Monday, October 5, 2009

Sequential Circuits Model 700 Programmer and Model 800 Digital Sequencer, Contemporary Keyboard and Synapse 1977


Sequential Circuits Model 700 Programmer and Model 800 Digital Sequencer from page 7 of Contemporary Keyboard June 1977 and page 5 of Synapse May/June 1977.

My archives are far from complete, but this must be one of Sequential Circuits earliest ads - at least in CK magazine.

Historically, I find the images in the ad most valuable from the perspective of SCI's logo evolution.

If you look closely, the Model 700 in the ad has a Sequential Circuits 'Co' logo rather than the more familiar 'Inc' logo. I'm not sure when they stopped using 'Co', but photos that I've found online of the 700 Mark 2 (released in 1979) can be seen with various versions of a non-'Co.' logo, including this one on Matrixsynth with the SC logo on the right side of the front panel and this photo in a brochure PDF I found on the Emulator Archive Web site that has the logo dead centre.

The Model 800 Digital Sequencer in the ad has what I believe is an even earlier version of the Sequential Circuits logo. This stylized 'SC' logo is more visible at the bottom of this very early Model 800 ad I found on synthmuseum.com.

You can follow more of the evolution of the SC logo throughout the Model 800's lifespan. After the stylized 'SC' logo, the front panel of the 800 displayed the 'Sequential Circuits Co.' logo as seen in this photo from Synthnut's tech pages, and then the logo changed to the straight-up 'Sequential Circuits' logo like this one from matrixsynth's Flickr photo stream.

More on SCI logo evolution later...

2 comments:

Warbirdskies said...

My brother in law worked for SQ back in the 80's and we had a few t-shirts with the logo on them - they had a strip underlining the logo that appeared to be random shapes but when viewed upside down read "F**k Off Asshole" or similar. The font was like a 3D block with each letter 'cut' into the block.
Company humour I expect!!!

Warbirdskies said...

Just dug out my old Letraset handbook and found the font used to underline the company name - it was "Block Up" and it was actually done back to front so the hidden message was only readable when looking in a mirror! Coupled with the use of the "STOP" font they obviously enjoyed playing with peoples ability to decypher text!

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