RIP John Simonton, founder/owner of Paia Electronics

[Brian Roth]

In Thursday's newspaper, I noted with shock and deep dismay the death of one of my mentors, John
Simonton, who founded Paia Electronics, a pioneering DIY electronics kit supplier based here in my
city.

I was in Junior High in the late 1960's, and I had spotted one of John's articles in Popular
Electronics magazine, with a "complete kit of parts available from...." listed. I don't recall
what that kit was, but it looked interesting, and I noted an Oklahoma City address.

At that time, Jonn was working at Tinker AFB, while running Paia out of his garage. I "finagled" a
visit to see his then-tiny operation to buy the kit of parts. I wasn't old enough to drive, so my
Mom took me to John and Linda Kay's house for that original meeting.

I know I was a "thorn in his butt" as I went through High School, but John hired me as his
'customer support person' soon after I graduated from HS. By that time, I had built many Paia kits
(most worked...and when they didn't, I'd haul my crappily soldered <g> units to John's new shoppe,
and he would cuss me out about my soldering...which IMPROVED..and he would sort out the problems).
Hence, I had quite a bit of "hands-on" experience with the kits before I landed that gig at Paia.

Somewhere in the time frame before John hired me, I concocted a guitar effects unit I called a
"Ping Pong". My original unit used incandescent lamps and photoresistors, and John revised the
concept using reversed-biased diodes for the gain control cells. He published an article in Guitar
Player magazine (along with "complete kit of parts available from..."), and for every kit sold, I
collected a small amount of money for the concept.

http://www.brianroth.com/projects/ping-pong.pdf

I could go on and on about my time working with John, the growth of Paia, continuing contact after
I went to work elsewhere, visits to the "Simonton Manor" on the shores of Lake Hiawasee, and our
long-running friendship.

At one point, John sold a MIDI device design to Peavey, and he semi-retired to his lake home at a
relatively early age. However, he was always "in motion", and cranked out new products when
retirement became boring to him.

It was perhaps 2-3 years ago when I last saw John...alive and well...when I had his "metal monger"
build the chassis for this custom rack-up I completed for my client/friend David Gardner at Magneto Mastering:

http://www.brianroth.com/audix.jpg

I am SO sad to learn of the passing of one of my true mentors, John Simonton. I will TRULY miss
him, just as I miss Grandad Roth who introduced me to the "basics of electricity" when I was still
too young to be in grade school.

http://www.paia.com/obituary.html

Bri

 

[Kyle]

Here's to a legend.

-Kyle

 

[Consul]

Wow, it's cool that you used to work for him, Brian. The best I can say is that I once talked to him on the phone. Even then, talking to some random guy from Colorado, he was very gracious and giving of his time.

It's sad to hear that he passed on. He will be missed.

It is heartening to see, though, that the company plans to move forward and keep his dream alive. I wish them all the best of luck. I know I have my eye on a few more of their kits.

Now to go finish that FatMan sitting in my room...

 

[PRR]

related thread
============================

> My original unit used incandescent lamps and photoresistors, and John revised the
concept using reversed-biased diodes

Well, DUH!!! John was the king of good-but-cheap. Lamps? photoresistors??? What a spend-thrift! We're talking dollars here, far over the actual cost of the early Paia stuff. Diodes are a dime and nobody cares 0.01% or 0.1% THD.

"- best of all inexpensive!"

My favorite was the 1-transistor ramp-to-triangle converter. It was an inverting follower, up to a point, and then it just went blooey.... just the right way to send the ramp the other way. OK, it had a glitch at the second peak, but who cares, it cost a quarter! ARP's approach was (IIRC) to have both a ramp and a triangle generator lashed together, using two log-current sources worth about $50 each.

And of course Paia's first Moog-like synth was all linear, not log-scale voltage/frequency. Made some things easy, or stable (or at least cheap); some things hard. And then he got an early CPU and programmed the lin-synth to do things that log-synths would not do.

I had a friend, made $50/week. Spent $10 for beans, $20 for pot, and $20 for Paia stuff. He had more useful music-making gear than the university's $40,000 Lab. Probably still uses it.

 

[adamasd]

Reading that reminded me of the 2700 modulars lowpass VCF. Maybe four caps, four diodes, a handfull of resistors and one transistor that was just a buffer and makeup gain stage for the completely passive voltage controlled lowpass filter. It is rediculously simple and cheap and is probably my favortie circuit. Only a few months ago while putting together an onboard guitar preamp I tacked on 4 diodes and 2 resistors to the RC lowpass so I could tune the cutoff frequency with a knob.

adam

 

[kkrafs]

[quote author="PRR"]related thread

My favorite was the 1-transistor ramp-to-triangle converter. It was an inverting follower, up to a point, and then it just went blooey.... just the right way to send the ramp the other way. OK, it had a glitch at the second peak, but who cares, it cost a quarter! ARP's approach was (IIRC) to have both a ramp and a triangle generator lashed together, using two log-current sources worth about $50 each. [/quote]

You find that in Moog's to, but whos design was it
initially John or Bob's? Or someone else, perhaps EMU?!

KD

 

[bcarso]

I know that the one-transistor sawtooth to triangle converter was in the oscillators on the Moogs of 1968-ish.

 

[12afael]

my first mic pre was the paia tube mic pre.
paia always is a great page to get new ideas.