Farfisa Super-Syntaccordion, Contemporary Keyboard 1980

Farfisa Super-Syntaccordion 1/2-page advertisement on page 20 in Contemporary Keyboard Magazine April 1980. 

Well, it's the Labour Day long weekend in Canada, as well as in a few other countries around the world so I thought I would just post a little something before getting back to my two main activities this weekend.

1. My relatively new hobby of chainsawing at the family farm in south central Saskatchewan. Fun stuff.
2. Playing around with the stems from Tara Busch's The Rocket Wife remix contest. I'm still not sure I'll actually submit anything, but I never turn down the chance to listen to other people's stems. I learn a lot.

You may recall that in my last blog post on the EDC DM-1000 Super Drum Machine, I spent a little bit of time explaining my beef with companies that slap the word "super" on their products. I've found that there is just too high a failure rate based on my expectations. But, it made me wonder about other "super" products that I may be able to find in Contemporary Keyboard.

The result - this 1/2 page advertisement for the Super-Syntaccordion. Not only has Farfisa managed to attach the word "super" to this product's name, but it looks like they have also tried to tack on the word "synth" as well. Nice work.

Now, knowing nothing about accordions or accordion culture, it could be that "synta" means something else entirely - and the accordionists amongst you are all shaking your heads right now.  But the fact the ad highlights that this accordion includes a synthesizer with mono and "poli" presets is a big clue to me. That, and the fact that Farfisa had the balls to advertise this accordion in a magazine that by 1980 had become more and more recognized for their synthesizer advertisements.

A quick Google search brought up a few interesting and entertaining links, many that include musicians quite proud of their Super-Syntaccordions:

Peter L. Mckee, who is available for weddings, dinners, retirement and informal parties.

"I use two of the finest instruments in the world, the first being an acoustic Excelsior Accordion, and the second being a world class Farfisa Super Syntaccordion which is accredited as being the ultimate electronic instrument of it's class ever produced."

Facebook page for Hoppy and the Gophers, who play everything from Zydeco, to polkas, to country, to rock and roll. In fact, "if you want to hear what Led Zepelin sounds like on an accordion, come out and see us!"

"Today Hoppy plays a modified Farfisa Super-Syntaccordion. The old electronics have been replaced with a midi system which is smaller than a shoebox and requires electronics in the accordion about the size of a sheet of paper."

And, of course, Youtube videos of musicians playing their Super-Syntaccordions

That second guy was even called "bass-ass" in an official farfisa.org post. And, the beat is coming from a Roland CR-8000. That is f*ckin' bass-ass!

I never did find out just how "synthy" the Super-Syntaccordion is. To my untrained ear, I couldn't hear anything different from other accordions. But, based on the comments and performances I've found on the Web, I'm going to give this "Super" product two thumbs up. Probably more fun than the Superball and Super-soaker.

Farfisa Soundmaker, Contemporary Keyboard 1979

Farfisa Soundmaker digital synthesizer half-page advertisement from page 60 of Contemporary Keyboard Magazine December 1979.

Never heard of it.

I was going to end the blog post there for two reasons.

1. I thought it would be funny (and, for the record, true).

2. So that I could spend the rest of the day playing video games and generally do nothing.

But there was something about this synthesizer advertisement that kept pulling me back to the computer. Maybe it was the unique look of the machine with those gray-scale buttons lining up in a row above the keyboard - if I know my gray-scale, those buttons scream 'rainbow' colours in real life. Or maybe it was the fashionable word 'digital' that was dropped into the main title, an attempt by Farfisa to distinguish the Soundmaker from SCI's and Oberheim's offerings at the time. Or maybe how cute it is to see the word 'poli'. Or maybe the Canadian contact info. Or... :o)

This rare half-page advertisement seems to have first showed up in Contemporary Keyboard in the December 1979 issue of CK and then appeared very sporadically over the next year and a half. I've blogged a bit about that December 1979 issue during a Yamaha CS-related ad post because the cover of the mag included a classic photo of Wendy Carlos, together with a great 15+ page interview with her. I've read through that interview a number of times and I can't believe I've never noticed the Soundmaker ad that appeared on one of those pages of text. Or may that was exactly the reason I didn't notice it - too busy reading.

Sure enough, it is one pretty-looking beast. Vintage Synth Explorer's Soundmaker page probably has one of the best images available, along with a nice summary of the machine.

Till Kopper's Web site also has a pretty good image of the machine, but what makes his Soundmaker page great is the vast amount of reference information he has decided to share online, including lists of all the preset sounds, some operational info (split modes, aftertouch), a bit of technical info, and a peppering of his own subjective observations.

According to Hollow Sun's Soundmaker page (created as part of a 'donations' sample collection where users can donate samples to the Zero-G 'Nostalgia' virtual sound module), the "obscure" instrument wasn't that successful "stacked up against the Prophet 5, the Oberheim OBs and, of course, other string synth hybrids such as the ARP Omni", and that Farfisa "lacked the clout to promote the product aggressively in a highly competitive market".

I have to agree. As far as I can tell, Farfisa wasn't aggressive at all with the promotion of their Soundchaser, or any of their other synthesizers for that matter. At least on this side of the pond. They didn't market nearly enough to get me used to putting the words 'Farfisa' and 'synthesizer' together in the same sentence. A quick jump to Farfisa's Wikipedia page confirms that few others string those words together either. The first thing you will notice is the lack of synthesizer information - pretty much all you get is "... and later a series of multi-timbral synthesizers."

Was Farfisa thinking that they could rely on musicians to keep the Farfisa name going, like they did earlier with their electronic organs? Maybe they should have taken a lesson from ARP and given away a few of the Soundmakers to some of the big musicians. Chick Corea endorsed *everything* at the time. But maybe he didn't even want it. :o)

I took to YouTube to try and find a video of the Soundmaker with some good audio. Turns out video footage of the instrument is almost as rare as the Soundmaker itself. I found one 9+ minute video that includes a very good sound demonstration.

Unfortunately the makers of the video decided to get all artsy and make the video black and white, so it can be hard to get a good up-close look at anything in particular. No, wait, that's not even B+W. They seemed to have turned the 'pretentious' knob to eleven and went straight for sepia. Geeez.

The first half of the video includes some hand-held camera-work of the internals of the instrument, but Mr. Hands located a tripod for the second half of the video, for some close-up keyboard playing and red hot slider action.

But I shouldn't complain, at least I get to see something while I listen...

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Some would say the name of the synthesizer is half the battle when marketing. 'Soundmaker' just doesn't cut it in a world rife in Prophets, Avatars, Chromas, Taurus', and the like.

As my GF just joked, why not just call it the 'Shelfsitter'.

Okay, maybe I should have stopped after "Never heard of it". The bad weather here is just making me grumpy now.

Apologies to all the hard working video creators out there (I do appreciate all the work that goes into producing those videos), to Farfisa, and the Soundmaker in particular.