John Bechdel of False Icons is a fan of old synths. One of his favorites -- excepting a little problem with tuning -- is the latter day Moog -- the Memorymoog. Even with the tuning issues, Bechdel says he managed some great atonal sounds on the band's just released CD, God Complex.

On to the Memorymoog!

"I had all my old synths serviced before we started recording but the Memorymoogs had problems with the auto-tune function. If the oscillators drift too far out of range, the auto-tune doesn’t work. There were possibly newer versions of the oscillators without the problem but it would still have to be re-calibrated, which is a nightmare on the Memorymoogs," he says. "When I first bought it in the ‘80’s, it tuned fine, after it was serviced it did only for a month or so. Anyway, when it’s all out of tune, it’s easy to get very atonal sounds which are reminiscent of Fad Gaget and Depeche Mode. I really wanted to use it, so it worked out in the end."

Bechdel's Memorymoog is actually the Memorymoog+ model.

"(It) has the MIDI retro-fit, providing primitive and slow MIDI implementation. When they work they are wondrous, there’s nothing like the warm angelic sounds the analog voice cards produce. I’ve gotten choirs and voices that sound like a sampler," he says. "Also, FM type sounds characteristic of the DX-7 as well as, the full spectrum of analog splendor. In mono mode, it stacks all the voices and you can turn on all the waveforms to get 56 oscillators on one key. At one point I had three memories, not bad for synth bass."

And this synth really can add something to a recording session.

"It has a unique rich sound, hard to re-create with anything else. The Micro Moog and Memorymoog were my first synths so I’m very bonded to them," says Bechdel. "It’s worth all the effort. At one point there was a modern mod for about $2,000 that turbo charged the MIDI. I’d love to get that."

A Memorymoog is similar to the venerable Minimoogs but it has, as the name would suggest, a great deal more memory. But there are other differences.

"I played Minimoogs but never owned one, seemed to have things covered with the Memorymoogs. One thing I never liked about the Mini was it only had ADRs instead of ADSRs." says Bechdel.

And there is more Bechdel likes about the Memorymoog.

"The filters sound great and there’s three osc’s per voice. A cool feature is it allows osc 3 to modulate osc 1 and 2," he says. "Plus it can be modulated itself from the LFO, then you can put osc 3 out of low range and back to audible range which makes awesome FM sounds."

False Icons are playing US shows now and plan to tour Europe in 2009.