First, a little history about this particular Moog.
It was originally ordered in the early 70's for a small community college in Northern California to be used in an electronic music course as envisioned by a newly-hired music teacher. I'm not exactly sure how he talked this small facility into making such a large and unusual purchase, given that the main scope of most of the programs there ran more towards agriculture and animal husbandry, but his taste in equipment was VERY good, and in the summer of 1974 they ordered a Moog Modular System 55 complete with monophonic and dual voice keyboards, a Moog Ribbon Controller, a 360 Systems Frequency Shifter, various cassette and Reel to Reel tape decks, a Dolby B noise reduction unit, and several bizarre Wurlitzer push button preset synthesizers that I've never seen the likes of before or since.
Here's an amended price list for the Moog gear from early 1974...
*** Moog Professional Synthesizer Systems ***
INSTRUMENT PRICE
MOOG System 55 8,795.00
MODULES PRICE
951 Five Octave Keyboard Controller 660.00
952 Duophonic Keyboard Controller 625.00
1150 Ribbon Controller 345.00
Effective February 1, 1974
Prices Subject To Change Without Notice
Not a bad start at all for a fledgling music studio, but as the story I heard goes, the teacher responsible for all this left the college staff soon after for reasons unknown, and the studio was taken over by various other members of the small musical teaching staff. As the years went by, no one was really skilled or interested in maintaining the various machines, and the Moog 55 ended up for a time in a tiny practice closet with a couple of small speakers where one or two people could squeeze in uncomfortably and work with it. Its major use was as a weekend noisemaker for a couple of students (we'll call them Beavis and Butthead) who would get very stoned, stick in patchcords at random and turn the knobs until it made a sound they liked, and then play along to it by banging on a small gong they would squeeze into the room with them, along with a handmade pentagram poster. Good times!
At the end of the '70s, it was decided by the powers that be that the college would sell off the electronic music equipment, so they sent a detailed list of the various pieces available to other colleges and proposed a sealed bid auction. I found out about the auction from a friend who stopped by and told me they were auctioning off something she thought I might be interested in because "it had a lot of knobs".
I thought that it might be test equipment, or probably an old stereo receiver.
When I went to check it out, a janitor took me to a supply closet where the Moog and other goodies were all stacked on their sides in a pile along with various cleaning supplies. "I hope someone buys it", he said, "because we really need the room". I just stood there staring at it slackjawed, thinking that...
A) There must be some mistake, and...
B) How much money could I actually get my hands on before the auction closed?
On the final day open for bidding, I brought my sealed bid to the designated office on campus about 15 minutes before the cutoff time at noon. I bid everything I had in my meager bank account at the time, plus a penny (my Dad's suggestion). I handed the bid over to the person manning the office at the college, and he tossed it into a basket on his desk. I casually asked how many bids they had gotten for the equipment, and he motioned to my envelope in the basket, and said "Well, that's the only one so far."
That last 15 minutes before noon were some of the longest ones of my life...I stood outside the door of the office scanning the hallway for anyone who looked like they might be headed my way with an envelope, weighing my chances of possibly tackling and holding them down until the deadline passed.
Fortunately for me, no one else appeared, and at High Noon, my envelope was opened and declared as the winner and sole participant of the auction, and for the hefty total of $600.01...
(a tidy sum then, as now) the electronic music department in its entirety became mine.
I remember loading it all into my van and getting out of there as fast as possible, just in case someone changed their mind.
I sold off all of the Wurlitzer synths and the badly maintained tape gear, kept the Moog and the frequency shifter (we'll talk about both of these items in greater detail later), and recouped around $300 of my initial investment.
"I call that a bargain, the best I ever had......."
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