PAIA Synthesizers
This is the original PAIA synthesizer sold in 1973. It was a breakthrough project, especially for those of us who were very interested in electronic music, but couldn't afford a Moog.
The version shown here consisted of a power supply, keyboard controller, VCO, VCA, low pass filter, bandpass filter, control oscillator, and noise source. The keyboard was the original steel wire/shirt button type. Formed, spring steel wires were screwed onto a piece of plywood. A contact point came from each key, and made contact to a piece of conductive vinyl which had DC voltage across it. The keys were tuned by moving the wire contacts. It did work pretty good. In the picture, it's sitting on top of my old Silvertone spinet organ. The organ was rather neat - all tubes. The master oscillators were divided down by neon bulbs.
Later on, I bought the ADSR, sequencer, mixers, envelope follower, and the balanced modulator.
After that, I bought the boards and built the Stringz 'n Thingz string synthesizer.
The PAIA vocoder allows you to impress your voice onto an instrument. This is how they make talking guitars and electronic chorusing.
The Vocal Zapper was used to remove vocals from recordings.
Originally offered as a synthesizer, the Gnome was an excellent SFX machine.
The Stereo Chord EGG (Encephalo-Gratification Generator) is really cool. It generates a swirling, relaxing pattern of C chords, F chords, anc G chords. The individual notes drift in and out, and the chords change very smoothly. I used this at night for many years with the speaker volume just on the verge of audibility. It was sold as a board only, so I don't have a picture.
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