Yamaha Electone E-70 organ, Contemporary Keyboard 1979

Yamaha Electone E-70 organ advertisement from page 23 in Contemporary Keyboard Magazine September 1979.

First time this ad ran, it was in black and white. All following ad runs were in color.

Not sure which I like best. It looks like they bumped up the brightness a bit in the black and white version, so you can make out more detail. But, this advertisement isn't really about detail. In fact, they include virtually no ad-copy about the organ at all. So, the colour version, with its soothing mood lighting, appeals more to my eye.

In the end, the ad ran so infrequently, I'm not sure if it had much of an effect. It seems to have first appeared in CK in September 1979, fourteen months after the first E-70/E-50/E-30 ad ended. And it ran only four or five times between September '79 and January '81. AND, in at least one of the issues it was featured in (February '80), Yamaha had FIVE ads running, so it probably got drowned out by their other ads as well.

But, none of that really matters, because my interest really isn't in the E-series ads (especially this one that has no reference info at all). My curiosity about these organs is all about my recent discovery that the E-series apparently has some things in common with the Yamaha CS-80. I had known about the connection between the Yamaha GX-1 and CS-80, but had never run across anything about the E-series/CS-80 connection.

As explained in my last blog post, this surprise first grabbed my attention in some rather recent comments on the CS-80 page at Vintage Synth Explorer. Commenter "FlameTopFred" was the first to start mentioning this connection on the page in January 2011.

After reading this, I started doing a bit of research, and it seems that the connection between the CS-80 and the E-70 didn't really gain traction online until somewhere around 2008. And, it appears that we can thank "FlameTopFred" for sharing a lot of that information with the synth AND organ communities.

It took a few minutes, but I soon hit gold. I found "FlameTopFred"'s initial E-70 purchase and a nice exchange of information on organforum.com where he first started posting back in 2008.

And, as I read on, I found myself agreeing with "flametopfred"'s comments in that forum discussion:

"Funny sometimes, to think how many times as a surly teenager I walked quickly past the organ shop in the mall, or turned my back to the Yamaha Organ booth at the harvest fair at the end of summer ... if only I could go back in time with a bag of moneyand a large truck . . ."

Tru-dat.

Others started catching on to this apparent connection too. "Dr. Funk" half-jokingly comments on the same forum about the effect that "FlameTopFred" had on E-series prices.

"I think FlametopFred may have had an influence on the resale value of
analogue Electones!"

"FlameTopFred" soon started posting some great YouTube videos featuring his E-70. His "E-70: the CS-80 killer" playlist description is:

"Through recent heavy research and after having stumbled on an amazingly good deal on an Electone D-85, am now convinced that the Yamaha E-70 is in fact 90% of the famed CS-80 synthesizer. I used to own two of those, and always felt the need for a 2nd keyboard ~ which the E-70 provides for playing bass lines and comping chords."

More details on the E-70 can be found in a 2008 review of the E-70 organ by "wjbarry" on Harmony Central in the user reviews section. This review has some good information the features of the E-70, and also talked a bit more about the connection between the CS-80, GX-1 and E-70. And, based on the details in that review, I wouldn't be surprised if "FlameTopFred" and "wjbarry" are the same person. In fact, I'm almost sure of it... :o)

"FlameTopFred" also shared detailed information about the E-70/CS-80 connection on VintageKeyStudio's recent E-70 YouTube video upload. In reply to someone that didn't think the two instruments sounded similar, "flametopfred" wrote:

"I used to own two CS-80's as well, and then owned the E-70 and E-75. The E-70 was designed and made the same year as the CS-80 - - both direct children of the GX-1 testbed. The E-70 has the same electronic engine, and if you replace resistors with potentiometers on the preset board, becomes a CS-80 synth. No - - not totally identical. The E-70 offered dual banks of sound (couple-able to upper keyboard), plus bass mono synth, drum machine and arpeggiator.  Great package.

Turns out, the E-70 in that video was destined for the dump until VintageKeyStudio came to the rescue. They created a page on their Web site/blog dedicated to this "poor man's Yamaha CS80". A fun read. The page also linked to some good photos of the organ on an Electone history/summary site.

And, if you scroll to the very bottom of the page, you will find this: "2010 Mike Thompson".

Mike Thompson was the name of another one of the recent commenters on the Vintage Synth Explorer page that originally started me on my E-70 discovery/journey!

Interestingly, I couldn't find any real information on the E-70/CS-80 connection prior to posts by "FlameTopFred". For example, nothing came up in my few quick searches through the Analogue Heaven archives. But then again, I didn't dig too deep.

I did find one weak reference from a February 2000 Sound on Sound article where Gordon Reid mentions the Electone connection with the GX-1.

Close, but not really.

I recently tracked down "FlameTopFred"'s email address and sent him a few questions, and I just noticed an email back from him in my in-box. Excellent.

I'll share my findings in my next E-series post. Just like "FlameTopFred" did. :o)

End note: That Sound on Sound article also has a great story about Keith Emerson's move from Moog to Yamaha's GX-1...

Yamaha E-70, E50 and E-30 Electone Organs, Contemporary Keyboard 1977

Yamaha E-70, E50 and E-30 Electone Organs advertisement from page 23 in Contemporary Keyboard November 1977.

Normally I'm not an organ fan. And as a general rule, I flip by piano, electric piano and organ advertisements when reading through old issues of CK. For the most part, that is all Yamaha advertised for the first 11 months of 1977 (well, that and Yamaha music courses). Call me a synth-snob, but these ads just don't catch my interest.

But, Yamaha had a good reason for putting organ, electric piano, and organ ads in CK. Tom Darter, editor for Contemporary Keyboard at the time this ad appeared, presented the late 1976 survey results in the "From the editor" section of the February 1977 issue. And according to the survey:

• 56% play acoustic piano
• 50% play electric piano
• 44% play electric organ
• 35% play synthesizer
• 11% play pipe organ
• 9% play harpsichord
• 5% play accordion

That's right. Only 35% of CK readers in 1976 played synthesizers. And so, Yamaha continued to advertise pianos, electric pianos, and organs throughout 1977, and I continued to ignore them - this ad included. Quite frankly, this ad and Yamaha organs in general would have continued to go totally unnoticed except that I was surfing around the Web and came across a small tidbit of information that I found rather intriguing.

It was recent comments on Vintage Synth Explorer's CS-80 page where "Flametopfred" wrote on January 20, 2011:

"In more recent years I have found the Electone E-70 and E-75 to be very good "siblings" of the CS-80 and retain many of the same sounds - - with the added bonus of dual sound banks, keyboard coupling, separate CS-80 bass synth, drum machine and arpeggiator."

And in response, "Mike Thompson" wrote on February 13, 2011:

"I also recently obtained an Electone E-70, and I am glad I played the CS-80 so I can now appreciate the similarities between the two..."

And "Bohemian86" commented on February 20, 2011:

"Yeah the E70 can be a quick shortcut to the CS sound. They also might be useful for parts for a non-working CS polysynth. I have one right now, unfortunately had to disassemble that beast to fit it down the steps. "

Well, ain't that intriguing! I hadn't heard anything about this apparent relationship between the CS-80 and the E-series Electones.

So, I decided to look up Yamaha's ads for the E-70 and it seems the E-series first appeared in CK in November 1977 with this ad for the E-70, E-50 and E-30 organs. . It continued to run fairly regularly throughout the winter, spring and summer until its last showing in July 1978. And, coincidentally, it was kinda replaced by an ad for the CS-80. So, timing-wise, these E-series organs and the CS-80 could very well have contained similar technology innards.

Reading through this ad, I found the ad-copy to be very "organ-y" until I came to the last paragraph, where it stated:

"What gives Yamaha's new Electone consoles such realistic voices and incredible versatility is a technology called Pulse Analog Synthesizing System, PASS for short."

Hmmm - "Pulse Analog Synthesizing System". Synthesis!

Actually, it sounded like a lot of hype to me. But, Yamaha wasn't really known for "hype", especially back in 1977.

A quick Google search brought me to the Electone Museum Web site, where it was explained that the E-70 (top of the line model), E-50 (mid-tier), and E-30 (smallest) organs all used PASS, which "took technology from the GX-1 and incorporated it into a consumer model instrument. The ramifications revolutionized the organ industry. Instruments voices began evolving towards emulating the true orchestral instruments rather than theater organ equivalents".

I recall I mentioned the GX-1 back in a June 2010 blog post about the Yamaha SY-2. Turns out the SY-2's filter has a connection to the GX-1. And the GX-1 has a connection to the CS-80. Ahhhhh.

Maybe PASS wasn't that "hype"-y a term. This whole thing definitely deserved more digging into.

But first...

Dinner. Stay-tuned for more research on the E-70 organ.

End note: Some of those other 1976 Contemporary Keyboard survey results are rather interesting too.

• Average age of CK reader: 25.6 years
• 86% of readers are male

• 75% play rock
• 62% play jazz
• 61% play classical music
• 51% play pop music
• 40% play the blues
• 28% delve into avant-garde music
• 23% play country
• 19% play traditional ragtime
  

• 65% are professional or semi-pro musicians
• 75% own TVs (what?)
• 91% own stereos

• 96% read standard music notation
• 44% have had more that 10 years of formal keyboard study
• average reader is a college graduate

• 24% also play percussion
• 15% work with brass instruments
• 12% with reed
• 9% with string

I wonder how this compares to today's readers of Keyboard magazine?

ARP Odyssey, Contemporary Keyboard 1977

ARP Odyssey advertisement from page 23 in Contemporary Keyboard May 1977.

Odyssey? Or ODDyssey...? <---- See what I did there :o)

At first glace, to me this looks like an ordinary ARP ad.

For example, the ad's format is quite standard - Name-> tag-line-> ad-copy-> logo-> image.

And ARP also keeps to their standard marketing strategies. The company doesn't miss the opportunity to promote their "human engineering" design philosophy - connecting it to their easy-to-read control panel, sliders and switches. And they nicely segue that topic into promoting not only all the accessories available for the Odyssey, but also into their other main advertising strategy: name-dropping. This time including Hancock, Corea, Duke, Winter and Wonder. Musicians so famous that ARP doesn't even have to include their first names.

But as I started to take a closer look at the ad, things started to go all "bajiggidy" on me. And the closer I looked, the more quirkier things became.

I figured it might be good therapy to just list them all out.

1. This is only the second Odyssey ad to appear in CK. The first ad was in the November/December 1975 issue of CK - almost a year and half earlier. Maybe ARP thought that they didn't need to advertise "the world's #1 synthesizer" very much. Not sure you can advertise too much... especially with the limited opportunities available in 1977.

2. This ad only seems to have appeared once in the magazine. As did the previous ad from Nov/Dec '75. As just mentioned, I just don't feel that this is enough exposure to get your message across. And, ARP must have felt they wanted to give this message exposure, because they also put a black and white version of this ad in the May/June 1977 issue of Synapse magazine.

3. The ad is only 2/3 of a page (two columns wide). And it is not like ARP couldn't afford a full page - the company had plenty of full-colour ads in CK on a regular basis, including one for the Pro/DGX in the back-inside cover of this issue. To my eyes, the 2/3 size just squishes everything together with little room for all the elements to breathe. Title, tag-line, ad-copy, logo, copyright, and that colour photo are all just crammed together. Give me white-space!

4. And speaking of that colour photo... it seems a little out of place in this otherwise black and white ad. Why wouldn't ARP splurge and just design a full-colour ad? It just feels off-balanced.

5. The placement of the ad on the page also adds to that off-balanced feeling. The ad is printed such that it is pushed in towards the inside of the page, and I purposely left all the extra white space on the top and right side of the ad so you could get an idea of just how squished it looks.

6. ARP strays away from that main message - "the Odyssey is #1". Out of nowhere, in the final paragraph of text (in a font that is oddly smaller than the rest of the ad-copy), ARP decides to throw in info about a five minute demo record... FOR THE OMNI. Why leave the reader thinking about a totally different instrument at the end of all that Odyssey lovin'?

Okay... breathe deeply...

Boy... after reading back all that bitterness above, I just realized that I must have woken up in a foul mood this morning. Seriously. And I don't know why, but I ended up taking it out on a poor innocent ARP advertisement.

But, looking back at the ad now, it becomes a bit more clear that maybe ARP tried a little too hard to stay on their ongoing marketing strategy in such a small space. This need for ARP to include everything but the kitchen sink in the ad probably caused 90% of the quirks.

But again, even with everything that I think is wrong with this ad, ARP could have done much worse.

ARP Brass Belt Buckle, 1977

Click images to view full size

ARP Brass Belt Buckle from 1977.

Man, I've been having fun. I've been playing around in my studio, but I find myself more interested in the logistics of it all rather than actually using it to create some semblance of sound. Moving this synth over here. Swiveling in my chair to see how it looks. See if my arm can reach it easily. Then moving that synth over there. Then back again...

Clearly I've hit rock bottom in some kind of creative slump.

Anyways, the whole studio switcheroo has been taking up a fair bit of my attention, and will probably continue to into the near future. So, to help free up some time I thought I would post a quickie, but a goodie.

Back in August 2009, I uploaded a few photos of my Sequential Circuits belt buckle and mentioned that I also had an ARP buckle in my collection. Since then, I've had more than a handful of emails asking me to post some photos of it. "Angelo" even posted a request for it in the comments section of this SCI merchandise blog post.

So, I finally got my lazy butt away from my scanner and over to my camera.

The one thing you will notice right away is that this ARP buckle isn't in as good condition as the SCI buckle. But, that ARP logo is still gorgeous. And the buckle does have the date stamped clearly on the back. Nice. Like my SCI belt buckle photos, I've also included a photo of the buckle with my favorite ARP synthesizer (Odyssey) so you can get an idea of it's size. It measures just a hair under 6 centimeters, which is about a hair and a half under 2.5 inches. So, lets just call it 6 cm/2.5" even.

Aside: The Odyssey in the photo was found at a second-hand music store a long while back. Poor thing wasn't in bad shape, but my tech buddy at the time cleaned up its innards nicely. It's missing most of it's slider caps, and the ones that are there are in pretty bad condition. I was thinking of getting new slider caps off eBay or somewhere (seen them there a few times) but now I'm thinking I might just save up for this "Lumina illuminated slider" upgrade. That is beautiful.

One thing that I find interesting is that this belt buckle is NOT included in the ARP software and accessories catalog that I posted recently. Both are dated at around 1977, so if the buckle was available to the general public, chances are it would have made it into the catalog. Especially since that ARP director's chair got in there. :o)

The person that I got this buckle from (and a few others that became the start of the collection) said he received it at a trade show. So, maybe these buckles were only available to dealers and a few fortunate others.

Lucky them!

Valentine's Day Sock Monkey with Synthesizer

You might recall that my gal Zenbecca created this collage and custom calendar back in 2009. Well, she was at her crafty best again - this time making me this retro sock monkey for Valentine's Day. And I just had to post it (technically, it is retro, and it's holding a synthesizer. :o)

And, I have to say, except for the lack of hair on the monkey, this pretty much is a spitting image.

The monkey is sporting my four favorite collectibles. All of which I am usually sporting every day as well.

Synthesizer - check.

Tie - check.

Digital calculator watch - check.

Pocket protector - check.

The synthesizer in the monkey's hands doesn't seem to be modeled after any specific synthesizer. But I kinda like the surreal-ness of it.

And, I'm a big fan of pocket protectors. I wear one to work every day, and my collection has grown such that I can now wear one to work every day for over five months without repeats.

But, I do have my favorites.