As is traditional, Jimmy and Nancy Moore were told to relax after their long drive and wait until the following day for the unveiling of their restored machine.

As if that wouldn't drive you nuts, I don't know what would...

...well, maybe Your Webmaster getting to "unveil" the ARP 2600, which was sitting about five feet from the cloaked FX Console?  Sorry, Jimmy.  :-)

The ARP 2600 is one of those synthesizer classics, up there with the Minimoog, the Prophet 5, the Jupiter 8, and the others that seem to be on everyone's "must have" list.  This unit, however, turned out to be a "problem child" and was not in good shape at all.

It started out as an EBay deal, then the first unit the seller sent never arrived and was declared lost in shipping.  Later on this one showed up, and aside from letting some magic blue smoke out during checkout (tantalum capacitor let go), it hardly worked.  Jerry Korb and I brought it to synth tech Phil Cirocco in Pennsylvania on our way to see the Moores in December 2004, and the machine became an absolute nightmare for poor Phil.  :-(  But he stuck with it, got everything working, and put in some upgrades.  I am hopeful that the 2600 will last a while now in good working order---it sounds really beefy now and is a lot of fun.  There's one more slight problem to work out on it, but it'll be set right with Phil's help (gee, I hope he's still willing to work on this thing).  And, of course, it'll likely always be a "problem child", as two more of the old 1/8" jacks have failed since coming back home.  Well, it is over 30 years old.  At least the jacks are straightforward to fix.

oops, sorry to interrupt, Jimmy.  Is it time for the FX now? -->