Where mini organs went to die

Thanks to Ben for pointing me towards miniorgan.com, a beautiful collection of 70s-80s musical toys, from the Stylophone (1970) to the Music Lok (1992). Highlights include the Muson Synthesiser: "Kind of a Roland TB-303 but much cooler & cheaper", the Realistic Rhythm Box: "This is absolutely the most kicking toy-drum-machine I have ever heard" and the Casio VL-10, which looks suspiciously like my Alesis Ion. It also reminded me that my sister used of have a Mattell Magical Musical Thing which I'm delighted to learn was "A great masterpiece of the golden age of electronic musical toys".

Posted by Tom Whitwell.

Comments:

I'd unreservedly recommend the Ion if - like me - it's your first hardware synth, and your only hardware synth. I've found it brilliant - after a few years playing with software synths, I'm learning how to play keyboard and how to program a synth. It's fun and sounds great to me, and it's ready to play within about 5 seconds.
If it's not your first synth, then I can't really comment. Although I did notice that the man with four fairlights has one...

# posted by

Tom Whitwell : 8:11 pm

by the same token (being a first time synth user), i can wholeheartedly reccommend the korg microkorg. especially once you download the pc app to design your own patches, it really is amazing all of the stuff you can do with it. i had to sell mine for a friends bail money, but it will be something that i will buy another of as soon as i have the extra cash.

# posted by

Anonymous : 7:32 am

Yes, the microkorg is very cool - I reviewed one once so had it for a few weeks. The only advantages the Ion has are the full-sized keyboard and the knobs - it has knobs for almost everything - whereas the microkorg only has 5 assignable knobs. Purely from the point of learning your way around the synth controls, the Ion is much more useful - once you learn where the filter envelope knob is, it's always there.

# posted by

Tom Whitwell : 8:45 am

I've made a set of OS X icons of some of the instruments on the site:
http://www.wileywiggins.com/icons.html

To use these as track icons in Logic Pro 7, export 128x128 png's from them using Pixadex, and check the 'late breaking news' pdf in the help menu for naming conventions and what directory to put them in.

# posted by

Wiley : 6:55 pm

Thanks Wiley, you utterly rule!

# posted by

Tom Whitwell : 12:20 am

You can get a VSTi version of the Stylophone at KVR Audio:

http://www.kvraudio.com/get/68.html

# posted by

Anonymous : 6:46 pm

thanks for sharing those wiley, super-sweet, thanks!

# posted by

Anonymous : 5:26 am

Hi,

I made a tune from that website. I emailed the bloke who runs it - Eric Schneider (hmmm Florian's brother??) and he had a listen and said this:
"hi chris,

howdy, wonderful, thank you :)

i wish i could create a multitrack for all my toys!
then, the site would get an award!

best regards
eric"

You can download the tune from www.voynich.co.uk

It's the second one down - "Step To It".

Cheers

Chris

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:15 pm