Every work order in this book is an instrument someone needs back. The musicians come in with cassette demos, residency dates, contracts already signed. We log what arrived, what was wrong, and what we did to make it sing again. Each card opens. Sketches are described in plain words because graphite on graph paper does not photograph well.
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⌑ MOOG · supplementary materials
Two-page spread from the Moog Minimoog Model D Operator's Manual, third edition, 1976. The left page carries a printed block diagram of the signal path: three voltage-controlled oscillators feeding a four-channel mixer, into a 24 dB/octave low-pass filter, into a voltage-controlled amplifier, into the output stage. Hand-drawn arrows label "gate input," "CV in," and "headphone bus." The right page is mostly text, set in a warm sans-serif: "The Minimoog is a small, portable musical instrument especially designed for live performance. Each of its three voltage-controlled oscillators may be tuned independently across a six-octave range. Owing to its all-discrete-transistor design, a brief warm-up of fifteen minutes is recommended before performance." Beneath, a small photograph of the front panel zoomed onto the oscillator bank. A coffee ring stains the lower right corner. Margin note in blue pencil reads HM — see C14, leaks every winter.
Without Werkstatt Klang my second record does not exist. The Minimoog went down four days before the residency at SO36. Hartmut took it apart at midnight, drove for parts to Charlottenburg in the rain, and handed it back to me with thirty minutes to load in. He doesn't only repair instruments. He keeps half of this city's electronic music breathing. When my Odyssey lost VCO 2 again this spring he diagnosed it over the telephone in eleven minutes. Eleven minutes.
— Sigrid Ehrlich, composer · Friedrichshain · February 1981