The factory is the only place that still manufactures the Moog synthesizer, which debuted in 1964. It wasn’t the first electronic synthesizer, a device that like its cousin the spooky and sci-fi sound-producing theramin had been around for several years. But Bob’s was the first commercial musical apparatus of its kind.
I learned about the history of the company during a recent tour of the facility located on Lexington Avenue.
The son of a piano teacher mother and an electrical engineer father, maybe it was inevitable that Bog Moog would somehow combine those two interests. According to our tour guide Jim, Moog became fascinated with the theramin when he was in school and started a family business selling kits that created the spacey tones when he was 19. Electronics giant RCA recognized his aptitude and gave him a scholarship.
An early collaboration with jazz musician Herb Deutsch in 1964 led Moog to develop a new instrument that produced unique sounds. Jim said the TV pop band The Monkees were the first to record a Moog synthesizer on a pop album. Mickey Dolenz played it on the song “Nightly Daily,” which was released in 1967.
But the Moog instrument really came to the public’s notice with the release the following year of the album “Switched-On Bach” by Wendy Carlos, according to our tour guide. More musicians started using the electronic device, using patch cords to connect keyboards that would act as switches to call up the various frequencies and patterns. An early modular unit that onced belonged to Keith Emerson of the rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer is displayed at the Moog Music store. It consists of a wall of lights, knobs and plug-ins that also included a switch to launch rockets at live shows.
Jim said Bob Moog was initially cool to the idea of merging a keyboard and synthesizer module into a single unit. Hoping to convince him that such a concept would work, some of his employees worked on it when he wasn’t around. They had an old electronic keyboard that had a few dead keys so they cut those off and the Mini-Moog was on its way.
Moog eventually sold his company and the rights to his name on its products. But he was able to buy back his company in 2002. His innovations included adding a touch screen five years before the iPhone came out with one.
Bob Moog lived and worked in Asheville until his death on Aug. 21, 2005. The company that still bears his name is now almost half owned by its employees and the rest by his last business partner, Michael Adams.
The company that started out with eight employees now has 150. On the factory floor, workers
assemble, solder, test, and package the products by hand using mostly locally sourced materials.
“It’s very labor-intensive,” said Jim.
In a world of digital sound, Moog devices still produce the analog sound coveted by many artists. That comes at a price, however, with low-end theramins starting at about $400 and synthesizers going as high as $150,000. A showroom displays many of those instruments that can be played and purchased along with other Moog-branded merchandise.
A stockroom stacked to the ceiling with boxes of Moog products ready to ship to distributors indicates that Bob Moog’s innovation may even be more popular now than when Bach was switched on more than half a century ago.