Technician accidentally gets high from LSD left inside vintage synth The story behind the legendary 'Buchla' brand synth it came from

Within the world of electronic music production, the modular synthesizer has become a trendy tool for underground producers to use in recent years. For those who seek a more experimental sound and control over exactly how these sounds are produced. A modular synthesizer is a synth where the cables and modules that create and filter the soundwaves within in the machine, can be physically altered by the user, as cables can be repatched to open up for greatly expanded sonic possibilities.

When a technician, Eliot Curtis, at Broadcast Operations Manager at KPIX California was recently fixing a vintage Buchla 100, he came across a crystalline substance underneath a red module within. After cleaning away the powder with his bare fingers, the unsuspecting technician slowly started feeling the onset of what would ramp up to a 9-hour acid trip. The substance found on the instrument was later tested and identified as LSD dating back more than 50 years. No one precisely knows how the acid got there, though it’s known that Buchla synthesizers did find their way onto the infamous “Further” school bus which drove around the United States in the '60s by Ken Kesey to spread the psychedelic gospel, becoming the inspiration for Tom Wolfe’s famous novel, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Buchla was also a friend of the band, the Grateful Dead's, sound engineer, Owsley Stanley who was known to manufacture a particularly potent strain of LSD. 

KPIX 5 has made a statement that there will be no more trips with this Buchla. As the instrument has now been thoroughly cleaned of all LSD. But who knows how many Buchla’s out there could be holding an unexpected drop of psychedelic history.