ARP "Meet the Carpenters new string ensemble" ad, Downbeat Magazine 1975

 

ARP "Meet the Carpenters new string ensemble" black and white advertisement from the March 27, 1975 issue of Downbeat Magazine 1975.

I'm a cookie addict. As someone who likes to eat. As an online marketing professional. As a curator/archivist. Yum! But more about that in a sec...

Following hot on the heels of my post about ARP's 1975 advertisement that featured Pete Townshend of The Who and his 2600 is this lovely promo featuring the Carpenters and ARP's String Ensemble. As far as I can tell, this advertisement showed up in various issues in a few different publications in 1974 and 1975, but I've even seen it referenced in 1976 as well. 

It's interesting that it got so much page time, so rather than blog about The Carpenters, a band I unsurprisingly know very little about, I thought I'd take a look at the marketing side of things. In particular, the little "cookie" that followed this, and many other ads around like gum on a shoe to tell the company where someone saw this advertisement.

In a way, it's similar to the common digital cookie that can end up following you around the web, annoying you with an ad for a Home Depot lawn mower you were looking at earlier in the day. ARP placed a cookie in the mail-in section of many of their ads, so if you bothered to fill it out and mail it in, ARP knew you were responding to this very specific advertisement.  You can see that cookie in the close-up below (red box). 

DB 1-16-75. 

Downbeat, January 16, 1975. 

I can hear you say "but you said this advertisement was from the March 27, 1975 issue!" It sure was, but the advertising campaign or budget utilizing this ad probably first appeared in the January issue. Smart. 

If you look closely at the Pete Townshend ad I posted, it has a DB 6-5-75 cookie, so that particular ad campaign probably began in the June 5, 1975 issue of Downbeat - the one I scanned! And, if you compare it to the same ARP/Pete ad that appeared in the May 22, 1975 issue of Rolling Stone, you can see it uses a different code - RS-142. 

So, RS = Rolling Stone. But what the heck is that 142? Well... 

I'm not sure. No, really. Not sure at all. 

The May 22, 1975 issue of Rolling Stone was issue 187. Since Rolling Stone was produced bi-weekly (I think?!?!) at that point, it would mean that if that number referred to the issue number, the first appearance of this ad would be almost two years before. Which doesn't appear likely. So, yeah. Still a mystery. 

But the point is, when all those cut-out return forms start making their way back home, those little cookies let ARP have a better idea of which ad in which magazine worked best to get you to respond.  

When I first started noticing these cookies in magazines, I first thought maybe the code wasn't a company code at all - maybe it was included by the magazine as a courtesy or to show the company that got the form back that the reader saw the ad in that particular magazine. To try and solve this question, I started looking at other ads that included mail-ins. 

Sure enough, many other ads included a little cookie in their clip-out sections as well. But, the cookie in different ads were often in different formats. For example, in that same issue of Rolling Stone that the ARP RS-142 cookie is found, we also get the company below using a fictitious department called "Dept RS" as the cookie. This is interesting because if the reader decides they don't want to cut out the form from their precious magazine, they would still use this address to write to the company and the company would STILL know how the reader found them since the address on the letter would have included the cookie. 

Another ad for a reggae record from the same Rolling Stone mag used the PO Box (Box 6/RS) for their cookie:

"Feelin' High". Ha! Yes, I'm nine years old. 

And finally, this Monty Python ad below from the same mag has just a little "rs" in the bottom right corner. Adorable. 

I've seen them in all manner of magazines. Those I collect - like Contemporary Keyboard/Keyboard, Electronic Musician, Electronics & Music Maker,  etc... as well as magazines I just happen to be flipping through at a friends house or online. From the 70s to the 90s and beyond. Those little cookies are everywhere. 

I get especially excited when I see an ad with a cookie, but the cookie is for a different magazine entirely. It's like someone forgot to update the ad for the new mag.  That's pure adrenaline! Makes my day.

Once I started looking for them, I couldn't stop, and to this day I still look for them.

Now you will too! You got lots of time during your covid lock down anyways.

ARP "Pete's ARP Opera" half page advertisement, Downbeat Magazine, 1975

ARP "Pete's ARP Opera" black and white advertisement from the June 5, 1975 issue of Downbeat magazine. 

I'm betting that Pete's face sold a lot of synths for ARP. 

If you were familiar with The Who... Pete Townshend... or ARP Instruments at the time, you definitely had come across this image in the media. It was everywhere - including this ARP advertisement in Downbeat. Prior to 1976 there weren't a lot of synth magazines to promote your synth products. So Rolling Stone and Downbeat were two magazines that managed to hoovered up more than a few advertising dollars from synth companies.

Let's face it, ARP loved using endorsements as a marketing tool, so when Pete sent promotional photos of himself with his ARP synths to them, it was a match made in heaven. Not sure I can call it serendipity... but it's something. 

According to ARP's own Arpeggio newsletter from April 1974, the original "outrageous self-portrait of Pete Townshend with his ARP 2600 has appeared in dozens of magazines, including Penthouse, Downbeat, Crawdaddy, Rolling Stone, Cream, and many others. Pete presented this photo to ARP about two years ago, and it has really made the rounds". 

No kidding. That quote also provides us with an estimated date the photo was taken - that issue of Arpeggio came out in April 1974... and two years earlier would have been around 1972. And that 1972 date is confirmed through other sources too.  Nice. 

And then three years later that photo showed up in this ad for ARP. That's a pretty good shelf life. 

Back in my early days, I was familiar with The Who mostly because a few of my friends considered themselves Mods during that culture blip in the 80s. It was one of those bands I listened to, but never really picked apart or dove too deep.  As a result I never really tuned into the fact that Townshend was such a synthhead. But as I got older and started hanging out in Usenet groups like rec.music.synth, I became aware just how synth-heavy the band was. Baba O'Riley. Who Are You. Won't Get Fooled Again. So many familiar songs.

I guess my point is... I want to squeeze the cheeks of this face. 

If you want to see a lot more of Pete and his synths, in particular his ARPs, check out the "The Electronic Music of Pete Townshend" page on Petetownshend.net.  Lots of great stuff there. 

Side note: the same site came out with a nice little post when Korg reissued the 2600 early in 2020 - it has some good bits about Pete and the use of the the ARP synths, including the Reverb feature video on the 2600 that came out at the time as well. Which of course includes a few of RetroSynthAd's ad and brochure scans!

ARP Literature Order Form, 1975

ARP three-page Literature Order Form from 1975.

I know its Friday afternoon - the time that company's put out news releases they don't want anyone to see and the place that blog posts go to die. Well, tough! There are still a few weeks left in ARP's 50th anniversary and there's stuff to be posted!

To many of you peeps, an order form ain't that glam, but for a collector... dat right dar is pur gold. 

It's a checklist for what is potentially out there... waiting... for me. It's a list of search terms to plug into Google and eBay. 

The thing that is so striking about this lit form are the prices. I get they are 1975 prices, but even for 1975, many of the items are cheap as borscht.

Mmmm... borscht.  Sorry, my blood sugar is getting low. 

I'm guessing those cheap prices are so dealers will buy 'em and pass them on to potential customers. 

Just look at 'em:

2500 manual - $3.60. 

2600 manual - $3.60. 

Odyssey manual - 90 cents! 

ARP Educator's brochure. Wut?!?!? Never come across that before.  12 cents! 

Odyssey cassette course. Never seen that either I don't think. $6.00. 

Now, let's flip to page two - and specifically "Dealer Materials". Boom! Promotion Kit! Musician's Workshop Invitations! Educator's Clinic Invitation! Decals! Tie tacks!  The list goes on and on. 

Let's flip to page three. Arrrrgh! 

Dummy plug? If someone knows what these are, contact me. Wait - never mind. Googled it. 

From an August 2012 post in one of the modular forums... someone going by the name Sempervirant had this to say... 

"A dummy plug is just a plug with no cable attached. I remember seeing one in Automatic Gainsay's videos on YouTube, where he was demonstrating the ARP 2600. Most of the internal connections on the 2600 are normalized (which is why it's considered a semi-modular). If you want to break one of those internal connections, but don't actually want to patch something else in, you just insert a dummy plug to bypass the normalized connection." 

And then, later on in the discussion, Sempervirant was nice enough to find that AG video - thank you very much! Go to 5m:58s to see him use one. Sweet. 

I have an ARP 2600, and many other semi-modulars and never knew dummy plugs existed.  Just goes to show you, we never stop learning. 

Now to find out if those ARP patch cords are branded at all. I gotta know. 

Now. 

Roland Echo Chambers RE-101/RE-201 "Deepen the Depth of Your Music" brochure, 1975

Roland Echo Chambers RE-101/RE-201 "Deepen the Depth of Your Music" four page colour brochure from 1975.

When I first got this brochure, I looked at the front image and asked myself.... REALLY? The tape inside these things really just flops around like that? Just all curled up?

Can someone verify that for me? Or am I missing something?

I just find it hard to believe, but then again, I find it hard to believe I used to listen to music on magnetic tapes at all. Or read books made of paper. Paper, I tell ya!

No matter - this brochure rocks. Yeah, its not a retro synth. So what. This thing is aces.

Before looking at this brochure, I really had no idea how tape delays functioned. Or their features. Nothing. I guess I could have always looked on the Web, but just never had the inclination. And that's too bad, 'cause now that I've read this brochure, I'm going on the hunt to find one. Or three. It's just the kind of doo-hickey I love. It has lots of knobs and controls and it's made to be opened up and fiddled with. Yum.

Ten bucks says I break my first one in under an hour. You know it! Whoo hoo! *high five*

Doh. 

The brochure's title "Deepen the depth of your music" is awesome, so it's beyond me why its located on the inside pages rather than slapped on the front - it would only add to the cover's beauty. Instead, the top of that front cover has the rather awkward lonely text "Best Echo Chambers Featuring Easy-to-operate Design and Well-developed Mecanism" just kinda floating there.

No matter, because once that brochure is opened up, it's like entering the Land of Oz. Smaller photos of the RE-101 and RE-201are surrounded by labels describing all the features of each and every switch, knob and dial.

And if you hate diagrams with labels randomly scattered about the two-page spread, then flip to the back for a nice little table comparing the main features of the two units.

And, for those history buffs, they graciously printed the full date of the printing - December 1975. Excellent.

Not much else to say today really. I've been kinda quiet both online and off recently. Except that while doing research, I noticed a couple of things that I found interesting.

First, the name of the RE-201 - the Space Echo. Although this awesomely cool name is clearly visible on the front panel of the 201 in the brochure photos, no where in the actual brochure is it ever referred to as the Space Echo. It's always referred to by the model number. And Space Echo is such a cool name that I think that was a lost opportunity, especially since, according to Wikipedia's RE-201 page, it is what the 201 became commonly referred to by the masses. Listen to the people, people! 

Second, the brochure keeps on bringing up the fact that the reverb unit incorporated into the RE-201 was manufactured in the U.S.A by O.C.E.  I've heard the name before, for example, in the Boss RX-100 reverb owner's manual (PDF) where it is referenced as "The three spring OCE Reverb Unit". But, I have no idea who or what exactly O.C.E is. And the few Google searches I did brought up nothing. I hate it when Google searches come up with zip. 

So... um... anyone got more info on O.C.E.?

Email me or leave a comment. Thanx.

Vibronic Music Service "What a combination!" ad, Contemporary Keyboard 1975

Vibronic Music Service "What a combination!" half-page black and white advertisement from page 23 in the September/October 1975 issue of Contemporary Keyboard.

Have you ever been flipping through a magazine you have read dozens of times (backwards and forwards), only to suddenly fixate on a certain image or article after all that time?

That is *exactly* what happened here.

The Moog modular drawing in this ad is fantastic. I just can't look away. It belongs on my wall or a t-shirt. Or two t-shirts. Gorgeous.

And so, after picking up a magnifying glass to read every little detail in that drawing, I decided I would try and find out more about Vibronic Music Service. It wasn't a name I was familiar with outside of the magazine ads I'd seen in the early issues of CK.

And I was curious.

Naturally, when starting to look for clues in to a synth company, the first place I look is at the ads and their ad-runs. Vibronic's ads started in the September/October 1975 issue of Contemporary Keyboard. This wasn't just an early issue of CK. But THE EARLIEST issue. There seems to only be one other Vibronic advertisement, which appeared a couple of times in early 1976. This tells me either the company didn't find value in advertising in the magazine or that maybe something happened to the company. Kinda like in the fossil record when dinosaurs just suddenly dropped off the face of the earth.

This got me even more curious.

The ad itself is also a good place to build up info on a company. The ad-copy in this ad may be sparse, but those five bullet points actually say a whole lot about Vibronic. It looks like the company was part of a network of service providers that supplied Moog products (Vibronic), service (Beacon), and customization (Polyfusion - another advertiser in early Contemporary Keyboard mags). The company even provided Moog sessions for other bands and recordings by someone named Kenny Fine.

Bam!

A name. Google likes names. Especially when you can cross reference it with other unique terms like "Vibronic" and "Moog". And it didn't take long to find out more info.

The first search result led me to the Moog Music forum where the original owner of Vibronic popped up to introduce himself back in a 2005 post. According to the post, musician Ken Fine owned Vibronic from around 1975-1977 and the company was the "first all-synthesizer music store" in the United States. When it opened in Pennsylvania, it seems it was quite a big deal with already-legend Bob Moog attending, drawing curious local press to see what Vibronic was up to. From the post:

"We supplied Moog products to area college music labs, recording studios, and of course musicians. I personally laid down Moog tracks for Philly Internationally Records, Sigma Sound Studios and Gamble Huff & Bell records. My Modular Moog III tracks appear on albums by the Spinners, Lou Rawls, The O'Jays and other Philly R&B groups of the 70's. Listen to "Rubber Band Man" by The Spinners! I also performed in an all Moog band called the Philadelphia Moog Ensemble."

Later in that string (a lot later - 2010!) he provides a bit more information on what happened with the company, along with the name of his business partner.

"After I closed Vibronic Music Service, I returned to school and became a psychologist. I left psychology in 2001 and got back into entertainment. I now own a corporate entertainment agency, speakers bureau and production company in Denver, CO. www.bluemoontalent.com. I also dabble around with video and have a photo studio on the side.
...
I have tried to contact my former business partner, Mark Paturka, but no luck."

 And this next part is what I like about the Internet so much. Turns out Mark's niece had recognized a piece from the Philadelphia Moog Ensemble playing on the radio and through Google found Ken's post in this forum and responded. Unfortunately it wasn't good news:

"You mentioned in one of your posts that you had tried to find Marc. Unfortunately, he passed away several years ago, I believe it was 2005. He suffered for several years with problems related to obesity & diabetes and died from complications of pneumonia. For many years he fought with addictions which he did finally overcome. When he died, he had been sober for 5 years and living in Southern California in Ramona, a town east of San Diego, where he was director of musical liturgy for a church. He had earned Doctor of Musical Arts degree somewhere along the way, too.
...
I do remember the summer that Marc came back to Wahpeton, ND (our home town) with a (Mini?)MOOG and performed a concert in the catholic church with the pipe organ and the synthesizer."

A 2012 follow up post in the same forum provides a bit more information about the company:

"My partner (Mark Paturka) and I sold mostly Mini Moogs and modular systems and we eventually became an authorized service center."

 So, looks like Vibronic was operated by two partners - Ken Fine and Marc Paturka and the company sold mostly Minimoogs and modular systems, eventually becoming an authorized service centre for Moog. Not too shabby for a small company in 1975.

But Ken made one mistake in those forums. He left contact information. Hee hee.    :) 

So I emailed him the other day, introducing myself and rattling off a long list of questions. Ken was not only open to answering the lot of them, but took the time to talk to me on the phone for over an hour about the company, synths, bands, and even that awesome drawing in this ad.

We had a great conversation - he's a funny and engaging guy who has spent four decades with at least one foot, and often two, in the music industry. Musician. Synthesizer store owner. Audio researcher. Music lecturer and educator. To name just a few.

And his memory from 35+ years ago is astounding. Right down to the name of the font used in that awesome Vibronic logo. No joke!

But all that is going to have to wait until Thursday's post. If you want to know more about what Ken Fine is up to now, check out his current events entertainment agency Blue Moon Talent, Inc.

And while you are looking through that, I'm going to start putting all this material together!.  :D

Roland SH-1000 "For those far-out sounds" brochure, 1975

Roland SH-1000 "For those far-out sounds" 2-sided brochure from 1975.

I'm "down" with the kids these days. Their music. Their hang-outs. Their lingo.

And back in 1975, Roland wanted readers to know they were "with it" too. The company made sure to give those potential customers lucky enough to get their hands on this brochure the real skinney on how the SH-1000 can create all "those far-out sounds". Bring this baby on stage and you'll be looooo-king good. A genuine Stone Fox. You will have all the bunnies getting down on the dance floor. It's total Ace.

Okay. I know... enough already.

So, what's all the buzz about this SH-1000 brochure? Well, for starters, it has the print date on the back!  I'm really digging that. Saves me time and effort trying to figure that out. Plus, I have a soft spot for that stylized "R" two-line logo.

I've come across the front half of the brochure online, but the back half seems to be a bit more difficult to find. A shame really - and one I'm hoping to fix with this post, since the second half has all the things I like in a retro synth brochure, including that great little diagram indicating the functions of each and every dial, switch, slider and tab. And it also includes a great little spec sheet underneath the diagram for those that would rather get their information in a more organized fashion.

According to many sources online, including Wikipedia, the SH-1000 was introduced to the world in 1973, and was not only Roland's first compact synthesizer, but the first to come out of Japan altogether. Sound On Sounds' April 2004 article on the history of Roland indicated that "it predated the Korg 700 by a handful of weeks". A pretty good start from a company that would expand on their SH-line for quite sometime after wards. And surprisingly, if online sources are correct, it continued production until 1981. 

Looking a little closer at it's specs, the SH-1000 had a pretty good feature set for such a young synth. VCO, Low pass filter with resonance, ADSR envelope generator, glide, white and pink noise... and the list goes on. It also included 10 presets, although the InterWebz jury still seems to be out on how useful they are on their own.

 It's brother, the SH-2000 came out a little later in 1973 with three times as many presets, but with less overall features and reduced sound editing capabilities. Some sites, such as Vintage Synth Explorer, speculate that the 2000 was possibly released because the SH-1000 turned out to be too confusing to many potential buyers such as church and home organists. That brochure photo of the SH-1000 sitting atop an organ backs the theory that the company originally was targeting those organists.

If you had any doubt about the capabilities of the SH-1000, look no further than to the YouTube video below created by AutomaticGainsay - aka Marc Doty. He hosts his own YouTube channel that is just shy of four million video views. He is also a recent Artist-In-Residence with the Bob Moog Foundation and a regular on VintageSynth.com's forums. You can be sure he knows a thing or two about synthesizers.

His description accompanying this SH-1000 video pretty much sums up his point of view on the beast.

"Do yourself a favour, and NEVER READ any review of the SH-1000 on the internet. ALL of them inaccurately portray the Roland SH-1000. Hopefully, this video will bring some accuracy and clarity.

Feel free to link to this video or post it on your page, but please give me credit by marking it "by Marc Doty." Thanks!"

Never read any review of the SH-1000? Now he tells me! Gah! *sound of hand hitting forhead*

Well better late than never.   :)

Mellotron "Make you a much better musician" ad, Contemporary Keyboard 1975

Mellotron "Make you a much better musician?" 1-page advertisement from page 38 in Contemporary Keyboard magazine September/October 1975.

It's not so much about the ad. Although it has quite a few good qualities - like the classic Mellotron photo and all those juicy quotes pulled directly from such large magazines as Downbeat, Billboard, Rolling Stone, and even Time. And the cool thing is, most of those excerpts are also doing the job of name-dropping for Mellotron - referencing people like Peter Gabriel, Isao Tomita, and Larry Fast.

But like I said - its not so much about the ad. For me, this ad is about being in the right place at the right time. Notice the issue date - September/October 1975.

This just happens to be the very first issue of Contemporary Keyboard. The cover has a close-up, moody photo featuring... you guessed it... Chick Corea, with a few hints to the secrets readers will find inside including columns by Bob Moog, Bill Irwin, Chick Corea, and Art Van Damme.

Inside the magazine, readers find only a few proper "synthesizer" ads. Instead, the slowly growing population of soon-to-be-synth-addicts have to turn to the articles to get what for many is probably their first fix of gear lust. The "N.A.M.M 1975 Keyboard Equipment Review" includes mouth-watering photos of the Orchestron, Polymoog, and Four-Voice, and the "Bob Moog, from theremin to synthesizers" article included images of Bob and his modulars posing with the likes of Keith Emerson and Roger Power. Drool.

The lack of synth ads isn't surprising. It's a gamble for any company to advertisement in a new magazine. It take brass balls to shell out cash - even when the magazine has the clout of Guitar Player behind it. Many synthesizer companies at the time were still young, small, and probably a little cash-strapped, so its probably easy to understand that CK got their initial support from the likes of Yamaha pianos, Hohner keyboards, and Musitronic effects ads.

Oh. And Mellotron. :)

In fact, the distributor for Mellotron, Dallas Music Industries |USA|Ltd., really stepped up to the task of supporting the cause by being the first to provide gear for CK Giveaway #1 - a free Mellotron. All of you filled out that contest form... right?

We can't actually give Dallas Music Industries all the credit. The Mellotron/CK contest page, which just happened to be directly opposite the Mellotron ad on page 39, does extend its thanks not only to the distributor, but also to ARP Instruments and Systems & Technology in Music - so, props to them as well for steppin' up.

The contest description of the Mellotron may have been many keyboard enthusiasts first glimpse at the specs for the instrument, written suspiciously like a Spec Sheet promo:

"The Mellotron is best described as a series of tape machines manipulated by a keyboard. Armed with the basic set of tapes, the musician can effectively reproduce the sounds of a flute, 'cello, or violins, across the instrument's 35 note range. Tapes are 3/8" / three track, and are mounted on a removable frame for ease of interchanging with other sets of tapes.

The Mellotron provides the performer with a number of effects and features: Pitch control with a variable of plus or minus 20%, tone control of a 10db cut at 10Khz, and a gain control. Normal tape velocity is 7 1/2 ips, with a reproduction range of 50Hz to 12Khz, plus or minus 3db. The height is 34", width 34", depth 22", and weight 122lbs. Power consumption is 75VA with a transformer tapped at 115V, 220V, and 240V, at 50 or 60cps; single phase.

This unique instrument is used by many major keyboardists to recreate sounds ranging from orchestras to vibes. it comes protected by a padded cover and a year's warranty against imperfect workmanship and labor. "

I love how, in many ways, it reads more like tape machine specs than keyboard specs :)

So, as the ad questions... can a $2000 instrument make someone a "much better" musician?

Well, I can't count the number of times in my early years that I shelled out a lot of dough for a new piece of gear, thinking *this* would be it. *This* will make my music hip and cool (okay, I probably didn't use those exact words). And Dallas Music Industries was betting that I wasn't the only one who thought that way. It's a strong "pull" for potential buyers.

But, as I've learned over many years (and many purchases - new and used), fame and fortune is rarely one piece of gear away*.
* does not include Fairlight or Synclavier buyers between 1982-1984. :D

Subscription form and associated material, Contemporary Keyboard 1975

More images below!

Subscription form attached between the front inside cover and page 3 in Contemporary Keyboard November/December 1975.

"I remember when I was a kid..."

Well, it is getting near the end of the year, and I thought I would scan something a little bit different. And this blast from the past shows me just how much I take the Internet for granted.

Now'r days, if you want to subscribe to a magazine, you just head over to their Web site, hit that big subscribe button, and charge the sucker to your credit card. I've done it with Keyboard Magazine, Computer Music and many others. But it wasn't always that easy.

Back in the day when Contemporary Keyboard was first getting started, they needed to get subscriptions up... and fast. But without the Internet around, they had to resort to (*gasp*) snail mail. So like most, if not all magazines, they included a subscription form.

This two-sided subscription form was attached between the front inside cover and page three of the mag. On the front was a nice big promo including details about the mag and the cost - six bucks for six issues (can't beat that!). And, to make sure it was visible, it was printed in a really bright red colour with some crazy imagery.

On the back was the actual form, with pricing and address info. You could even save a few bucks by subscribing in multiples of six's.

But, the problem was that this subscription form was only about 4 x 6.5 inches (10 x 16.5 cm). So, even in bright red, I guess CK thought it could easily get lost. So, to help everyone find this important piece of material, CK also included a big one page subscription ad only a page-flip away on page five, sending the reader back a page flip.

And it is on page five that we get a better idea on why this Michelangelo-like imagery was chosen. Just look at the tagline - "A Truly Inspiring Music Magazine".

So, now that the reader has found the form and filled out a check for the appropriate amount, Contemporary Keyboard again wanted to make sure it was as easy as possible to get that money back to them. So, at the bottom of the back page of the form, you will see the text "Detach this page, fold, and insert into envelope".

What envelope...?

Well, sure enough, I flipped to the back of the magazine and found that the other half of the form page was attached to a mail-in envelope. Address info already printed on the front, and postage paid. They even kept the 'inspiring' imagery going.

So, let me get this straight. A buck an issue. And postage paid?

Count me in!

But what a hassle from CK's end. All that design, print and other resources that had to go into this just-starting-out magazine.

CK kept this form and envelope going until October/November 1976 issue when they changed it to a more contemporary design to promote subscriptions as a holiday gift.

Soooooo, if anyone wants to get *me* a holiday gift...

hint... hint...

ARP Odyssey, Contemporary Keyboard 1975

ARP Odyssey synthesizer ad from the back inside cover of Contemporary Keyboard magazine November / December 1975.

Looking back over my posts, I've noticed that with the exception of a few posts, I've been neglecting ARP. To help rectify this situation, I've gone back to my earliest magazines to see what I could dig up - and the first result is this ARP Odyssey ad.

This is one of the earliest ARP ads I can recall that drops names AND gives away free stuff - a tradition ARP continued in many of their later ads. And, its even unique in these two respects:

1. Free stuff - not only did you get a free anvil case, but it was customized with your name hand-lettered on the side.
2. Name dropping - this ad didn't just name-drop famous Odyssey users, but Odyssey users that lugged their gear around in Anvil road cases. And apparently, based on the name on the road case in the photo, The BlackByrds were one of them.
   

There is no real reference information in the ad, but you can find lots online, including:

• Vintage Synth Explorer
• Synth Museum
  
• Wikipedia
• The Ultimate ARP Odyssey resource page (ironically, many of the links I clicked on aren't working, making it not very 'ultimate' at the moment) has a good history of the Odyssey from Sound on Sound magazine
• History of ARP (reprinted from Keyboard magazine) from rhodeschroma.com
  

More ARP posts to come in the weeks ahead.

Roland RS-101, SH-1000, SH-2000 and SH-3A, Contemporary Keyboard 1975

Roland (from left to right) RS-101, SH-1000, SH-2000 and SH-3A synthesizers from inside front cover of Contemporary Keyboard magazine November/December 1975.

Scanned from the second issue of Contemporary Keyboard, this is one of Roland's earliest ads from the magazine, and includes four of Roland's 1973-75 collection of synthesizers/string ensembles.

It also features Roland's first free demo record - something I've never been able to hunt down, but have this inkling an MP3 is sitting out on the interwebz somewhere. If anyone has an idea where I can get a copy, please contact me.

One other thing that interests the amateur graphic designer in me is what looks to be latin text below the record image at the bottom of the ad. Looking similar to the 'lorem ipsum' text often used by computer layout artists as a temporary substitute for real text (so the client will focus on the design), similar 'lorem ipsum' text was apparently included in the Letraset catalogs of the 1960's and 70's - often used by advertising agencies in print layouts for the same reason. Did they just forget to replace the text? Or maybe the ad agency thought the relatively low-res printer would keep the text from being legible?

But I digress.

Vintage Synth Explorer has some basic reference material on the SH-1000 and SH-2000.

The site also has information on the SH-3A, which, according to a quote on Synthtopia, was put into the market after Moog sued Roland for the original SH3’s filter design.

Surprisingly, there is just bits and pieces of information on the RS-101 lurking around the Internet, even at the usual synth hangouts, but you can find the instruction manual at the Roland Vintage Gear Manuals Web site. In fact, take a look at this site for a wack of different user and service manuals. Great stuff.

BTW, Sound On Sound has a great article on the early history of Roland online. Definitely check it out if you haven't already.