PPG sales were tedious. More and more “low price synths” appeared on the market that made our life harder. Especially the new Korg models MS10,20 etc. were sold in high numbers and also reached completely new groups of buyers. At the same time, I had come to know Klaus Schulze who wanted to extend his Moog. He sold lots of records at the time and he (or his manager) had the idea to open a synthesizer school. The whole thing was really professionally arranged and organized in the way that the instruments required for the courses were supplied by the companies. So there was an abundance of Moogs, Arps etc. Since my sales were diminishing, I had the idea to open a shop and thereby participate in Korg’s, Roland’s etc. success. The idea was that it should not be a normal music shop, but rather a “Keyboard Specialist Store”, only for synthesizers. After some discussions with Klaus Schulze we could also offer courses for synthesizers and were even supplied with some of his “training devices”! Klaus also came to the opening of the store. The store was run in the way that before noon we held courses and in the afternoon it was open for sales (or the other way round). At the same time, I continued my developments. At that time, I had just bought a house together with my first wife, or rather, an insurance company salesman had talked me into a credit agreement. The house was never finished, since the building authority didn’t release the site. But we had already passed on our old flat and had nowhere to stay! Therefore, it was an obvious decision to temporarily move into the little flat in the back of the store. I set up a workplace in the cellar, below the salesroom, so that I pushed my developments downstairs and demonstrated and sold the Korgs upstairs (really not an ideal situation for concentrated work). ![]() But I came to know a lot of interesting people at that time – amongst others, there was Michael Wehr, who should play an important role in PPG later on. Then, however, he was enganged in Kuwait, so he disappeared again, with a Wave he had bought. Another companion was Detlev Paschen, who first helped out in the store while he was pursuing his degree of theology, and later also programmed for PPG. Schwere Zeiten Der Verkauf der PPGs verlief schleppend. Es kamen immer mehr “Low Price Synths” auf den Markt, die uns das Leben schwer machten. Besonders die neuen Korg-Modelle MS10,20 etc. wurden viel verkauft und erschlossen auch ganz neue Käuferschichten. Klaus Schulze system with PPG cabinet and custom keyboard Er hatte gerade grosse Plattenerfolge und die Idee (oder sein Manager), eine Synthesizerschule aufzubauen. Das ganze war sehr professionell aufgezogen und war so organisiert, dass die Instrumente, die für die Kurse benötigt wurden, von den Firmen gestellt wurden. Es gab also jede Menge moogs, Arp’s etc. © W.Palm 2008 |