Wednesday, October 14, 2009

It is said that Bob Moog had a sixth sense by which he could sense electricity flowing through circuits with great sensitivity. It is said that this influenced his designs heavily. I always thought this was fascinating, but didn't really understand it until I started cleaning the Moog Modular filter set we have at the University. The concept of the layout, the attention to detail, the pure beauty of the devices is unparalleled in anything I've seen before. It's been a few years now since Moog died, but cracking these filters open have reminded me just how profound the loss was.

I installed a Rotatone in one of my rotary WE 500 phones so that I could use it with the system at work, which does not accept pulse dialing. End result; great success, plus some bonus features including speed dial! And it's such a huge improvement over the crappy phones they provide. Unlike most of the people in the building, I'd managed to avoid the "upgrade" to the awful sounding, digitally ringing monstrosities that are common around the system and at least kept something with a real ringer with real bells, but the switch to a rotary-encoded phone has really taken it the extra distance for me. Photos of that later - it's a custom blue/black look.

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