Octave Electronics Inc. CAT ad #4, Contemporary Keyboard 1977

Octave Electronics CAT ad from page 45 of Contemporary Keyboard Magazine November 1977.

Before this ad came around in November 1977, there had been three earlier CAT ads during the first half of the same year. I've blogged about each of those three ads (ad #1, ad #2, ad #3), mostly because I found them a little different from other synthesizer ads at the time with their creative illustrated imagery.

But this ad takes the promotion of the CAT in a new direction, and I'm pretty sure its not a good one.

My biggest beef with this ad is actually a beef that spans all their ads to date. As a reader in 1979, I'd be coming across these ads in sequence. Sure, ad #1 may have come off as pretty cute with the illustrated CAT synthesizer in the jungle. But three ads in and three months later I think I'd be a little ticked that I STILL HAVEN'T SEEN AN ACTUAL PHOTO OF A CAT SYNTHESIZER.

Then, finally, this ad comes along three or four months after dead silence, and what do I get - a new ad with CAT synthesizer action shots that are so small and blurry that they are pretty much useless. Just let me see a photo of the synthesizer. Please!

And if that isn't enough, missing from this ad are two vitally important pieces of marketing - the actual CAT logo with the slanted 'A' that appears on the actual synthesizer, and the associated little paw print - both of which appeared in each of the previous ads.

This ad also falls down in other ways too.

First of all, the tag line is way too long. Look at the three earlier ads with their short catchy phrases:

• "What's new in the synthesizer jungle."
• "No matter where you perform."
• "Give your CAT a play-mate."

Now I have to read: "It takes a great synthesizer to give you the Sounds you need... it takes a CAT Synthesizer to give you MORE!"

Plus, they include a sub-title near the Octave Electronics Inc. logo: "The CAT, where quality is our most important feature".

Just not snappy enough for my tastes.

Second - the text in this ad is way too small. And there is no reason for it - there is lots of white space. Which brings me to my third point.

Third - the white space. You hear about white space all the time from graphic designers. Well, here is an example of white space abuse. I purposely left as much of the white border around the ad as possible so you could see just how much more space they had to work with. Where as the earlier ads were well-balanced, this ad comes across as unbalanced and top-heavy.

They did start doing something right - they took a page from ARP and Moog and started using musician endorsements, including David Burns of "Burns, Renwick & Rags", and Rod Argent of "ARGENT". It's a start.

It is no wonder that, as far as I can tell, this ad only ran once. In December, a new CAT ad featuring the CAT SRM came out. Will blog about that one later.

End note: There is one other thing in this ad that didn't appear in earlier ads - underneath the Octave Electronics logo, new text started to appear: "An Affiliate of Syn-Cordion Musical Instruments Corp". I did a quick Google search and came across their home page. They are an organ/accordion manufacturer that recently celebrated their 100 year anniversary. Unfortunately, they also announced their closing at the end of May of last year. :o(

Octave Electronics Inc. CAT ad #3, Contemporary Keyboard 1977

Octave Electronics CAT ad from page 15 of Contemporary Keyboard Magazine May 1977.

This is the third CAT ad to appear in the magazine and Octave Electronics continued to showcase the distinctive artwork of J. Mannix. The first ad introduced the CAT in an illustrated 'jungle' setting to try and distinguish it from other synthesizers with its low cost and features. The second ad featured the CAT in a 'back lane' setting, but didn't really include any new information for readers.

This third ad, featuring two CATs connected by a ball of yarn, finally gave readers a bit more information about its unique 'slave/master' jacks - aka its CV and Gate connectors.

I've never owned a CAT, but from what I gather, unlike most synthesizers that at the time used separate cables for CV and Gate, it looks like the CAT used one stereo cable to connect the CV and Gates between instruments. Each CAT had both 'From Master' and 'To Slave' jacks allowing you to connect CAT synthesizers in a series. This unusual CV-Gate format evolved throughout the life span of the instrument, as mentioned in a call-out box in the May 1999 issue of Sound on Sound (SOS):

"The earliest version of CAT had no CV and Gate sockets at all. Later examples of the same model had two sockets marked 'To Slave' and 'From Master'. These were stereo quarter-inch jacks that carried the CV on the tip and the Gate voltage on the ring. If this wasn't strange enough, the Gate voltage was a non-standard 7.5V, which led to unreliable envelope triggering when used with conventional synths. It was only on later SRMs that Octave got its act together, although the synth retained the stereo jack arrangement rather than offering four individual sockets for the CV and Gate inputs and outputs."

SOS indicates that early CATs had no CV and Gate sockets and although this ability is not mentioned in the CAT's Spec Sheet announcement in the November/December 1976 issue of CK, the earliest CAT ad from February 1977 does mention this ability. I can't imagine too many CATs are out there without sockets.

On a tongue-in-cheek end note: The ability to have multiple CATs in a series got me thinking - I wonder what kind of cumulative 'delay' would have been introduced as you linked more and more CATs together in a series? Were there musicians that would swear they could 'feel' the delay and refuse to use this feature on the CAT, similar to the MIDI delay issue that was 'the' contentious topic of many synthesizer articles in the 1980s and 1990s? Just wondering :o)

Octave Electronics CAT ad #2, Contemporary Keyboard 1977

Octave Electronics Inc. CAT synthesizer ad from page 7 in Contemporary Keyboard Magazine April 1977.

This is the second in a series of Octave Electronics' CAT ads featuring distinctive artwork that appeared in Contemporary Keyboard Magazine when the synthesizer was first introduced.You can read about the first ad here.

Looking at this ad, it got me thinking about the whole cat&synth meme that currently exists on the Web. As far back as I can remember, discussions about cats and synth gear have existed both on- and off-line. Members of forums and e-mail lists such as Analogue Heaven have exchanged stories at least as far back as 1999.

When matrix, owner of the popular synthesizer blog MATRIXSYNTH, was asked about the phenomenon in an e-mail earlier this month, he replied "I noticed that of all animals, cats seemed to be the most predominant in synth shots". He started posting cat&synth photos on his blog with a cat label (now synth cats) back in December 2005, and it became such a popular MATRIXSYNTH theme that readers began sending in their own videos and images featuring cats and other animals. Dogs run a close second along with birds and reptiles.

Amar, creator of the CatSynth blog, started blogging about cats and synths in mid-2006, virtually unaware of the large number of others sharing the same two interests. "I started searching online for 'cats and synthesizers' and found Matrixsynth and some past articles at CDM, and it was only then I really found out the phenomenon of cat and synth pictures". Amar adds that it is not surprising to see cats with music gear. "They do like to get around and explore things and they like warm surfaces. I think a lot of musicians with cats enjoy having them as a presence in their creative spaces".

Many, says Amar, refer back to the popular 'cat on a keyboard in space' image as a possible unofficial beginning to the meme - but I've yet to track down the date this image first appeared online.

Regardless of when the phenomenon took off, it didn't take long for photos, videos, and everything else cat&synth to start showing up all over the Web. There is even a VSTi called the meowSynth.

On a side note, another cat&keyboard meme has caught on recently - and the original VHS videotape recording apparently dates back to 1986. The 'Keyboard Cat' video meme has been described by Rocketboom's History of Keyboard Cat as the "mercy kill of the Internet". Great stuff - definitely check it out.

Don't be a stranger - if you have any history to add, please comment.

And on that note, I'll let Fatso play me off...

Octave Electronics Inc CAT, Contemporary Keyboard 1977

Octave Electronics CAT synthesizer ad from page 7 in Contemporary Keyboard magazine February 1977.

This was apparently the first CAT ad created by Octave Electronics after the synthesizer was announced in the Spec Sheet section of Contemporary Keyboard in December 1976.

Most other synthesizer ads at the time drifted somewhere between text-heavy technical ads like this Moog ad and photo-heavy ads like this ARP ad. To introduce the world to the Cat, Octave Electronics kept the text-heavy technical aspect, but replaced the standard photo-op of the synthesizer with a cartoon image that took the reader out of the studio and, in this case, into the jungle. Octave continued to use this cartoon theme in a small string of ads (to be seen in future blog posts).

Its not to say Octave Electronics were the only company to enlist artists. Around the same time, ARP was promoting their sequencer with an artist drawn (and I think creepy looking) hand image, and three or four years later, Sequential Circuits became well-known for their use of cartoon images in the Ear-Force ads and the continued use of the wizard-like image in a variety of ads for different synthesizers.

You can find lots of basic information online about the CAT , including Vintage Synth Explorer and Synthmuseum.com but Music Machines' spec sheet on the CAT written by Mike Dvorkin is by far one of the best resources I've found. Alas, there doesn't seem to be an Octave Electronics or CAT synthesizer page on Wikipedia.

But, if you are going to check out just one link from this blog post, check out Gordon Reid's interwoven history of the Octave Electronics CAT and the ARP Odyssey published in May 1999 for Sound on Sound magazine.