Arp 2600 vintage ad
The ARP 2600 was arguably one of the greatest analog synthesizers ever and has been used in just about every form of music. It’s a semi-modular, monophonic synth that was made to compete directly against the first professional Modular Moog synths during the early 1970′s.
Of course the nice thing about the Arp 2600, was that you didn’t have to buy distinct modules and patch them all together – the 2600 has a fixed selection of basic synth modules internally pre-wired, which you could also re-route with patch-cords. Less than 3000 Arp 2600′s were made, so if you have one, please take care of it!
The ad to the left (click for much larger version) is for the ARP 2600 synthesizer ad from pages 26 and 27 of Contemporary Keyboard Magazine in November / December 1976.
I love this ad because it features Joe Zawinul sitting between two (angled) 2600′s, with an Arp sequencer between them. This looks completely badass, and I’d kill to have this setup in my studio.
We also find out that he names his synths ‘Eins’ and ‘Zwei’ (German for ’1′ and ’2′), and he talks about how he inverts the keyboard of one of the 2600′s, calling it “a real head trip”. Nice.
The Arp 2600 has been used by just about everyone, including Orbital, Underworld, 808 State, Meat Beat Manifesto, Hardfloor, Jean Michel Jarre, BT, Joy Division, Depeche Mode, Weather Report, Chemical Brothers, Front Line Assembly, David Holmes, Tony Banks, Rick Wakeman, Pete Townshend, the Crystal Method, Stevie Wonder, Vince Clarke, Nine Inch Nails, and Edgar Winter.
It was even used to create the vocalizations for R2D2!
Photo courtesy of RetroSynthAds.
