Bob Moog Foundation Archives
PRESERVING AND SHARING THE LEGACY OF BOB MOOG
The Bob Moog Foundation Archives preserves and shares an extensive collection documenting 50 years of Bob Moog’s pioneering work. The materials offer a glimpse into his creative process and the people who worked with him or inspired his innovations.
Explore the instruments, records, and materials that document Bob Moog’s life and work:
- Vintage instruments and breadboard prototypes
- More than 5,000 photographs
- Articles and periodicals
- Project notes
- More than 3,000 schematics
- Correspondence and writings
- Memorabilia
- Recordings
The Work of the Bob Moog Foundation Archives
We’ve devoted thousands of hours to caring for this one-of-a-kind collection and making it accessible. Our work includes:
- Cataloging, cleaning, and archiving more than 2,500 vintage schematics, some drawn by hand by Bob himself.
- Maintaining a database of more than 15,000 items.
- Fully restoring vintage instruments, at a cost of thousands of dollars per instrument.
- Digitizing 88 reel-to-reel tapes from the late 1960s and 1970s. Read about the digitization project and listen to excerpts from the restored tapes.
- Displaying archival materials at the Moogseum and national festivals such as Moogfest and ProgStrock. Museum exhibits have included Switched-On: The Birth of the Moog Synthesizer at The History Center of Tompkins County and Waves of Inspiration: The Legacy of Moog at the Museum of Making Music and the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame.
- Bringing archival materials to hundreds of thousands of people of all ages through our website and Google Arts & Culture’s Music, Makers & Machines exhibition.
- Sharing archival materials with journalists, researchers, and authors. The Archives was a key source for Albert Glinsky’s biography Switched On: Bob Moog and the Synthesizer Revolution.
The Bob Moog Foundation Archives seeks to create traveling exhibits for museums and science centers, collaborate with other institutions to display small archive collections, and expand collections on view at the Moogseum in Asheville, North Carolina.
We are committed to preserving and sharing the information in the Bob Moog Foundation Archives for generations to come. Donate to help us preserve and share these archives.
Recent Additions
2026
Additions to the Bob Moog Foundation Archives include:
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The Rensitron
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Billy Joel’s Minimoog Model D
2024–2025
The Bob Moog Foundation Archives received more than 5,000 donated items, primarily documents and schematics. Highlights include:
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R.A. Moog Model 351 theremin
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Gary Wright’s Moog Liberation keytar
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Fairlight CMI
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Synton Modular
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Moog Music Voyager prototype
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Big Briar Ethervox prototype
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Big Briar Touchpad
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Bob Moog’s 2002 Technical GRAMMY Award
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Six schematic notebooks
2023
Acquisitions include:
- Historic letters and photographs
- Business memos from Moog Music (Buffalo)
- Vintage instructional and service manuals
- Vintage interface templates
- R.A. Moog Troubador Theremin
- “Outside the Lines” article by Allison Frank. Donated to us by Allison Frank, along with a tape recording of the interview with Bob Moog.
- MuSonics Minimoog
- R.A. Moog Minimoog
- R.A. Moog Melodia theremin
From the Bob Moog Foundation Archives
This mechanical drawing shows the 1973 Moog 1130 Percussion Controller, including the assembly of the final unit, and gives hints about its operation. The 1130 converts the physical impact of the drum head being hit into a voltage output that can be used to control any voltage-controlled aspect of a Moog modular, or any device that responds to changes in voltage. The prototype of this device can be found in the Bob Moog Foundation Archives.