Serge 1 Boat System Rebuild

I built a custom Serge from a "basket case".  The customer created the panel graphics for a printed FrontPanelExpress 2mm black anodized panel. There is a lot of good information on Serge at www.serge.synth.net/.

The panel consists of a New Timbral Oscillator, Ring, Precision VCO, Dual Universal Slope Generator, Extended Range VCF, YUSynth MiniMoog VCF (VCF24), Resonant Equalizer, Dual VCA (Quad), and two MOTM-800 Envelope Generators. The Ring is between the NTO and Precision VCO, and the two additional VCA channels are to the bottom left of each Envelope Generator. The YUSynth and MOTM modules have been modified for +/-12V. My customer replied "With the Yusynth and the MOTM EG, give me a little 5u flavor, and loving it. I couldn't be happier with my system, thank you so much!"

 

In order to fit potentiometers in the tight spaces I used Alpha 12 mm. You can see in this image how the potentiometers had to be oriented for clearance. I have not drilled the PCB mounting holes on the Envelope Generator side as I did not know exactly how the PCBs would be arranged until wired.

 

This system took a lot of time to wire. Each board has sufficient slack to rotate out for service. I made a power distribution board for a star configuration to each module and the VCO front panel controls with an 18 gauge power cable. The YUSynth Euro MiniMoog VCF board is the same length as the Serge. The MOTM boards are shorter so I made two rails to mount to the PCB to fit in the extrusion.

 

Several of the PCBs had problems so needed repair. I touched up a lot of the soldering and cleaned excess flux off. I added a piggyback op-amp to the Resonant Equalizer to mix the two inputs since they are both banana.

Total restoration and build time for this was 44 hours.

 

 

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