom-made IC containing an envelope-generator and filter, while the master divide-down system gave each the equivalent of one oscillator.

The Polymoog Keyboard didn't, and was thus paraphonic.

[Rarebird]

That belongs in gear porn.

[Trane]

In Nick Kunt's book Apathy for the Devil, in the three years the Pistols existed, they never bought a single instrument (except the one he was using when part of the band, but he owned it for years)

Jones & Cook systematically stole everything from Denmark Street - they also had a squat (Kunt was in NME), rehearsal space in that area as well, before heading for an old empty BBC building (through Matlock's dad)