THE WEST COAST SCENE
In the 1960’s I was in a record shop and under the classical music section found an album of “Silver Apples of the Moon” by Morton Subotnick.
On listening I was mesmerised. It the first totally electronic music I had heard. I knew nothing at the time how this was made and had never heard of a Buchla synthesizer.
Much later I read a book called “Analog Days” by Trevor Pinch.
It described the evolution of both the West Coast movement pioneered by Donald Buchla and the East Coast scene driven by Robert Moog.
Another innovator on the West Coast from the early 1970’s was Serge Tcherepnin.
In time I found schematics of the Buchla modules and decided to have a try at making something along those lines. The schematics of the 200 series are sometimes confusing and not easy to read.
Some of the designs presented here are based very loosely on Buchla and Serge. Many are my own.
Hopefully I didn’t infringe any copyrights or missed any acknowledgments.
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Some component notes:
Because the schematics were drawn for the stripboard layouts there may be some front panel mounted pots and switches missing. Apologies if it is confusing.
There are also some designs using the difficult to find CA 3080 opamps.
These can usually be replaced with LM13700.
Also all dual transistors can be replaced using discrete transistors in thermal contact with the 1k Tempco.
The vactrols are DIY and there are online instructions on how to make them.
All diodes are 1N4148
All NPN transistors are BC 337 or similar
All PNP transistors are BC 327 or similar
JFET are MPF102
