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The Optigan (a portmanteau of optical organ) is an electronic keyboard instrument designed for the consumer market. The name stems from the instrument's reliance on pre-recorded optical soundtracks to reproduce sound.
What is an Optigan®, and how does it work? – Optigan. The Optigan® (OPTIcal orGAN) was a sort of adult toy originally made by Mattel in the early 70’s. Basically it was laid out like most home chord organs of the time, but its sound producing mechanism was very unique. Instead of producing electronically simulated organs, drums, etc, it ...
Welcome to the world of the OPTIGAN® (NOT “Optigon,” “Optagon” or “Octagon!”)! In the early 70′s, Mattel devised this OPTI cal or GAN to play back the sounds of REAL instruments, encoded on celluloid discs like concentric rings of movie soundtrack. The result was pretty crappy sounding and soon forgotten by the world at large ...
7/25/72 Patent granted: “Keyboard for Musical Instrument or the like.” 9/72 Optigan® launches a highly visual point-of-purchase promotional display campaign, designed by the Selig J.Smith Company. 9/72 Optigan® launches the largest TV ad campaign ever for a musical instrument, produced by Carson/Roberts. The 30 second “Make Your Own ...
Mar 23, 2017 · The Optigan is a sample-playback keyboard instrument, introduced in 1971. It uses transparent sound disks, with sounds optically encoded on them. The company was originally a subsidiary of the Mattel toy company.
Aug 18, 2020 · Optigan.com has introduced four new sound discs for the Optigan ‘optical organ’, a keyboard from 1971 that played back optically-encoded audio samples. The Optigan plays flexible sound disks, which look a bit like xrays, but have samples encoded on them as circular patterns. The resulting sound plays back with a unique, lo fi quality.
Jun 4, 2019 · We’ll call this one the Mediterranean optigan because that’s what Mattel called that design in the catalog. The other was presented to us as a “parts” optigan. It hummed loudly and had some random screws defacing the chord side of the keyboard.
