Ebay of the Day: Triadex Muse.

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In the late 1960s, when all synths were big black boxes that looked like electronic test equipment, two MIT professors invented this thing: The Triadex Muse.

It's often billed as the first digital synth, but it's not really a synth - it's a sequencer, or at least a composition machine. The sliders affect the musical notes, not the sound produced (although you seem to be stuck with the on-board sound - it won't connect to anything else). As the Synth Museum says: " The exact logic behind the composition engine is rather technical, and not exactly intuitive."

There's a very primitive 'virtual Muse' program here. Only 280 Muse machines were ever produced, so it seems odd that 0.7% of them are on Ebay at the moment: this one for $1,299 and this one starting at $999.

"Tom's Music Thing is brought to you by Music Thing, the London-based website about music gadgets."  

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