BENCH NOTES

Welcome back to Bench Notes! We hope March treated you kindly, despite the time-change and unpredictable weather. 

Inside the shop, we had a handful of oddities come across our benches, including an Arbiter Soundimension, another Roland GR-700, and (oddest of all) an Atari Video Music. Otherwise, March was rife with our typical Farfisas, Rolands, and, of course, Moogs.

MARCH MOOG-NESS

March was a big month for Moog repairs! We put the finishing touches on a Polymoog, restored a Minimoog Model D, and worked on three Moog Opus 3’s (a veritable statistical rarity). 

It’s fair to say that vintage Moog synths are one of the cornerstones of our work at the shop, and we love working on them! While the synths themselves can be fussy at times, the old Moog service manuals are well-documented and the market for replacement parts is reasonably well stocked, meaning we can keep these incredible instruments running for decades to come.

RHODES R&R

On March 20th, we added a new page to our website going over the ins and outs of our Fender Rhodes repairs and restorations. It covers the most common issues that we see in these electric pianos, and illustrates our standard processes for getting one back to a professional grade. If you ever wanted to learn more about sticky keys and dead tines, give this here link a click.

We’ll be sharing more articles like this on other synths and pianos in the coming months - let us know if you have any requests!   

THE JUNK DRAWER

Some other tidbits from last month worth sharing:

• We received a beautiful new painting titled “Move, or be Moved” from our friend Adam Chapman! Give it a good gander next time you visit the shop, as it's a fabulous piece.

• We brought in a CRT TV to test the aforementioned Atari Video Music. Cannot overstate how odd that is for a synth repair shop.

• London is yet again our Employee of the Month! Most people would call this a hat-trick, but everyone knows dogs don’t wear hats or do tricks.

LOCAL EVENTS

Synth and synth-adjacent happenings in the GTA.

Monday, April 8th | Toronto Electronic Music Open Mic

On the second Monday of each month, our friends at TEMOM hold an electronic music open mic night at Handlebar. 15 minute sets. All live. All musical styles. Drop by at 8pm and enjoy!

Monday, April 8th | The Eclipse

If you didn’t already know, there’s going to be a solar eclipse between 2pm and 4:40pm. Toronto itself will only experience a partial eclipse, though Hamilton, Niagara Falls, and other cities in this region will witness a few minutes of totality. We’ll be taking the day to see it, so do yourself a favor and pick up some eclipse glasses!

Saturday, April 13th | Frequency Freaks

Frequency Freaks Synthesizer Workshops are free educational synth events that encourage sharing gear info and sound-design techniques in the Toronto synth community. They’re held in association with Arraymusic at 155 Walnut Avenue.

Got any suggestions for local events we can add here? We’d love to hear about them! Just reach out and let us know.

If you made it this far, thanks so much for reading this third edition of Bench Notes! Feel free to let us know what you think, share it with a friend, or suggest new topics you’re curious about.

—The Team at Synths When