The Vintage Synthesizer Museum

[GR Baumann]

Private Initiative, founded 2013. Sadly too far away from me, besides I would not travel to a rogue state.

[Guy Rowland]

Fantastic! I'll book my flights for 2029.

If you want to visit somewhere else wonderful a bit nearer - and not in a rogue state - I've pasted here a post I made a couple of years ago in the legacy section.

This museum is (not) obsolete

Those of you with a fondness for vintage hardware have a new mecca, in the unlikely location of Ramsgate, an ex-port in my own UK county of Kent. The original name of The Museum Of Everything Else is perhaps more fitting, a wild collection of everything that isn't in other music and tech history collections. You won't find any original minimoogs here, instated vast numbers of kit synths, midi-jigged pipe organs and a synth made of owls.

See this wall of red lights?



It is in the Guiness Book of Records as the most number of oscillators in a synth. Not 20, not 50, but 1,000 oscillators. Wanna know what that actually sounds like? It's the world's most over-engineered white noise generator.

Such charming follies abound. Not all of it is musical - there is a working 1930s telephone exchange, a huge old reel to reel air traffic control recorder and in one dark corner, an army of Tellitubbies will do a mexican wave a the press of a button.

But make no mistake, the curator Sam and his army of devoted volunteers will stop at nothing to make an old kit-synth produce sounds. This is how I first discovered the place, a video Sam made of making an old kit synth, the Powertran Transcendent 2000, work with instructions from a magazine and his diagnoisis of a faulty component no longer manufactured for which he found a working replacement.



This was where it all began for me, my school had this synth and I was allowed to run riot with it. I can confidently say that I was the only one in the school - including the teachers - who had any idea of how to use it, which I worked out purely by a lot of trial and a lot of error. On the day of my visit, this synth had been hijacked as a table which was a bit unfortunate, since they are very keen to have as much working as possible. I did play the Powertran Polysynth which I'd never seen before, an absolutely bonkers configuration. And there's a ton of other esoteric synths, all playable at least to a degree:

I loved the atmosphere. It was especially good to see almost as many female geeks in there as male - how times have changed.

I'm sure I'll be back. If you ever have any reason to vist this part of the world, check the website to see if they are open, it is infrequent in winter.

https://this-museum-is-not-obsolete.com/

[Erik]

(You mean, an Axe of Evil state ?)
Looks like an awsome museum Guy. Glad you reposted it, forgot the OG. But anyway, since GB has exited the continent it’s a tad more cumbersome to move to your place, alas.

[GR Baumann]

I think I posted that one too at some stage