From orion.oac.uci.edu!network.ucsd.edu!swrinde!gatech!pitt.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!minerva!metlay Thu Mar 19 16:47:10 PST 1992
Article: 31165 of rec.music.synth
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From: metlay@minerva.phyast.pitt.edu (metlay)
Newsgroups: rec.music.synth
Subject: Re: Electro Harmonix -Blast From The Past...
Summary: The MiniSynth
Message-ID: <203374@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
Date: 13 Mar 92 15:32:03 GMT
References: <1992Mar11.231042.38484@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
Sender: news@unix.cis.pitt.edu
Organization: Atomic City
Lines: 49

In article <1992Mar11.231042.38484@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> barnhill@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>	They also made a synth back in the early '70's, which for the life
>of me I can't recall a single salient point about, other than I'd be willing
>to wager it was none too reliable.  Anyone know anything about what happened
>to it, or better yet, have any anecdotes about them?  

The EH Mini Synthesizer was a one-oscillator (plus suboctave) device with
a touchplate keyboard and a fairly simple set of controls (you had two
switchable Q settings, a slider for filter cutoff, and a couple of others).
It was housed in a plastic case about the shape and size of a notebook and
had a cardboard backplane. It ran off two 9V batteries and weighed less than
two pounds. The Model 400 was the synth alone; the 410 had a built-in
analog delay and a ribbon controller on the keyboard. There was a piezo
transducer under the keys to sense how hard you whacked it; this tended
to cave in the back of the synth. It had a great gnarly sound in the low
end, a lot like a Moog Rogue or Taurus II. There's a famous photo of 
Jean-Michel Jarre leaning out into his audience in Shanghai, holding out
a Mini and letting people play it (fifty at once, of course).

First synth I ever owned. I sold it, regretfully, to an EH collector
in the UK who promised to give it a good home.

>	I recall when the company folded, there were lots of allegations
>about them running a sweat shop type operation, and some attempt at 
>unionization...I still subscribed to the trades in those days...ah, youth.

Well, on the flip side, there's a fair amount of evidence that the union
used coercion to try to get workers to join, including arson and violence.
Matthews sent his people back to school and didn't limit upward mobility
in the company-- they had a better deal than union scale, in a lot of cases,
and didn't see the need for union dues. I don't know who was right, but
the judge trying the case decided against the union-- too late to save EH, tho.

>	Anyway, any pointers would be appreciated...Big Muff, what a name...
>but it was really fat, warm sounding stuff, we'd wax on about it's "analog
>sound" in this group, I suspect....

EH stuff is generally very noisy and flimsily built, but does weird things
that are often tough to find elsewhere. 





--
metlay                         |            "It's been years
                               |             since I
                               |             woke up
metlay@minerva.phyast.pitt.edu |             in this head...."       (htm)