Korg "...we put it all together" Family of Products ad, Keyboard 1982

Korg Family of Products advertisement including the ES-50, Delta, Sigma, M500 Micro Preset, MS-10, MS-20, MS-50 and Trident synthesizers, CX-3 and BX-3 organs, LP-10 electric piano, KR-55 and KR-33 drum machines, SE-300 and SE-500 Stage Echo effects units, and X-911 guitar synthesizer from page 42 and 43 in Keyboard Magazine January 1982. Also included some tuners - meh.

And so the Korg love continues!

It had been quite a while since Korg had summarized their keyboard and drum machine offerings in a single ad. Oh yeah... Um... Never.

They had previously smooshed a couple of different instruments together in smaller ads, but I can't recall anything like this. Readers had the relatively rare privilege of viewing this ad in the January, February and June 1982 issues.

And it was about time it showed up. Competitor ARP had turned the "product family" photo ad into an art form back in 1976. Oberheim had also featured a family photo ad back in 1976, and Roland in 1978. And Sequential Circuits Inc. was about to join the family photo party with their ad starting in February of the same year this ad showed up.

It was also about time because for the previous few years, Korg and been pushing a lot of different products in Keyboard, sometimes three or four ads in an issue. A reader could easily get overwhelmed by it all. So, by putting "it all together" into a single ad, Korg helped readers wrap their heads around everything available in a nicely laid out 2-page package, while at the same time pounding their chests a little at some of their competitors. Korg big! Korg smash!

The collection of synthesizers Korg brought together for this ad is nothing but spectacular. It's definitely not every piece of gear Korg had on offer. But it's a good summary. And including products like the MS-20 or Sigma, gear that hadn't been advertised for over a year or two, were nice gentle reminders to readers that these instruments were indeed still available in 1982. For readers today, it provides a perfect summary snapshot in time. A great historical resource.

The design of the ad is a little chaotic. "Korg" in bright neon-red may almost be too big, and to me, looks like it is pushing what was once a nicely lined-up set of instruments into the column of text. Maybe that was the intent, but it makes reading the ad-copy a little more difficult than it should be. And that poor MS-10 in the upper-middle of the ad facing the wrong direction. What's going on there? It's like it never got the memo.

But those small small criticisms aside (from the guy, almost 30 years later, with 20/20 hindsight) just makes me love this ad even more.

The most interesting reference from this ad is right at the bottom: Get a full color catalog and 20" x 28" Keith Emerson color poster for three bucks. Good to see Korg take a page out of ARP's playbook and throwing a bit of name-dropping into their ads.

Korg, I'm still crushing on you. <3

Yamaha E-70 ad #3, Contemporary Keyboard 1981

Yamaha E-70 organ advertisement #3, from page 41 in Contemporary Keyboard October 1981.

This final Yamaha E-70 ad appeared in CK with a clear purpose. It began running regularly through out the holiday months starting in October 1981, for five consecutive months. People are just more in the buying mood during the holidays, I guess. But, Yamaha just had to do things a bit different. So, for the first, third and fifth months, the ad appeared in colour, while during the second and fourth months, it appeared in black and white.

Looking closely at the two versions of the ads, other than the whole colour/not colour thing, they appear pretty much identical. Except for one little difference. The lens flare highlights in the black and white version have been intensified quite... er... intensively. Although the flares are still quite understated, I can't help but think of Photoshop whenever I see lens flares in photos now. It was like someone from the future went into the past to create this ad, just to torment me at some point in the future again... :o)

Like past E-70 ads, this one mentions Yamaha's "revolutionary" PASS, aka Pulse Analog Synthesis System. It also highlights many of the orchestra preset sounds that are available on the E-70. But, unlike previous ads, this ad really starts moving the E-70 into more "un-organ" territory.

Here's what I mean. In all past E-series ads, including those for just the E-70, the first sentence of the ad-copy has ALWAYS mentioned the E-70 in terms of being an organ.

• "Yamaha's new Electone console organs deliver a variety of uncompromisingly-real, precisely-defined sounds."
• "It's an organ! It's an orchestra!That's what you get with features like the Upper Orchestra section on the fabulous E-70 and E-50 Electone Organs. "
  
• "Now that you've finally learned to play an organ, you owe it to yourself to play up to a Yamaha Electone E-70. "
  

But this ad switches it up slightly:

• You know how to play keyboard. So now you can play an instrument that delivers every possible orchestra and organ sound.
  

And, in the photo, the pull out image of the newspaper personals/advert doesn't mention "organ" at all. It seems the marketing emphasis has switched from the E-70 being an organ that plays realistic sounds, to the E-70 being a keyboard that plays orchestra and organ sounds. It's subtle. But I think significant.

My guess is that Yamaha realized that keyboard players were looking more closely at the E-70 as a blues, rock or jazz keyboard. Not an organ in a stuffy little living room (as pictured in the last ad). Luckily, Yamaha also built one of the monsters of the synth industry at the time - the CS-80. I would think keyboard players at the time would have been comparing the two. And probably mostly the presets, since the E-70 focuses closely on those.

In my recent back-and-forth emails with FlameTopFred, he pointed out the fact that there were more preset buttons for each bank on the E-70 than on the CS-80.

"The CS-80 has 11 preset buttons for each bank (x 2 channels). The E-70 has 18 preset buttons for upper and 12 preset buttons for the lower manual - but the lower manual sounds can be coupled and blended with the upper manual sounds.

Plus the E-70 has an additional bank of 12 preset buttons of mono CS-80 type synth sounds - and some are very, very good bass sounds. Some of those can also be used for lead type sounds, but you would have to play on the lower keyboard."

And then FlameTopFred said something that, frankly, made me look at organs in a totally new light.

"The CS-80 is an amazing synthesizer. But the E-70 deserves a second look - especially by anyone that loves having a lot of very musical features in one box. Two 61-note manuals, arpeggiator, bass-line-arpeggiator, drum machine.

I find it strangely odd that those big home organs of 1977 had everything working cohesively - which MIDI then exploded out into separate components. It takes ages of time and lots of patience to make unrelated MIDI components work as flawlessly as a big E-70 running on all cylinders."

Organs did have a lot of tech working together - very cohesively. And MIDI must have affected organ evolution by allowing the components of organs to be sold separately. Suddenly you didn't need to buy one big piece of equipment. You could mix and match.

But, other technology also kept evolving along with MIDI, which led to the evolution of large workstation keyboards. And those workstations really just brought back together all the different components of the organ together again (along with a sequencer).

So, really, workstation keyboards are just another evolutionary branch of organs. Kinda. Not really. :o)

Yamaha E-70 organ ad #2, Contemporary Keyboard 1981

Yamaha E-70 organ ad #2 from page 15 in Contemporary Keyboard Magazine March 1981.

This ad confuses me. And creeps me out a little. Okay- it creeps me out a lot. And not just because the dude looks like a project manager that I work with.

Luckily, like most of the E-series ads, this creepy one only ran a couple of times in the front half of 1981.

Looking through past Yamaha ads, they've always kind of hinted at a sense of humor, but it has always been really understated. A cute little catch phrase or tag line here and there, like this one about organs that do everything with music except dance. Queue the small chuckle.

But in my mind, the first two things that pop into my head when someone mentions "Yamaha", is "quality" and "sound". To me, that was, and still is, their brand. Yamaha will always be all about the serious musician in my mind.

With this in mind, I decided to see if I could find anything out about Yamaha's brand. The idea being that if Yamaha has been doing a good job of branding all these years, my "feelings" about Yamaha should come close to what they say their brand is.

One quick Google search later and I found the description of their three-tuning-fork logo:

"The three tuning forks of the Yamaha logo mark represent the cooperative relationship that links the three pillars of our business -- technology, production, and sales. They also evoke the robust vitality that has forged our reputation for sound and music the world over, a territory signified by the enclosing circle. The mark also symbolizes the three essential musical elements: melody, harmony, and rhythm."

Well, that's eerily similar. Good job, Yamaha!

So, then, what the heck is going on with this ad?

When I first looked at the ad, my eye was immediately drawn to the photo. A guy playing an E-70. But the image is just... not... right (is it just me?!?!?). My mind just couldn't process that weird image as a whole. So, I looked below the photo and started reading the rather serious ad-copy:

• "You owe it to yourself..."
• "Every sound is produced with the greatest authenticity...."
• "Conduct a test.."

So then my mind needed to try and connect that weird photo back to the serious ad-copy, so I looked back at the photo and my eye was immediately drawn directly to that facial expression on the guy - which quite frankly borders on maniacal.

Then my eye started looking at the surrounding scenery in the photo. The wall paper. Curtains. Fake plant. Picture of fruit. Lamp. Not to mention the totally fake tree outside the window. All crammed into such a small space making this image look totally absurd on more than a few levels. Again - is it looking a little weird, or is this just me?!?!?

I showed it to someone else to see if I just wasn't "getting it". Luckily for me, that person agreed. In fact, the whole photo is so surreal that she said she "was expecting Chick Corea to peak through the window". She also said the guy in the photo's wife "was probably waiting for him to die so she can turn it back into a sewing room". Bazinga!

So - was the ad trying to be humorous? Or serious?

Three years earlier, CK had done a survey and found that the average age of it's readers was just over 25 years. They were also predominantly male. So, if you believe that Yamaha was trying to be totally humorous in the ad photo by showing an old guy rockin' out on an organ in his living room (and right now I'm leaning towards this point of view), then the ad may have "clicked" with this younger audience. Laughing at the older generation of organ players, etc... But, the serious ad-copy would not have reinforced the imagery, and in my mind, the ad may have failed in its purpose.

On the other hand, in the off-chance you think the photo wasn't supposed to be totally funny, then it also fails. Because I'm pretty sure no 25 year old wants to be this old guy playing an E-70.
They would much rather be this guy playing a Yamaha SY-2 (nice shoes):

Or even better, "the kids" would probably want to be like a famous musician... Avid E-70 user FlameTopFred tells me that Pete Townshend had both an E-70 and CS-80, and used an E-70 on Eminence Front and a few other Who songs. He directed me to a Web page on thewho.net for more reference info (do a search for e70).

It makes me wonder why Yamaha didn't just take a page out of ARP's name-dropping book and start listing influential musicians.

Like me name-dropping FlameTopFred all the time. Thanks again for the info! :o)

Yamaha E-70, E-50 and E-30 Electone organs ad #2, Contemporary Keyboard 1980

Yamaha E-70, E-50 and E-30 Electone organs ad #2 from page 9 in Contemporary Keyboard Magazine June 1980.

This rare advertisement only ran once or twice in Contemporary Keyboard in mid-1980. Which is common for Yamaha. After the initial ad for the E-series ran semi-regularly from November 1977 to July 1978, Yamaha didn't run ads for these organs too often. The second ad didn't start running until a year after that first one stopped, and then only ran four or five times over the next year and a half, with the last one appearing in January 1981.

Then, it was four months later that this ad finally showed up. Unlike the second ad, which had no reference-like ad-copy at all, this third ad finally provided readers with a few more details about what this beast was capable of. And it begins with a large font and very clear language. 1. It's an Organ! 2. It's an Orchestra!

The black and white close-up images that accompany these two tag lines highlight these two features of the organ nicely, and the ad-copy goes on to explain some of the more musical features of the presets. And one of the first things Yamaha tries to get across to readers is that when the orchestra presets are "combined with the Flute section, musical marriage takes place on the incredible Electone consoles".

Interestingly, friend of the blog and fearless E-70 organ enthusiast "FlameTopFred" (I'm going to lose the quotes around his name from now on), made a similar statement in a recent email exchange concerning comparisons between the E-70 and CS-80.

"When using the orchestral presets, a key feature is being able to bring in some of the flute sounds (Flute on Electone is really a Hammond clone type of drawbar sound). This gives you an additional bank of Hammond tones that can be quite useful. The CS-80 was great - but it was missing that bank of flute (Hammond) tones. "

I'm starting to think that maybe FlameTopFred wrote this ad... :o)

The one area that I feel Yamaha could have really made these ads punchier is by adding colour. The close-up photo of the E-70's orchestra buttons that you see in all their gray-shaded glory, are actually bright white, red, yellow and green in real life. Colour would have really made the ad pop.

In the E-70 manual I found online, it describes the colour-coding:

White: Flute. Red: Brass. Yellow: Stings. Green: Synthetic tones.

Looking at the orchestra buttons in the ad, it was all lining up nicely except the last two buttons. Rather than saying "synthetic" or "synth" on the preset buttons, Yamaha decided to go with "Funny 1" and "Funny 2". What...? Maybe this is why synthesizer enthusiasts have a history of not getting along with organ enthusiasts. :o)

And after seeing those "Funny 1" and "Funny 2" buttons, I was even more curious about the sounds of the E-70 and its comparison to the CS-80. The preset buttons certainly looked similar.

I turned to FlameTopFred for expertise in this matter. He has owned both, picking up his E-70 in part because he also thought those buttons looked mighty similar too. He bought his E-70 for $150 in 2008, and the more he played with it, the more he kept coming across sounds that resembled his CS-80 synthesizer.

"When people say the E-70 is not a CS-80 I remind them that most of the useful sounds on the CS-80 came from using the preset buttons and then using the panel controls for the resonance, the aftertouch and so on - - - you can do some of that on the E-70. No - they are not identical, but certainly very close and for $150 the E-70 is an inexpensive sound-alike for many musical applications. The E-70 is a remarkable instrument - and one that I think has been overlooked by synth aficionados.

Funny I and Funny II are very close to the Funky I and Funky 2 sounds [of the CS-80]. Violin on the E-70 was close to the Strings 1 sound on the CS-80. Trombone and Trumpet were close to the Brass sounds on the CS-80."

When asked specifically about the different presets and which sound most musical, FlameTopFred commented:

"For the wild filter sweep sound, it would be Funny I or Funny II, the two green buttons on the far right. From the red buttons, Trombone and Trumpet were very useful. Harpsichord and Banjo were good sound for bright, fast attack sounds. Clarinet was also quite good as a triangle or sine wave sound. Kinura at first listen was awful, but was one of the best for using the filter (Brilliance) control.

Just as on the CS-80, between the octave buttons and the filter (Brilliance) control, there is a range of useful sounds from each orchestral button. And because you can combine those together (by coupling the Lower Manual sounds to the Upper Manual) there are sometimes very useful and musical blends using sounds that might not normally work on their own.

The CS-80 was also like this - and people forget that. Most of the time on the CS-80 you're staring with one of the presets and working the other controls on the console. The Filter, the Resonance, and most especially with the aftertouch."

Of course, from my "analogue-synth" point of view, I was really interested in the Funny I and Funny II presets. When asked, FlameTopFred described the two "Funny" presets in more detail:

"They have a fast filter sweep - sweeping both the filter and the resonance, very quickly. Funny I has a gentler sweep, gentler resonance, Funny II has a rapid attack sweep, with a short filter decay to a nice sustain, with a little more resonance in the attack. You can almost blow your speakers on Funny II."

Thanks again to FlameTopFred for providing this useful information (and more for future blog posts!). He's done a fantastic job of bridging between the organ and synth communities.

Definitely check out his YouTube site if you haven't already. And, he credits a lot of his knowledge to other YouTube videos, Yamaha's manual library site, and the Electone museum Web site. FlameTopFred recommends that if you are planning to buy an Electone, definitely check out these sites.

I know I'm hanging out on kijiji.ca a lot more now. :o)

Yamaha Electone E-70 organ, Contemporary Keyboard 1979

Yamaha Electone E-70 organ advertisement from page 23 in Contemporary Keyboard Magazine September 1979.

First time this ad ran, it was in black and white. All following ad runs were in color.

Not sure which I like best. It looks like they bumped up the brightness a bit in the black and white version, so you can make out more detail. But, this advertisement isn't really about detail. In fact, they include virtually no ad-copy about the organ at all. So, the colour version, with its soothing mood lighting, appeals more to my eye.

In the end, the ad ran so infrequently, I'm not sure if it had much of an effect. It seems to have first appeared in CK in September 1979, fourteen months after the first E-70/E-50/E-30 ad ended. And it ran only four or five times between September '79 and January '81. AND, in at least one of the issues it was featured in (February '80), Yamaha had FIVE ads running, so it probably got drowned out by their other ads as well.

But, none of that really matters, because my interest really isn't in the E-series ads (especially this one that has no reference info at all). My curiosity about these organs is all about my recent discovery that the E-series apparently has some things in common with the Yamaha CS-80. I had known about the connection between the Yamaha GX-1 and CS-80, but had never run across anything about the E-series/CS-80 connection.

As explained in my last blog post, this surprise first grabbed my attention in some rather recent comments on the CS-80 page at Vintage Synth Explorer. Commenter "FlameTopFred" was the first to start mentioning this connection on the page in January 2011.

After reading this, I started doing a bit of research, and it seems that the connection between the CS-80 and the E-70 didn't really gain traction online until somewhere around 2008. And, it appears that we can thank "FlameTopFred" for sharing a lot of that information with the synth AND organ communities.

It took a few minutes, but I soon hit gold. I found "FlameTopFred"'s initial E-70 purchase and a nice exchange of information on organforum.com where he first started posting back in 2008.

And, as I read on, I found myself agreeing with "flametopfred"'s comments in that forum discussion:

"Funny sometimes, to think how many times as a surly teenager I walked quickly past the organ shop in the mall, or turned my back to the Yamaha Organ booth at the harvest fair at the end of summer ... if only I could go back in time with a bag of moneyand a large truck . . ."

Tru-dat.

Others started catching on to this apparent connection too. "Dr. Funk" half-jokingly comments on the same forum about the effect that "FlameTopFred" had on E-series prices.

"I think FlametopFred may have had an influence on the resale value of
analogue Electones!"

"FlameTopFred" soon started posting some great YouTube videos featuring his E-70. His "E-70: the CS-80 killer" playlist description is:

"Through recent heavy research and after having stumbled on an amazingly good deal on an Electone D-85, am now convinced that the Yamaha E-70 is in fact 90% of the famed CS-80 synthesizer. I used to own two of those, and always felt the need for a 2nd keyboard ~ which the E-70 provides for playing bass lines and comping chords."

More details on the E-70 can be found in a 2008 review of the E-70 organ by "wjbarry" on Harmony Central in the user reviews section. This review has some good information the features of the E-70, and also talked a bit more about the connection between the CS-80, GX-1 and E-70. And, based on the details in that review, I wouldn't be surprised if "FlameTopFred" and "wjbarry" are the same person. In fact, I'm almost sure of it... :o)

"FlameTopFred" also shared detailed information about the E-70/CS-80 connection on VintageKeyStudio's recent E-70 YouTube video upload. In reply to someone that didn't think the two instruments sounded similar, "flametopfred" wrote:

"I used to own two CS-80's as well, and then owned the E-70 and E-75. The E-70 was designed and made the same year as the CS-80 - - both direct children of the GX-1 testbed. The E-70 has the same electronic engine, and if you replace resistors with potentiometers on the preset board, becomes a CS-80 synth. No - - not totally identical. The E-70 offered dual banks of sound (couple-able to upper keyboard), plus bass mono synth, drum machine and arpeggiator.  Great package.

Turns out, the E-70 in that video was destined for the dump until VintageKeyStudio came to the rescue. They created a page on their Web site/blog dedicated to this "poor man's Yamaha CS80". A fun read. The page also linked to some good photos of the organ on an Electone history/summary site.

And, if you scroll to the very bottom of the page, you will find this: "2010 Mike Thompson".

Mike Thompson was the name of another one of the recent commenters on the Vintage Synth Explorer page that originally started me on my E-70 discovery/journey!

Interestingly, I couldn't find any real information on the E-70/CS-80 connection prior to posts by "FlameTopFred". For example, nothing came up in my few quick searches through the Analogue Heaven archives. But then again, I didn't dig too deep.

I did find one weak reference from a February 2000 Sound on Sound article where Gordon Reid mentions the Electone connection with the GX-1.

Close, but not really.

I recently tracked down "FlameTopFred"'s email address and sent him a few questions, and I just noticed an email back from him in my in-box. Excellent.

I'll share my findings in my next E-series post. Just like "FlameTopFred" did. :o)

End note: That Sound on Sound article also has a great story about Keith Emerson's move from Moog to Yamaha's GX-1...

Yamaha E-70, E50 and E-30 Electone Organs, Contemporary Keyboard 1977

Yamaha E-70, E50 and E-30 Electone Organs advertisement from page 23 in Contemporary Keyboard November 1977.

Normally I'm not an organ fan. And as a general rule, I flip by piano, electric piano and organ advertisements when reading through old issues of CK. For the most part, that is all Yamaha advertised for the first 11 months of 1977 (well, that and Yamaha music courses). Call me a synth-snob, but these ads just don't catch my interest.

But, Yamaha had a good reason for putting organ, electric piano, and organ ads in CK. Tom Darter, editor for Contemporary Keyboard at the time this ad appeared, presented the late 1976 survey results in the "From the editor" section of the February 1977 issue. And according to the survey:

• 56% play acoustic piano
• 50% play electric piano
• 44% play electric organ
• 35% play synthesizer
• 11% play pipe organ
• 9% play harpsichord
• 5% play accordion

That's right. Only 35% of CK readers in 1976 played synthesizers. And so, Yamaha continued to advertise pianos, electric pianos, and organs throughout 1977, and I continued to ignore them - this ad included. Quite frankly, this ad and Yamaha organs in general would have continued to go totally unnoticed except that I was surfing around the Web and came across a small tidbit of information that I found rather intriguing.

It was recent comments on Vintage Synth Explorer's CS-80 page where "Flametopfred" wrote on January 20, 2011:

"In more recent years I have found the Electone E-70 and E-75 to be very good "siblings" of the CS-80 and retain many of the same sounds - - with the added bonus of dual sound banks, keyboard coupling, separate CS-80 bass synth, drum machine and arpeggiator."

And in response, "Mike Thompson" wrote on February 13, 2011:

"I also recently obtained an Electone E-70, and I am glad I played the CS-80 so I can now appreciate the similarities between the two..."

And "Bohemian86" commented on February 20, 2011:

"Yeah the E70 can be a quick shortcut to the CS sound. They also might be useful for parts for a non-working CS polysynth. I have one right now, unfortunately had to disassemble that beast to fit it down the steps. "

Well, ain't that intriguing! I hadn't heard anything about this apparent relationship between the CS-80 and the E-series Electones.

So, I decided to look up Yamaha's ads for the E-70 and it seems the E-series first appeared in CK in November 1977 with this ad for the E-70, E-50 and E-30 organs. . It continued to run fairly regularly throughout the winter, spring and summer until its last showing in July 1978. And, coincidentally, it was kinda replaced by an ad for the CS-80. So, timing-wise, these E-series organs and the CS-80 could very well have contained similar technology innards.

Reading through this ad, I found the ad-copy to be very "organ-y" until I came to the last paragraph, where it stated:

"What gives Yamaha's new Electone consoles such realistic voices and incredible versatility is a technology called Pulse Analog Synthesizing System, PASS for short."

Hmmm - "Pulse Analog Synthesizing System". Synthesis!

Actually, it sounded like a lot of hype to me. But, Yamaha wasn't really known for "hype", especially back in 1977.

A quick Google search brought me to the Electone Museum Web site, where it was explained that the E-70 (top of the line model), E-50 (mid-tier), and E-30 (smallest) organs all used PASS, which "took technology from the GX-1 and incorporated it into a consumer model instrument. The ramifications revolutionized the organ industry. Instruments voices began evolving towards emulating the true orchestral instruments rather than theater organ equivalents".

I recall I mentioned the GX-1 back in a June 2010 blog post about the Yamaha SY-2. Turns out the SY-2's filter has a connection to the GX-1. And the GX-1 has a connection to the CS-80. Ahhhhh.

Maybe PASS wasn't that "hype"-y a term. This whole thing definitely deserved more digging into.

But first...

Dinner. Stay-tuned for more research on the E-70 organ.

End note: Some of those other 1976 Contemporary Keyboard survey results are rather interesting too.

• Average age of CK reader: 25.6 years
• 86% of readers are male

• 75% play rock
• 62% play jazz
• 61% play classical music
• 51% play pop music
• 40% play the blues
• 28% delve into avant-garde music
• 23% play country
• 19% play traditional ragtime
  

• 65% are professional or semi-pro musicians
• 75% own TVs (what?)
• 91% own stereos

• 96% read standard music notation
• 44% have had more that 10 years of formal keyboard study
• average reader is a college graduate

• 24% also play percussion
• 15% work with brass instruments
• 12% with reed
• 9% with string

I wonder how this compares to today's readers of Keyboard magazine?