ARP / Mu-tron price lists, 1980

ARP / Mu-tron price lists from January 1, 1980.

Given that I'm a HUGE fan of price lists, you'd think that I would have pushed this out the door a lot sooner, but I just never got around to it.  Even more surprising, I'm not gonna focus on the prices at all*.

* I reserve the right to change my mind

Instead, when I looked back at these scans I became more curious to the relationship between Musitronics and ARP, and quickly found that the history isn't remotely close to being as bright and rosy as I had wanted it to be. 

TO summarize... according to Wikipedia, Mu-tron, short for Musitronics, was a musical effects company founded by Mike Beigel and Aaron Newman in 1972. Beigel was an engineer who had been working on a synth project at Guild Guitar Company when the president of the company was killed in an accident. The new president wasn't as interesting in synths (what the heck?!?!) so Beigel and another former engineer new Newman from GGC, pulled the envelope filter outta that synth and called it the Mu-Tron III. 

By 1979 Musitronics had 35 employees and was churning out a number of effects units out of a retrofitted chicken coop. Eventually, they decided to sell to ARP Instruments on a royalty basis, but unfortunately ARP folded in 1980, before they could collect any money. 

Okay, I summarized a lot. 

But even if my severely summarized ditty isn't bumming you out enough already, Musitronics tried to keep going as Gizmo Incorporated, but it ended when Aaron Newman suffered a heart attack.

FACK.

I hate everything about this story. But the connect between these two companies is important history, the details of which we don't hear much about. So, here are two scans to help keep those companies connected just a little bit longer.

Okay - let's end this on a happy note - LOOK AT THOSE ARP SYNTHS.

There - much better. 

ARP 2600, Omni-2, Piano and Quartet infosheets, 1979

Set of ARP 2600, Omni-2, Piano and Quartet infosheets from 1979.

Catalogues, info-sheets, brochures? I just don't know which is which anymore. I definitely haven't been consistent over the last 11 or 12 years that I've been yapping on and on through this blog. And my tags are a dog's breakfast because of it.

In my head, catalogues are usually larger marketing documents that contain a little bit of everything, bound together in some way. Saddle stitch, glue or whatever.

Love 'em. 

I got a lot of 'em. 

Roland. Korg. Casio, Akai... they even have covers that say "catalog" or "catalogue" on 'em with a year/date and volume number - very official looking.  But scanning large catalogues takes a lot of time and I'm an "efficiently lazy" person by nature, so you don't see a lot of them on the blog.  

Info-sheets, on the other hand, are those one-pagers (often two-sided) that contain a lot of information and specs on one instrument. Often, they are part of a larger group of similarly designed info-sheets like the ones above.  And usually I scan these similar documents all at once, and then spread out their posts over time so that in my head I feel like I'm being more productive. 

I gotta tell ya, lately I've been feeling like I'm running out of things to say. 

How many times can I say...

"Lovely!" 

"Consistent design!"

"Logo!" 

"Font!"

"Large photo!"

"Diagram!"

"Did I mention diagram!"

Now, I gotta say that all of the above applies here and posting them all at once really shows off the lovely consistent design with large photos and diagrams. I could literally post a scan and just write LCLFLDD underneath the images and call it a day.  

There isn't much else coming outta my head these days synth-related. 

Hence, lets continue on with my original thought. Where was I? Catalogues. Info-sheets... oh right...

Brochures. 

Brochures, in my head, are usually smaller that catalogues, but larger than info-sheets. Maybe stapled if they are more than two pages. 

Sometimes they tell the company story and feature more than one instrument - I'm thinking in particular of that 1974 "Arp Story" brochure that I had posted earlier this month. 

But, isn't this just a catalogue? 

To make it even more confusing, each of those pages can also be found in the wild as individual "info-sheets", and ARP even created addition info-sheet inserts for this brochure of newly released instruments to increase the shelf life of the original brochure. 

But how about those Roland "We design the future" brochures I fetishize over?

Drool. 

*tick tick tick*

(Its literally two hours later because I started looking at these lovely beasts. I still have so many to scan from this series.)

Anyways, like those ARP info-sheets above, these Roland brochures feature one instrument and usually contain a diagram or two, some specs, and are part of a larger group of similarly designed documents. The only real difference between those ARP info-sheets and these Roland brochures is a fold. Seriously. A FOLD. 

I guess my point is that I have no standardization. 

Hey... I'm surfing around the blog now... what about this ARP "promo/datasheet"...?

Or these Moog "reference sheets"... ?

Do I go back and change them all to "fact sheets" now? 

So much work. 

Double ugh.   :)

ARP Omni-2 "We're a rock and roll orchestra... / Kerry Livgren" ad, Contemporary Keyboard 1978

ARP Omni-2 "We're a rock and roll orchestra... / Kerry Livgren" black and white and orange full page advertisement from page five in the November 1978 issue of Contemporary Keyboard.

It's Halloween night! And I've already had a recycling container and a spider monkey come to my door! They both got extra candy. Every year I get the 90 or 120 packs of mini bars and twizzlers - and every year only about forty kids show up.

But this year, even with all this candy hanging around, I've still been able to hold out and not eat a single treat. And I'm not just talking about tonight. I have yet to eat even one mini chocolate bar this year. Bam!

[kids coming to my door - ballerina in a parka, Woody (toy, not pecker), ninja, and ????]

And to celebrate, here is the second and last Omni-2 "Halloween"-themed ad, and the third in the full ARP series as far as I can tell.. Unfortunately, ARP decided to move on after this ad last appeared in January 1979. I think the theme could have easily lasted another three months, changing up the performers every two or three months. But hey, always leave 'em wanting more. Right?

[more kids - two cowboys, a princess, and Thing 1 and Thing 2!]

So, here they are all in a nice little row.

In that first one we had spooky Tom Coster, in the second happy frankenstein-like Allan Zavod, and now ghostly Kevin Livgren. A trifecta!

[kids - ghost, smurf, guy in just a hat (booo!) and a three year old batman]

There is something to be said for continuity from top to bottom - large image of musician, main quote in larger font, small more recognizable photo of musician face, three columns of ad-copy, logo, large ad-title, slogan, other musicians.

[more kids - Mick Jagger (apparently), a boat, and three girls in pajamas]

They moved around a few small bits, but overall pretty much stayed constant throughout.

[Hulk, bumble bee (insect, not robot), and a pirate]

Okay...

[small child with the label Spiderman pinned to his red outfit, cheesehead, another batman]

Kids starting to come a bit faster...

[robot, cat and mouse, pikachu!]

So much yelling...

[another ninja, thing from the movie Scream (mask is off because it is "sweating her face"), another kid in parka]

I think this might be a record. I'm not gonna get anything else written.

Blogging done for tonight.

ARP Omni-2 "Big polyphonic synthesizer sounds.../Allan Zavod" ad, Contemporary Keyboard 1978

ARP Omni-2 "Big polyphonic synthesizer sounds.../Allan Zavod" black and white and orange full page advertisement from page 41 in the September 1978 issue of Contemporary Keyboard Magazine.

Halloween is getting closer and closer, and I think I'm finally getting into the spirit. Pumpkin is ready to be carved and boxes of candy have been bought. Even more surprisingly, I still haven't opened any of that candy stash. Usually I'd be on box #2 by now.

That *is* a first. But there is still three nights to go. Let's not get too optimistic. My insulin levels are already rising in anticipation of a will-power breakdown.

Anyways, Just like I'm prep'd for Halloween, ARP was locked and loaded with the new look of their synth front panels - what I have been referring to as their Halloween colours or theme. Usually this term has been used when referring to one of the three colour palettes of the Rhodes Chroma's panel that used orange, red and yellow colouring. But, since it was Philip Dodds, VP of Engineering at ARP and product manager for the Chroma at CBS/Fender, that came up with the term, I'm going to say its okay to use with other ARPs as well.    :D

The first ARP ad that used the new colours was an Odyssey advertisement that featured Tom Coster of Santana fame.

The following month, ARP decided to give the same kind of make-over to their Omni-2 ads. And readers of Keyboard would have had the opportunity to come across both of these ads in the September and October 1978 issues of Keyboard. Nice. The more I look at these ads, the more I like 'em (could be all the talk of sugar too).

Now, if like me you found Coster had a spooky jack-o-lantern kinda look to him in that Odyssey ad, you may also have found that Allan Zavod superficially resembled a very happy Frankenstein in this Omni-2 ad.

I'd be a very happy looking person too if I was surrounded not just by Omnis, but those other ARP synths as well. Look to be 2600s to me.

I don't have 2600s surrounding me at the moment (I haven't checked my lotto ticket yet), but thanks to Allan Zavod and this ad, I am still quite happy because of all this ad-copy. Well, actually, just that last paragraph.

"Thanks to Allan Zavod, and more than five thousand other great musicians around the world, the ARP Omni has become the most popular synthesizer in music history..."

 Unless you are Apple Computers or Nintendo and your quarterly earnings are through the roof, its often quite hard to get a company to cough up real production numbers. Usually companies will try and keep those numbers confidential for as long as possible.

So, after almost a year of ARP bragging that more Omni's have been sold than any other synthesizer, we finally have a number from ARP (over 5000) to back up that claim. 5000 doesn't seem like a lot now, but back in 1978 synths were still falling slowly towards affordability. But it wouldn't be long after that new technologies would make both the power of synths skyrocket while bringing prices to the lowest they have ever been.

The result? Well, after the DX7 was released approximately four years after this ad appeared in CK, it apparently sold over 160,000 units according to Wikipedia. The M1 came out in 1988 and sold 250,000 units. Interestingly, each of these machines sold for $2,000 - more or less.

Of course, you have to take into account inflation. One online inflation calculator tells me that $2000 in 1978 had the same buying power as $3,143.32 in 1983 and $3,717 in 1988. So, costs down, but technology in those machines definitely skyrocketing.

If only I could same for the Halloween mini Mars and Snickers bars where although prices for a box of 90 seem to go down every year, so is the size of the little bars in each little package. I have to eat something like ten now just to get a full chocolate bar fix.

Or at least it seems like it.

ARP Omni-2 "...into a rock and roll orchestra" introductory ad, Contemporary Keyboard 1978

ARP Omni-2 "...into a rock and roll orchestra" full page colour introductory advertisement from page 50 in the March 1978 issue of Contemporary Keyboard.

My mom always said that if I had nothing good to say, don't say anything at all.  Well, I'll keep this post short then.

ARP has a history of wordy advertisements. Four or more paragraphs is not uncommon, such as in the ads below.  

But usually the words in those ads are at least readible. Dark text on a light background. Or the other way around.

But when I look at this Omni-2 ad, my eyes just don't know where to start. The title is large, but the main image is too close underneath it. Copy is running over the images. And the image of the Omni-2 is bumped up against the ad-copy as well. This is a good example of what happens when there isn't enough "white space" in an ad.

In fact, this ad reminds me of what I get back from a passive aggressive designer after I've given them too much text and too many images to use in an ad.  Rather than just trying to explain there is just too much crap to include, they make the point by providing a first draft with all that text and images intentionally running all over each other. 

I can understand ARP's need to make sure this Omni-2 introductory ad provides as much information as possible to the readers of CK, but I'm pretty sure that even I could cut that ad-copy in half and still get all those messages across.

The first message in this ad is the one I'm most curious about. It references the ARP String Ensemble as it's direct evolutionary predecessor, although I'd have thought that position would have gone to the original Omni (Omni-1...?).

In fact, the original Omni had it's last ad in CK running almost right up to the launch of this Omni-2 ad. And it was promoting it as the "best selling synthesizer in music". So, why wouldn't ARP leverage the original Omni's clout in this respect?

I think Vintage Synth Explorer's ARP Omni page provides the answer:

"ARP later released the Omni Mk 2 (pictured above). It was basically the same machine as its predecessor, except for a few minor enhancements and a cosmetic Orange & Black color-scheme upgrade."

The Omni Wikipedia page provides a bit more detail on these changes, but basically it was the same machine except with the new "Halloween" colour scheme. So, comparing it back to the String Ensemble with its lovely string sounds probably makes sense.

Interestingly, this wasn't the only new ARP ad to appear in CK this month. There was also the ARP Odyssey and Axxe "...now the most playable" two page ad that began running - introducing the new colour scheme with those two synths.

Aaaaah - so really, all three machines were being re-introduced with the new colour scheme in the same month, but the Omni also had a few tweaks to it, so made sense to create its own ad rather than group it in with the other two.

I'll buy that.

The other half of the ad-copy can be split up into two basic themes. Technical - polyphonic, connectors, etc; and ARP's favorite topic - Human Engineering.

On the technical front, the Wikipedia page mentions that the bass section of the Omni-2 had its own audio output, giving the keyboard three audio outputs that ARP would refer to "Tri-phonic" in literature. But this early ad didn't include that little marketing gem, suggesting that this term came later in the Omni-2's life time.

And those ARP writers transition from technical to Human Engineering nicely by mentioning that Omni-2's variable control panel has the new graphic colours and thus "like other Arps... are faster to read and understand for better live performance".

Okay, so, this ad isn't all bad. But unlike books, I do judge ads by their covers. And, I probably should have done what my mom said and kept my mouth shut.