In 1976 after developing those two sequencers, John Bowen joined Dave. John was an ex 'Moog' employee. He had worked for Moog until Norlin took over the company. He still did some demos and clinics on a per diem basis for them. John helped Dave but was not really an employee. He did it just to have some free equipment. John's main focus at that time was the band 'Nielsen/Pearson' he played in as a bass player.
Together they built a Minimoog programmer, called the 'Model 700 Programmer'. This unit provided rudimentary patch memories for analog monosynths like the Minimoog and the ARP 2600. In 1977 this was a huge step forward. The programmer was a success for the small company. They sold one unit a week for two years, and two versions where made; the Mark 1, and the Mark 2.
It could store a total of 64 programs in 8 banks of 8 programs. The 700 programmer has a pair of programmable envelope generators with offset voltages for tuning.It replaces the envelopes of the connected synthesizer through the amplifier and filter connections. Later version allowed for a multipin connector to use just one cable for connection. Older models could also be modded with the multipin cable. Other modifications allowed for a clock pulse to make the 700 a seqeuncer with dual programmable envelope generators per note.
|