If you're feeling lucky and want to get your hands on a fully restored Moog Memorymoog worth $15,000, now's your chance. The Bob Moog Foundation has announced that a Memorymoog Plus, owned by Dominic Milano, is being raffled off, with 5,000 tickets available to purchase up until 6 November.
Milano is the former editorial director at our very own Keyboard magazine, which he helped to launch back in the 1975, and also the author of the original Memorymoog manual.
Dominic became friends with the great Bob Moog after the two met for an interview for the very first issue of Keyboard. He was given this Memorymoog as part payment for writing the manual in the mid '80s (clearly a more lucrative time to be writing about synths than 2023 – hey, we're not bitter).
He has generously donated the synth to The Bob Moog Foundation, an organisation set up to "inspire creative thinking at the intersection of science, music, history, and innovation through its three hallmark projects: Dr. Bob’s SoundSchool, the Bob Moog Foundation Archives, and the Moogseum".
The Memorymoog was the last synth made by Moog before it went bust in 1982 (and not because it was paying journalists too much), although the company, of course, came roaring back in the 2000s with a series of fantastic reissues and new hardware synths.
The later 'Plus' version of the Memorymoog was that much better thanks to its onboard sequencer, MIDI implementation and more stable oscillators. The model being auctioned off has been completely restored and is signed by Milano, as is the manual he wrote that also comes with the synth.
“Keyboard magazine was an essential source of information for a burgeoning synthesizer community when the technology was quickly evolving," says Michelle Moog-Koussa, Executive Director of the Bob Moog Foundation. "Thousands of synthesists have Dominic and the Keyboard team of editors and writers to thank for what quickly became an indispensable resource for a worldwide community.”
Memorymoogs are currently retailing for anything up to $15,000 secondhand so this is quite a prize. Understandably, then, ticket prices are quite high, too, and limited to that 5,000. They cost $25 each, 5 for $100, 12 for $200, and 35 for $500.
The raffle ends on Monday, 6 November, 2023, at 11:59pm EDT, or earlier if all tickets are sold.
And if anyone fancies donating a Memorymoog to current journalists for writing news pieces like this, get in touch at the usual address. Thanks.
Enter the raffle at the Bob Moog Foundation website.
