Polymoog Service Manual Notes

This manual has been scanned by Polymoog enthusiasts for the benefit of other Polymoog enthusiasts. The intention is to make available the information to allow owners to understand at least a little of the workings of these complex synthesisers, and perhaps to carry out some routine maintenance such as calibration, and maybe the odd repair, at your own risk of course. It goes without saying that you shouldn't be delving around inside your or anybody else's Polymoog unless you are at least slightly proficient in electronics maintenance, or you'll probably end up doing more harm than good (top tip - don't lick the power supply). If in any doubt whatsoever, leave working on your synth to the pros. If you are a professional electronics tech you may get a little more out of this manual, but we would like to hope that first and foremost it remains in the hands of enthusaists with a real interest in keeping these superb old machines going for as long as possible. Of course there will be competent techs who are also owner-enthusiasts, in which case lucky you ;o) 

The scans are sourced in the main from a slightly dodgy (second generation?) photocopy of the original manual, and in consequence the quality isn't fantastic. It is certainly usable though. An attempt has been made to tidy up the scans and remove the photocopy artifacts such as spurious noise and shading, and the worst of the punch-hole marks. Many artifacts remain however as it was just too daunting to do a full restoration on every page. Similarly many of the pages were photocopied off-vertical, and again the worst, but not all, of this has been corrected.

The second issue you'll soon notice is the result of the difficulty of copying large fold-out drawings such as the original manual contains. The work-around has been to spread these pages over two or three A3 or A4 pages, or a mix of both. By and large all these drawings overlap (I can only recall one pair of pages where the source photcopies don't overlap properly and a few component specs are missing) so there should be very little information missing. It just makes the pages a little harder to read in their entirety, and could make for interesting times if you intend to print the document out... 

This manual copy is not intended to be a full substitute for an original set of bound service manuals, or for a professionally reproduced manual, if such a thing exists. The quality just isn't high enough. There are a number of reputable dealers in old synth manuals who will cheerfully sell you the real deal when available - look them up on the internet, USENET, etc. We encourage you to give them your patronage if your expectations are higher than these scans can provide. Nonetheless, we hope this manual is of use to some.

There has been a presumption throughout this little project that the the original document is long out of print and that there is no copyright infringement going on here. We're no lawers though. All Trade Marks, intellectual property and all that kind of thing remain the property of their title holders, M'lud. 

Finally, a big thank you goes out to Bob Moog RIP, and also to Dave Luce the chief design engineer on the Polymoog project. You've made a lot of people very happy with these synths. When we aren't tearing our hair out and swearing at the damn things anyway ;o)