Originally developed in the early 1960s and built in Birmingham (England) the Mellotron is an electro-mechanical, polyphonic keyboard. It superseded the Chamberlin, which was the world’s first sample-playback keyboard. The heart of the instrument is a bank of parallel linear magnetic audio tapes, which have approximately eight seconds of playing time each. Playback heads underneath each key enable the playing of pre-recorded sounds.

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Elektrostudio Rhythmus is inspired by an old rhythm machine. There are ten buttons available, each button can play two different rhythm sections so essentially there are about 20 different rhytmic loops offered, such as samba, mambo, tango, waltz, rumba etc. When you click “open”, you can change the tune, volume, pan of each rhythm component such as snare, bongo, cowbell, hi-hat etc. That’s not all – you can mix these rhythmic sections with Tamburine, Guiro, Quijada sounds.

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Davoli Davolisint synth is rare Italian keyboard created in 1972 – it was the year before the synthesizer industry really took off. “The Minimoog, EMS VCS3 and the ARP 2600 were already available and the ARP Odyssey was just about to appear, but the first of the more affordable Rolands, Yamahas and Korgs were only to be unveiled a year later. The other thing you need to know is that, in 1972, manufacturers were still experimenting with both the form and function of electronic keyboard instruments, balancing costs, flexibility and simplicity in innovative ways that were largely abandoned just a couple of years later. This means that the Davolisint had very little in common with the synths that preceded it, or those that were soon to follow.”

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