Visit to the Moogseum in Asheville, North Carolina

jtbell · Nov 15, 2021

In this case, the waves are sound waves and radio waves. On Saturday, I drove up to Asheville NC for some sightseeing. Although I've been to stamp and model-train shows south of town nearby many times, I had never done any real sightseeing downtown, only driven through it.

Stop 1

My main destination downtown was the Moogseum, which showcases the life and work of Robert Moog, of synthesizer fame. He moved to the Asheville area after retiring from his signature company in New York.

Storefront of the Moogseum on a downtown street, with a beige awning reading MOOGSEUM and a lamppost wreath; visitors stand at the entrance beside a sandwich board sign, with cars parked along the curb.

The museum is small but has interesting exhibits about Moog's life and the history of synthesized music, including predecessors to the Moog synthesizers such as the theremin and the ondes Martenot, with which I'm acquainted via Olivier Messiaen's music. Moog started his career by building and selling theremins as a teenager in the 1950s. There's a reconstruction of Moog's workbench as it was when he died in 2005. I was amused to recognize items that my students and I used in undergraduate labs: Fluke multimeters, Tektronix oscilloscopes, etc.

When I was in high school in the late 1960s, two of the first albums I bought were Walter/Wendy Carlos's Switched-On Bach and The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, which helped make Moog famous.

Unfortunately, the museum doesn't allow photography except in the entrance area / gift shop. Underneath the portrait is a couch made up to look like a synthesizer.

Painted portrait of a man with dark hair in a striped shirt, arms folded, rendered in black, white and grey; below it a long couch styled as a synthesizer panel with knobs, sliders and labels reading Mixer, Modifiers and Output.

Because of its small size and Covid restrictions, the museum can currently accommodate only a limited number of visitors at a time. I bought my ticket and made a reservation for a specific hour online.

jedishrfu · Nov 15, 2021

That’s cool, I had no idea.

jtbell · Nov 16, 2021

I arrived in Asheville earlier than I expected, so I had some time for exploring before my reserved time at the Moogseum.

Downtown Asheville has a lot of small shops, restaurants, brewpubs, nightclubs, etc., most of which were just starting to open in late morning. The central plaza is Pack Square, presided over at one end by the Buncombe County courthouse and the Asheville city hall.

Pack Square in downtown Asheville on a clear autumn day, with a tall stone courthouse tower on the left, a domed building with a copper roof on the right, and a curved stone arch in the grassy plaza.

It also had some nice specimens of fall color.

Vivid red and orange maple tree in full autumn color, with a paved walkway, low stone planters and a blue sky behind it.

Not far from the Moogseum is the boyhood home of novelist Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938), who is generally considered to be North Carolina's most famous writer. The house is now a NC state historical site.

Two-and-a-half-storey yellow Victorian house with a wraparound front porch and a red brick chimney, with a brick-and-stone wall in front and a sign reading Thomas Wolfe Memorial.

I didn't take the tour through the house because I was a bit short of time by then, but I did look at the exhibits in the visitor center. They include artifacts from his apartment in New York City. When he died suddenly from complications of pneumonia, his brother gathered up his belongings and shipped them back to Asheville.

Recreated writer's room with a portrait of a seated man in a suit and tie, an antique Remington typewriter, a brass oil lamp fixture with glass chimneys, a blue willow plate, and a bed at left.

Corner of a room with a worn, floral upholstered armchair with a lace doily on its back, a brown felt fedora on the seat, a brown leather satchel on the floor, and a dark wooden tabletop radio with an arched grille beside a small table holding a lamp with a turquoise glass shade, two glasses and an amber ashtray.

The radio ties in with my next stop...

jtbell · Nov 16, 2021

Speaking of theremins... here are a couple of snippets from the theremin concerto by the Finnish composer Kalevi Aho:

jedishrfu · Nov 16, 2021

Speaking of Theremins? I thought we were speaking of moogs.

Jazz composer Dick Hyman and a song from his Minotaur album entitled the Moog and Me

jtbell · Nov 17, 2021

Stop 3

After finishing at the Moogseum, I drove to the Asheville Radio Museum, which is open only 1-3 PM on Saturdays. Getting there was a bit of an adventure. I had to use my car's GPS and follow the directions and photos on the web site. I ended up on the third floor of a classroom/lab building at Asheville-Buncombe Technical College ("A-B Tech").

Entrance to the Asheville Radio Museum, with a sign above the doorway and a display window showing vintage radio sets, speakers and tube equipment inside.

Interior of a crowded radio museum room with tall shelves of vintage radio transmitters and receivers, a large wooden-horn gramophone, and a visitor standing in the background.

As you can see, this place is chock full of stuff. A homemade Hertzian spark-gap transmitter:

Wooden demonstration apparatus with a spark gap, large brass-coloured curved plates on wooden stands, and a 'HIGH VOLTAGE' sign, alongside a blue Mickey Mouse radio and a small vintage meter; label reads 'HERTZ PROVES RADIO WAVES'.

Crystal radios:

Homemade crystal radio built on a cylindrical oatmeal-style box wrapped in copper coil, with a small crystal detector and wire terminals on top, displayed in a museum case beside a Master Science Crystal Kit box.

Vacuum tubes:

And more...

jtbell · Nov 20, 2021

Stop 3 continued

More stuff from the radio museum...

It's maintained by an amateur (ham) radio club, so it has a large collection of vintage ham radio equipment:

Two shelves of vintage amateur radio equipment, including receivers, transmitters and a microphone, with printed index cards and a sign reading W8JK.

The Hammarlund company had its main factory in nearby Mars Hill NC from 1951 to 1973.

Ham radio operators honor legacy of Mars Hill company (Asheville Citizen Times, 2020)

Two vintage Hammarlund shortwave receivers on a shelf: the HQ-150 with a light grey front panel and tuning knobs, and the HQ-One Forty-Five-X in dark grey. A small Hammarlund Short Wave Listening Radios brochure and a printed card sit in front.

Downed pilots in World War II used this emergency radio to signal their location to rescuers. They held the radio by its curved sides between their thighs, and turned the crank on top to power it.

Yellow metal emergency radio with a black hand crank on top, a Gibson Girl transmitter, displayed on a shelf with a placard reading Signal Light and a switch for 500 K.C. Manual and 8200 K.C. Automatic.

A Latvian radio of the 1930s-1940s has a tuning dial that names the different cities it could receive (mostly northern Europe):

Close-up of a Latvian radio tuning dial with concentric colored rings listing European cities such as Oslo, Moskva, Leningrad, Bergen, Tromso, Frankfurt, Riga, Tallinn and Danzig, with a metal tuning knob and pointer.

An early TV set:

Wooden-cased Philco Television set from the late 1940s with a small rounded-corner screen framed in gold, three knobs and a larger dial at lower right, sitting on a shelf.

A radio and 8-track tape combo from the 1960s-1970s:

Cream-colored portable Elgin radio with a black speaker grille, a carrying handle on top, and a row of station buttons; a blue M&M's figure in sunglasses sits on the shelf beside it.

A hallway display elsewhere in the building has a collection of tabletop radios:

Glass display case holding about a dozen vintage tabletop radios on three shelves, including cream, green, maroon, and wood-cabinet sets, with a few dark Bakelite-style sets on the bottom shelf.

jedishrfu · Nov 20, 2021

An amazing collection of stuff.

jtbell · Dec 14, 2021

Addendum

When I did this trip, I was hoping to make another stop that fit in with the radio theme of the museum, but I ran out of daylight.

Last weekend I was in the Asheville area again for a stamp show, and had enough time to make a detour onto the Blue Ridge Parkway to view Mount Pisgah, elevation 5721 ft (1744 m).

This is the site of the highest television transmitter in the US east of the Mississippi River. It hosts two Asheville TV stations, WLOS (ABC) and WUNF (PBS-NC), that my wife and I watch regularly via our rooftop antenna more than 80 miles (130 km) away in the "lowlands" of the South Carolina piedmont region.

One of these days I want to hike the trail to the summit.

Mount Pisgah seen from the Blue Ridge Parkway, a forested peak with a tall radio transmitter mast on its summit under a clear blue sky, with bare winter trees in the foreground.

Photo of a tall lattice radio transmission tower with a thin antenna mast rising from the bare-treed summit of a forested hill against a clear blue sky.

DennisN · Dec 15, 2021

jtbell said:

A very funny bench in that photo! (or small sofa?)

And very nice photos of cool gear and locations, thanks for posting!

collinsmark · Dec 15, 2021

DennisN said:

A very funny bench in that photo! (or small sofa?)
And very nice photos of cool gear and locations, thanks for posting!

Yes (from what I gather), it's a comfy sofa/couch/bench made as a quite accurate depiction of the Minimoog, Model D.

Minimoog synthesizer with wood-panelled case and black knobs, keyboard in front, sitting on a flight case in front of a blue backdrop with circuit diagram lines.

Figure 1. Minimoog Model D

Here's a Wikipedia article on the instrument (all models): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimoog

Here's a video with the unmistakable sound of the Minimoog instrument (may have to be watched on YouTube, since embedding may be disabled):

Edit: Oh, and lest we forget Gary Numan, here's the song Cars, primarily made/recorded with a Minimoog (along with a Polymoog Keyboard):

jtbell · Dec 17, 2021

It appears to be the same device (or similar) that Moog demonstrates in the video in this post in another thread:

Post in thread 'Wendy Carlos's Moog-synthesized classics'
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/wendy-carloss-moog-synthesized-classics.1009614/post-6570371

Visit to the Moogseum in Asheville, North Carolina

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