Object of desire - ARP 2600
Odd that I should hear about this on Bob Moog's birthday.
Of course, he had competition -- there is nothing patentable about a voltage controlled oscillator or filter and if the actual circuitry is different, there is nothing actionable.
There were other companies making music synthesizers and one of the biggies was
ARP Instruments (named for founder Alan Robert Pearlman). If you saw the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind you saw a large ARP 2500 system at the top of Devil's Mountain. Their first really affordable instrument was the
ARP 2600. (voice of R2D2? ARP 2600!)
ARP stopped manufacturing this in 1981 and because some of the key components are no longer made, there are fewer and fewer of these machines in playable condition.
Until now -- welcome to the
Two Thousand Six Hundred
Some folks in Sweden have reverse engineered the 2600 and are making it available again in kit form. More information
here.
Cost for the full kit is said to be around $1K -- considering that used 2600's in great shape sell for $3K on up, this is a bargain...
I doubt that I will get one -- have a decent analog system already and enough digital synths to keep me happy for a long long time. No shelf space.
Still -- damn -- a brand new 2600...
Posted by DaveH at May 23, 2013 12:19 PM