Showing posts with label collaboration info. Show all posts
Showing posts with label collaboration info. Show all posts

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Aliens, Dewtron and stuff


Here is this second article collaboration from a source that wants to remain anonymous, despite this I can tell you that this story is real.


Many of us, synth fans, ask ourselves for why reason synth companies or kit builders in the 80's, went down in business.

Many of us argue that it was caused by the japanese invasion.

But what many of us doesn't know is that the aliens also had something in this business, as was the case for the Dewtron company (it can't be another one that you Dewtron!)

Please take the time to read this weird/funny/strange story about the people of Dewtron and some info about the customer service, you won't regret!

"One day in about 1974 a man knocked on the door of my basement in London. I was in my early 20s and this man was about in his mid-40s. He was dressed in a blue shirt and black trousers.

I thought he was a policeman, but he was not. He had met a friend of mine called Antoinette in Wales and she had suggested he talk to me.

This man was called Nigel Woodfine and he came to talk about his friend Brian Bailey, of Dewtron.

This was a big coincidence because I had already built a Dewtron synth and so had my friend Max Norman. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Norman

Then Nigel showed me about 12 typewritten pages. Brian had been possessed by aliens. He was an electronic engineer with no past interest in aliens or UFOs or anything esoteric whatsoever. 

Over a period of about a week he had felt compelled to write down what was dictated to him in the form of automatic writing. Someone else's hand controlled his pen.

The messages in general went along the predictable lines of 'We come in peace to bring you this message etc.' All very interesting, but you could have put it down to the imagination of someone.

But in these pages was one thing which was a specific experiment. I don't have the pages any more, but the message went like this:

'Take a diamond and cleave it in the quadrant mode, so that a beam of light of x angstroms strikes the third axis of the diamond at Y degrees.'

I have forgotten what x and y numbers were.

My father was a PhD in geology, working for BP research, so I showed him but he could not understand exactly how to do the experiment.

As far as I know nothing was done about these messages, but I kept in touch with Nigel for a while and Brian Bailey went crazy trying to understand what it all meant."


Later, the anonymous friend adds:
"The Dewtron synths were very bad because all the circuits were set in brown polyester resin and when they were built they could not be repaired. If you bought 2 VCOs these had to be matched and ordered together. I bought 2 and somehow both were destroyed. I sent them back with Nigel and Brian replaced just one for me, he would not give me both. A one oscillator synth is not much good to anyone."

In the following email, I asked to 'anonymous' why Nigel was sent to him and he reply:
"I am still in touch with Antoinette. I should ask her how she came to send Nigel to me about Brian Bailey of Dewtron. I know Brian went to talk to the people at Porton Down. Porton Down is a government and military research station in Wiltshire who also used to investigate UFO cases, maybe they still do. I don't think they were very interested."

I know, this entry is not very synth related... but you can't deny that this story made you laugh or -at least- put a smile in your face! Oh Dewtron! you have so much to tell us...

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Clef Products (Electronics) Ltd.

In the next entries I will be publishing some information about Clef Products Ltd. (sometimes called Clef Electronics). This company had very interesting kits, some of them were ahead of their time, but badly marketed. I have a couple previous post about Clef, look for the Clef tag.

I've found this web with profuse information about Clef and the kits they were selling at that time:
http://audiotools.com/en_mi_dead_b.html

In conversation with our friend Jeffrey Jones about Clef, he recalls:

"As regards Clef I have met Alan Boothman twice, once at an electronics exhibition where he had a stand displaying the piano and string ensemble, and once when I went to his premises to pick up the cabinet for the piano. He was always very friendly and helpful. I also had contact from someone who used to work at Clef. He was advertising to buy a String Ensemble about two years ago. I contacted him and he gave me a valuable insight into the company which I can share with you."
Sure we will enjoy what you have to told us Jeff! He also sent this old Clef two-page catalog pictured here:



I made this chronological list of Clef instruments/kits:
  • 1972 - PE Electronic Piano (Practical Electronics, sep 1972 to jan 1973)
  • 1975 - Joanna (PE Joanna - Practical Electronics, may to sept 1975, may 1977)
  • 1976 - Sound Design (updated Joanna) (Practical Electronics, mar 1976 pg.215?)
  • 1978 - String Ensemble (PE String Ensemble - Practical Electronics, mar to july 1978)
  • 1978 - Electronic Piano (88 keys, 72 keys and 'Stage Piano', three versions of an updated Joanna)
  • 1979 - Master Rhythm (PE Master Rhythm - Practical Electronics, dec 1980 to jan 1981)
  • 1979 - Band-Box (PE Bandbox - Practical Electronics, nov 1981to feb 1982)
  • 1982 - Microsynth (aka. uSynth and later B30 Microsynth - Practical Electronics, jun to aug 1982)
  • 1984 - PDSG
I don't know if Clef had more than those instruments/kits mentioned here. From all of it, there are so little info on the web, so, with the help from some friends, in the following posts we will be talking about some of this rare instruments.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Surprise!!! More Dewtron


Weird, I have the blog almost abandoned because I don't have all the time I wished but last months I saw several comments about the rare stuff we're talking here, seems that Google sent me all the people interested in rare/old synths, I hope this can help the visitors in any way. Sadly very few people give an email address or webpage to contact for a chat about the subject.

Luckily that was not the case of Patrick Kirby (of Planet Television London http://planet-television.com) who wanted to collaborate with the blog and all the people looking for information about Dewtron stuff. Patrick also likes old instruments, he told me he wrote an article about Selmer Musical Instrument company some time ago

Patrick scanned and cleaned this info-sheet about the Dewtron "Ring-O-Lett" Ring Modulator RM2 we're showing here. Obviously this short information doesn't reveal the magic behind this mysterious module but is a great help for all the people looking for a way to connect or test an RM2 module.

Also this little manual give us some interesting news about Dewtron, it seems that the name comes from "Design Engineering (Workingham) Ltd." a company located at that time at 254 Ringwood Road, Ferndown, Dorset, BH22 9AR - ENGLAND, the name of the owner was Brian H. Baily.

Wow! I think this was a great collaboration because to my knowledge there is not much information on the web more than all written in my previous posts. Thanks to Patrick Kirby for that, and I encourage to all of you who want to share any info about any old and rare electronic musical instrument to contact me, I will give you all the credits for that.