Moog SonicSix

SonicSix1I’ve completed a few of these now, and must admit to a little trepidation when they come in as this synth was clearly made for education use (everything is squeezed into a SonicSix2plastic suitcase with no ventilation holes, or easy access to pre-sets for set-up etc.). Setting it up is difficult to say the least, and like others in blogs I have read, just got it to scale on both SonicSix3oscillators with minute adjustments. The original pre-sets are of very poor quality, so I replaced the majority of them; thy used very low ohm values and did not get a nice sweep on adjustment, so multi-turn replacements would be good, but space and access is an issue.

SonicSix4The main issue was that it did not scale, and sounded like hell. The root cause was the -15v regulator where the 723 regulator chip was holding it at -23v. Thankfully no other chips have died (yet) due to this. One of the rectifier diodes was also bad, so there was a lot ofSonicSix5 hum from that, but after replacement of these parts things settled down. The Mullard C280 “Tropical Fish” caps were falling apart, so they were all replaced, alog with the can caps. Next move was to service all of the pots/switches, re-bush the keyboard, and (struggle with the) set-up. Jim was delighted, which makes the effort worthwhile!