Vintage Keyboards

Keyboards with old-school sound

Keyboards and synthesizers are instruments that electronically replicate the sounds of pianos, organs, strings, drums, horns, woodwinds, FX and even human voices. Recent keyboards can do much, much more, but some people think they are lacking character and vintage feel of the 70's.

VINTAGE DOESN'T MEAN USELESS

History

The history of keyboards is very interesting, not many people know that one of the first synthesizers was the Novachord, which had 169 vacuum tubes, weighed in excess of 500 pounds, and made its debut at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, where a quartet of Novachords, plus a Hammond organ serenaded visitors to the Ford Motor Company Pavilion. Another keyboard pioneer was Robert Moog, who created his first synthesizer, which featured two keyboards and a pair of freestanding modules, each equipped with jacks and knobs. It is estimated that the 1960's were a formative decade for electronic keyboards. Firstly the Mellotron Mark II made in England in 1964, that was used by Mike Pinder of The Moody Blues, who used it on songs like “Nights in White Satin”. The next big band that used Mellotron were The Beatles (you can hear its "flute" during the intro to “Strawberry Fields Forever”. Mellotron Mark II was also used by Genesis and Yes making their music unique and helping to gain millions of fan around the world. We all heard of Hohner, who at the time produced harmonicas. Thanks to their invention called Clavinet the world has received another fantastic musical tool, not just an instrument. Clavinet was used among many others by The Eagles in "Life In The Fast Lane", Pink Floyd in "Have A Cigar", Led Zeppelin in "Custard Pie" and also Stevie Wonder in “Superstition”.

In the 1970s, electronic keyboards became very popular. Next instruments were ARP Odyssey and Sequential Circuits with the Prophet 5. In the 1980s the market has been flooded with many quality Japanese manufacturers such as Roland, Yamaha and Korg changing the music scene forever. many analog deviced have been replaced by digital technology enabling players and artists to create unimaginable sounds and effects. These days almost nobody wants to buy a vintage keyboard, if the same money can buy a workstation that connected to the computer can act as a home recording studio. There are however professional music studios and artists that will always use this vintage sound with all its imperfections that new keyboards will struggle to produce. For full list of vintage keyboards / synths visit this website.

Some people when they look for a keyboard still pursue an original Hammond Organs sound. Most keyboard will have this sound patch, but nothing really sounds like Hammond Organs with its rotating Leslie speakers. The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Various models have been produced, most of which use sliding drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, Hammond organs generated sound by creating an electric current from rotating a metal tonewheel near an electromagnetic pickup, and then strengthening the signal with an amplifier to drive a speaker cabinet.

Around two million Hammond organs have been manufactured. The organ was originally marketed by the Hammond Organ Company to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, or instead of a piano. It quickly became popular with professional jazz musicians in organ trios, small groups centered on the Hammond organ. Jazz club owners found that organ trios were cheaper than hiring a big band. Jimmy Smith's use of the Hammond B-3, with its additional harmonic percussion feature, inspired a generation of organ players, and its use became more widespread in the 1960s and 1970s in rhythm and blues, rock, reggae, and progressive rock.

In the 1970s, the Hammond Organ Company abandoned tonewheels and switched to integrated circuits. These organs were less popular, and the company went out of business in 1985. The Hammond name was purchased by the Suzuki Musical Instrument Corporation, which proceeded to manufacture digital simulations of the most popular tonewheel organs. This culminated in the production of the "New B-3" in 2002, a recreation of the original B-3 organ using digital technology. Hammond-Suzuki continues to manufacture a variety of organs for both professional players and churches. Companies such as Korg, Roland, and Clavia have achieved success in providing more lightweight and portable emulations of the original tonewheel organs. The sound of a tonewheel Hammond can be emulated using modern software.

Back in the 60's and 70s, in the days before MIDI, a Hammond tonewheel organ did keyboard duties for many a amazing rock band. We must mention Tom Coster of Santana, Jon Lord of Deep Purple and Keith Emerson of Emerson Lake and Palmer. In many modern bands that play alternative rock, or jazz, the Hammond still serves its purpose as a versatile instrument capable of producing walking bass lines, riffing chords and searing solos. Many home recording studios, wedding bands and smaller rock bands were also willing to sound like the rock legends and used digital emulation of Hammond Organs.

VINTAGE KEYBOARDS

What Vintage Keyboard should you choose?

A lot depends on what you want. Analog keyboards have amazing vintage sound but most of them are expensive, heavy and require a lot of space. Depending on your needs we recommend digital vintage keyboards with MIDI capabilities and sequencer for editing songs e.g. Yamaha PSR 550. This particular model has most of the the vintage sounds of 60's, 70's and 80's and some of the most important capabilities that you can use to edit and create you own music. Following new trends you will discover that newer keyboards will have USB drives, what makes them more reliable and up-to-date. Some people however replace old Floppy Disk Drives with compatible USB drives and connect old MIDI output to USB adapter to be able to connect it to their laptop and continue to enjoy their vintage instrument. Once used with audio oscillator and digital effects available on the computer this is still a very powerful tool that can surprise even most demanding listeners.

Features

Yamaha PSR 550 features 713 sampled sounds, professional sounding DSP effects, 112 accompaniment styles, nine demo songs, a floppy disk storage drive for your backing track music and recording and a solid touch-responsive keyboard action. There's also a pitch bend wheel, and Bass-Boost stereo speakers. This keyboard was the first to utilize the "Sweet" and "Cool" voices, which would later be seen in the Yamaha Motif series, and higher-end keyboards like the PSR-2100 and Tyros series. The "Sweet" voices are sampled instruments meant to capture the natural sounds of the instruments, while "Cool" voices reflect the sounds of electric instruments as they were heard through vintage amplifiers and effects.

Controls placed to the left of the built-in LCD screen include DSP controls, touch-sensitivity, an alternate method of implementing sustain, and harmony and echo settings. The 550 was also the first keyboard to use a wide, easy to read, multi-color-changing display, which cycles between blue, red, and purple depending on operator activity. It was also the first keyboard to feature the Music Database system. The built-in floppy drive allows compositions to be saved, as well as the ability to download numerous new songs and keyboard configurations from the Internet. Additional controls include a toggle for auto-accompaniment, a tap-based tempo setting button, a transposition feature, and a rapid way to access the user's favorite presets. The Multi Pads allow drum sounds or short melodies to embellish user songs. The user can even record their own phrases for the Multi Pads.