There are two schools of analog music synthesis - West Coast and East Coast. I am firmly in the East Coast camp and have a largish system based on Bob Moog's designs. The two primary designers for the West Coast machines are Don Buchla and Serge Tcherepnin. All three companies are still manufacturing synthesizers.
I ran into this story about someone working on an old Buchla 100 - from the San Francisco CBS affiliate:
Repair Of Iconic ’60s Era Synthesizer Turns Into Long, Strange Trip For Engineer
For years, an urban legend circulated online and in documentaries purporting how part of a groundbreaking musical instrument — versions which are stored at a Bay Area university and other institutions — was dipped in LSD.
Online chatter detailed how musicians who used the instrument would wet their finger, touch the device, and then lick their finger to get a little bit of mind-expanding inspiration.
Now this supposed myth may turn out to be a reality.
And the trip?
During his repair work, Curtis opened the module and saw something stuck under a knob.
“There was like a residue … a crust or a crystalline residue on it,” said Curtis.
He sprayed a cleaning solvent on it and started to push the dissolving crystal with his finger as he attempted to dislodge the residue and clean the area.
About 45 minutes later, Curtis began to feel a little strange. He described it as a weird, tingling sensation. He discovered this was the feeling of the beginnings of an LSD experience or trip.
The sensation lasted roughly nine hours.
And a little bit about the machine:
It turns out this machine has deep roots to the west coast counterculture. It’s called a Buchla Model 100, and it was created by the late Don Buchla of Berkeley.
“I call him the Leonardo Da Vinci of electronic music design.” remarked Suzanne Ciani, known as the “Diva of the Diode” and an acknowledged pioneer in electronic music. Ciani worked with Buchla in the late ’60s and ’70s when she was a grad student at University of California, Berkeley.
I have played Buchla synths (and Serge) and they are a lot of fun but my brain is more wired to the Mood design - it's how I think...
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