Crumar Spirit: How Bizarre

It may have looked basic from afar, but in reality, the Crumar Spirit was anything but. It had an absolutely bonkers signal path, with two analogue oscillators each with unique settings and a dual filter comprising Oberheim-style SEM and Moog-style Ladder sections, the latter with overdrive, bandpass, highpass and off modes. It also had two separate signal paths, with one heading through a ring modulator, a 6dB/octave lowpass filter and a separate VCA. There was also a bizarrely flexible modulation section including two envelopes and unique Mod X and Shaper Y control sections.

Synthesizer Dream Team

If the Crumar Spirit sounds like the end result of a team of mad scientists going a little crazy with synthesis circuits, that’s because it pretty much was. The spirit was designed by Bob Moog with former Moog employees, Jim Scott and Tom Rhea. Talk about your synthesizer dream team.

Crumar Spirit Lives Again

Hunter S Thompson once said, “Too weird to live, too rare to die.” He was talking about his lawyer but it may as well have been the Crumar Spirit. Now it may indeed live again and we’ll hopefully all have the opportunity to try out this wild beast for ourselves.

Details are still scarce but hopefully, we’ll be getting a modern (and stable) recreation of the original this calendar year. Prices and more information to follow as we get it.