It was in a closet in the corner of a classroom, which was a little sad

May 22, 2019 1:58 PM

Repair Of Iconic ’60s Era Synthesizer Turns Into Long, Strange Trip For Engineer
posted by ActingTheGoat (34 comments total)

Zane Kesey leading the calling-bullshit position at the youtube version of the KPIX story
posted by thelonius at 2:14 PM on May 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

Turn on, tune in ... (20 years later) ... replace capacitors, drop out.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 2:15 PM on May 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

West coast synthesis.
posted by acb at 2:16 PM on May 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

Bet there's no LSD inside Raymond Scott's Electronium, but if there is, that might explain why there's been no updates on its restoration since 2012.
posted by SansPoint at 2:17 PM on May 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

Lots of threads here to follow to Bay Area mid/late-60s beautiful, inspiring weirdness - Robert and Anne Basart, Glenn Glasow, early KPFA, Jess and Robert Duncan, Pauline Kael, Owsley, etc. Spent years hating nostalgia, but now it's hard not to be jealous of people who had the luxury of having some hope and optimism about the future, technology and human potential.
posted by ryanshepard at 2:19 PM on May 22, 2019 [12 favorites]

Man, that KPIX site really, really wants you to watch the video instead of reading the story. Once you scroll past the video, it pops up in a smaller window that covers part of the text.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:20 PM on May 22, 2019 [9 favorites]

I wonder if it would be possible to develop an electrical component which would pass current through, perhaps acting as a resistor or capacitor, and as it warmed up, gradually release tiny quantities of a chemical added to it, in this case, LSD. Had such a component been created and the details spread through word of mouth, we'd probably be finding them in analogue synths of a certain vintage everywhere; more in California than on the East Coast, though with clusters in England and West Germany.
posted by acb at 2:24 PM on May 22, 2019

Continuing with my recent run as a subject-matter consultant for drug stories:

If there was a bulk quantity of LSD there to begin with I don't have trouble believing enough to make you trip would have survived - people have taken very old acid that was stored securely.

Not so sure about the skin absorption part.

Not entirely clear what the story is regarding why LSD would have been put in this particular module of this particular synth?
posted by atoxyl at 2:27 PM on May 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

acb, this sounds like a funky-ass Hardy Boys mystery. The Case of the Outgassing Electrolytic!

(Or the spy thriller version, where a PC is shipped with leaky caps that emit a poisonous gas...)
posted by phooky at 2:28 PM on May 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

Man, that KPIX site really, really wants you to watch the video instead of reading the story. Once you scroll past the video, it pops up in a smaller window that covers part of the text.

This where Outline comes in really handy.
posted by jeremias at 2:44 PM on May 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

“Yeah, [they were] looking for new ways of creating sound”

Aren't we all?
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:47 PM on May 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

atoxyl: Not entirely clear what the story is regarding why LSD would have been put in this particular module of this particular synth?

I have no idea how these people got their acid wedged into their synthesizers, or why.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:50 PM on May 22, 2019 [28 favorites]

* in the distance, a Krell patch is heard *
posted by salt grass at 2:55 PM on May 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

What if all of the theremins are covered in lsd and nobody noticed?
posted by ActingTheGoat at 3:01 PM on May 22, 2019 [15 favorites]

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.

I bring little science to the table here, but if he was using a contact cleaner, would the isopropyl alcohol or other solvents (e.g., hexane) found in contact cleaners help facilitate skin absorption?
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:16 PM on May 22, 2019 [5 favorites]

Incidentally, Krell Patch and the Outgassing Electrolytics is the name of my new psychedelic jam band.
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:24 PM on May 22, 2019 [15 favorites]

*tosses hair back in slow motion* How do I keep my flowing, 70s prog rock locks under control? With Krell Patch, of course. Now with outgassing electrolytics!
posted by phooky at 3:35 PM on May 22, 2019 [16 favorites]

"...and that's how Elliot accidentally doused himself."

Never leave psychedelics reporting to the squares.
posted by vverse23 at 3:38 PM on May 22, 2019 [16 favorites]

"...and that's how Elliot accidentally doused himself."

Does that mean he can now use his own body as a divining rod?
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:40 PM on May 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

Never leave psychedelics reporting to the squares.

It's something we should be Leary of, to be sure.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:42 PM on May 22, 2019 [24 favorites]

“With a bit of luck, his life was ruined forever. Always thinking that just behind some narrow door in all of his favorite bars, people with modular synthesizers are getting incredible kicks from things he’ll never know.”
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:55 PM on May 22, 2019 [12 favorites]

Back when I was CRAZY into modulars I built a synthtech system and read everything I could find about the study. This was 96' or so, at the start of the re-emergence of the stuff. At the height of my obsession I had a recurrent dream about going into a room in my apartment I didn't know was there and finding a massive horde of vintage modular gear. I was living in NYC at the time, so it was an odd variant of the "my apartment has an extra room" dream so many New Yorkers have. I was mentioning it to a buddy once and he said "yeah, lots of folks have that". Suffice it to say modulars are a kind of madness even without psychedelics.
posted by hilberseimer at 4:30 PM on May 22, 2019 [8 favorites]

Oh my god, by the way, the synth was dosed. I'm unreasonably happy about this. listening to a lil michael garrison . wondering if this is why ms. meatloaf spends so much time downstairs with her nord
posted by nixon's meatloaf at 4:59 PM on May 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

hilberseimer, I read the "yeah, lots of folks have that" as “lots of people have dreams about hidden modular setups” and I briefly felt included in the world. For I too have had this dream, however here in Southern California, the magical synthesizer is invariably in an extra backyard I never knew I had.
posted by q*ben at 5:00 PM on May 22, 2019 [7 favorites]

I have also always wanted to discover a room full of modular synths. I studied music at community college, and I was always eyeing the Moog they had wrapped up in the storage room, but no one could never convince them to part with it. The electronic music professor always complained about how much he hated analog synths (he said they were too much of a hassle), so it stayed in storage, and is probably still there to this day.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 5:52 PM on May 22, 2019

Zane Kesey leading the calling-bullshit position at the youtube version yt of the KPIX story

Further up the comments thread, folks suggest his wife doused, I mean, dosed him. She looks like a head. Sorry honey, lol.
posted by Chuffy at 6:33 PM on May 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

....hated analog synths (he said they were too much of a hassle)

the people who toured with them in the 70's must have had some serious techs.....even when they were working, there were issues with the tuning drifting because of voltage, stuff like that
posted by thelonius at 6:55 PM on May 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

it's hard not to be jealous of people who had the luxury of having some hope and optimism about the future, technology and human potential

It's OK, it didn't last. As the good doctor put it:

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

posted by flabdablet at 10:55 PM on May 22, 2019 [7 favorites]

One final note: there will be no more trips with this Buchla. The instrument has been thoroughly cleaned of all LSD.

To my way of thinking, that puts the repair in the same league as this restoration.
posted by flabdablet at 11:02 PM on May 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

As hippybear mentioned, Albert Hofmann's very first trip happened via accidental absorption through his fingertips.

The Wikipedia article doesn't mention any solvents, but when I lived in Berkeley in 1974, there were all kinds of stories about DMSO carrying LSD through skin, and I knew a handful of people who said they'd done it that way.

I used DMSO on a sprained ankle once, and I had the overpowering garlicky taste in my mouth in well under a minute, so I have no doubts about its skin penetrating powers.

Hofmann lived to be 102, by the way, which I find quite reassuring, considering that he continued to give himself small doses of LSD throughout his life.
posted by jamjam at 11:36 PM on May 22, 2019

I was living in NYC at the time, so it was an odd variant of the "my apartment has an extra room" dream so many New Yorkers have. I was mentioning it to a buddy once and he said "yeah, lots of folks have that

I can confirm that this applies to London as well.
posted by acb at 1:44 AM on May 23, 2019

rural people with huge homes have that dream too, it's just a normal thing
posted by idiopath at 2:46 AM on May 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

calling-bullshit

For the record, I Believe.
posted by thelonius at 5:20 AM on May 23, 2019

We pulled out the buchla a few times in the new music ensemble when I was at csueb. It didn't get a lot of use but it wasn't just like it was sitting around abandoned somewhere.
posted by Television Name at 8:42 AM on May 23, 2019 [3 favorites]