Amazing restoration project...

Between 1938 and 1942, the Hammond Organ Company was selling the Novachord, considered by some as the first real polyphonic synthesizer available on the market.




It's 72 notes polyphonic, amazingly ALL TUBES!!!
It has oscillators, filters, VCAs, envelope generators, and
a frequency divider...





A bit more than a thousand units were build, it was huge, heavy, and very fragile. Imagine yourself getting your hands on one these beast, and having to restore it: 72 notes, all tubes, really old components with toxic stuff in them...

Phil Cirocco at CMS got one, but as he says: "the sheer number of components and it's complexity, make properly restoring a Novachord, a Herculean task..."

Well, he managed to do it!!!

This guy is completely crazy, or a Genius, or probably both...

You'll find some sound samples at the bottom of the page, recorded right after restoration, and they are properly amazing, mind boggling, unbelievable, incredible, whatever you call them.
Scroll down a bit more and you'll find his conclusion about this job, it's truly freaky.

Oh, and Phil Cirocco is considered to be the foremost ARP guy in the world...