Monday, August 22, 2011

In the 1970's Radio Shack sold a Moog synthesizer that they branded as "Realistic MG-1 Concertmate." It is essentially the same synth as a Moog Taurus or the Rogue with a few differences. One of the more interesting features it has is an auto trigger that you control the frequency with the LFO. It also has a continuous filter setting that would be like playing a Juno 6 with hold button on.

I've got one of these and it has suffered the ages rather poorly. The plastic end caps were held on by hot glue and these have popped off or are loose. I swapped the actual keys with my Moog Prodigy to restore the Prodigy. So the MG-1 has some broken keys. At one point, I tried to lower the pitch by an octave, and inadvertently changed its tuning so that the frequency change between an octave was off.

I bought a nylon tuning kit consisting of a set of plastic rods that fit into the little groove of an electronic trimmer pot. I have been successful in re-tuning the MG-1, but it has some other problems keeping pitch, possibly from the old broken keyboard, or some component on the main circuit board I'm not sure.

I still really like sounds it makes, so I'll have to keep working on restoring it now that I've become reattached to it again.

No comments: