ARP Instruments, Inc. was a Lexington, Massachusetts[
]
in 1969. It created a popular and commercially successful range of synthesizers throughout the 1970s before declaring bankruptcy in 1981. The company earned a reputation for producing excellent sounding, innovative instruments and was granted several patents for the technology it developed.
History
Background
Alan Pearlman was an engineering student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute,
Massachusetts in 1948 when he foresaw the coming age of
electronic music and
. He later wrote "The electronic instrument's value is chiefly as a novelty. With greater attention on the part of the engineer to the needs of the musician, the day may not be too remote when the electronic instrument may take its place ... as a versatile, powerful, and expressive instrument."
Beginnings
Following 21 years of experience in electronic engineering and entrepreneurship, Pearlman founded the company in 1969 with $100,000 of personal funds and a matching amount from investors, with fellow engineering graduate David Friend on board from the beginning as the co-founder of the company.
The company derived its name from Pearlman's initials, and existed briefly as the ARP Instrument Division of Tonus, Inc.
Their first instrument, the ARP 2500, was released the following year. It was marketed for use in academic contexts as "The concert grand of synthesizers."
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Success
The ARP 2600 began production in 1971. As an engineer, Pearlman had little understanding of the music industry or its potential audience. He felt the best market for synthesizers would be music departments at schools and universities, and designed the instrument to be easy to use for this reason. David Friend and musician Roger Powell toured the US demonstrating the 2600 to various musicians and dealers, and it quickly became a popular instrument. The first significant user of the 2600 was
Edgar Winter, who connected the keyboard controller of the 2600 to the main unit via a long extension cord, allowing him to wear the synth around his neck like a
keytar.
Stevie Wonder was an early adopter of the 2600, who had the control panel instructions labelled in
Braille.
Throughout the 1970s, ARP was the main competitor to Moog Music and eventually surpassed Moog to become the world's leading manufacturer of electronic musical instruments. Performers found that ARP synthesizers were better at staying in tune than Moogs owing to superior oscillator design. The 2500 used a matrix-signal switching system instead of patch cords on a Moog, which led to some performers complaining about crosstalk between signal paths. The 2600 on the other hand, used hardwired ("normaled") signal paths that could be modified with switch settings, or completely overridden using patch cords.
There were two main camps among synthesizer musicians—the Minimoog players and the ARP Odyssey/ARP 2600 players—with most proponents dedicated to their choice, although some players decided to pick and choose between the two for specific effect, as well as many who dabbled with products produced by other manufacturers. Notably, the 2500 was featured in the hit movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind;
The ARP Odyssey was released in 1972. It was designed as a cut-down version of the 2600 for touring musicians, competing with the Minimoog, and contained a three-octave keyboard. Later versions featured a pressure-pad operated pitch control system.
The best selling ARP synthesizer was the ARP Omni, released in 1975. It was a fully polyphonic keyboard that used top-octave divide-down oscillators that had been used on , and competed with the Polymoog. In 1977, the company peaked financially with $7 million sales. The ARP Quadra was released the following year, and contained a number of synthesizer modules combined and controlled by a microprocessor.
Decline
The demise of ARP Instruments stemmed from financial difficulties following development of the
ARP Avatar, a synthesizer module virtually identical to the
ARP Odyssey without a keyboard and intended to be played by a solid body electric guitar via a specially-mounted hexaphonic
guitar pickup whose signals were then processed through discrete pitch-to-voltage converters.
Although an excellent, groundbreaking instrument by all accounts, the Avatar failed to sell well. ARP Instruments was never able to recoup the research and development costs associated with the Avatar project and after several more attempts to produce successful instruments such as the ARP Quadra, ARP 16-Voice & 4-Voice Pianos, and the ARP Solus, the company finally declared bankruptcy in May 1981.
During the liquidation process, the liquidators ordered Philip Dodds, chief engineer at ARP, to sell the assets he managed to sell the 4-Voice Piano and a working prototype of the ARP Chroma the company's most sophisticated instrument design to date—were to CBS Musical Instruments for $350,000. Dodds reassembled the former ARP development team at CBS to complete the Chroma primary the software and manufacturing now as Rhodes Chroma. It was produced from 1982 to late 1983. The instrument has a flexible voice architecture, 16-note polyphony, weighted, wooden keyboard action with 256 velocity levels, a single slider parameter editing system (subsequently implemented on the Yamaha DX7); and the inclusion of a proprietary Digital data interface system that predated MIDI. It was controlled internally by two processors, keybed scanning by Intel 8039 and a Motorola 68B09 generating all functions such as LFO, EG, etc.
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Aftermath
In 2015, almost three and a half decades after it closed its doors, the company's second flagship instrument, the
ARP Odyssey, was brought back into production by
Korg, working in collaboration with David Friend, Alan Pearlman's co-founder at ARP.
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]
Products
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1970: ARP 2500 analog modular synthesizer, patched with a switch matrix, noted for its reliable tuning compared to competitors Moog and Buchla
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1970: ARP Soloist (small, portable, monophonic preset, aftertouch sensitive synthesizer)
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1971: ARP 2600 (smaller, more portable analog semi-modular synthesizer, pre-patched and patchable with Electrical cable)
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1972: ARP Odyssey (pre-patched analog duophonic synthesizer, a truly portable performance instrument, a competitor of the Minimoog)
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1972: ARP Pro Soloist (small, portable, monophonic preset, aftertouch sensitive synthesizer—updated version of Soloist)
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1974: ARP String Ensemble (polyphonic string voice keyboard manufactured by Solina)
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1974: ARP Explorer (small, portable, monophonic preset, programmable sounds)
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1975: ARP Omni (polyphonic string synthesizer with rudimentary polyphonic synthesizer functions)
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1975: ARP Little Brother (keyboardless monophonic expander module)
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1975: ARP Axxe (pre-patched single oscillator analog synthesizer)
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1975: ARP String Synthesizer (a combination of the String Ensemble and the Explorer)
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1976: ARP Sequencer (desktop analog music sequencer)
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1977: ARP Pro/DGX (small, portable, monophonic preset, aftertouch sensitive synthesizer—updated version of Pro Soloist)
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1977: ARP Omni 2 (polyphonic string synthesizer with rudimentary polyphonic synthesizer functions—updated version of Omni)
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1977: ARP Avatar (an Odyssey module fitted with a guitar pitch controller)
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1978: ARP Quadra (4 microprocessor-controlled analog synthesizers in one)
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1979: ARP Quartet (polyphonic orchestral synthesizer not manufactured by ARP—just bought in from Siel and rebadged)
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1979: ARP 16-Voice Electronic Piano
[
]
. (courtesy of Kevin Lightner) seen on:
(model 3363) / ARP 4-Voice Electronic Piano (model 3553)
File:ARP Pro DGX.jpg|Pro/DGX
File:ARP Soloist.jpg|Soloist
File:ARP Omni Mk2.jpg|Omni (rev.2)
File:ARP Omni Mk1.jpg|Omni (rev.1)
File:ARP Solus.jpg|Solus
File:ARP Axxe.jpg|Axxe
File:ARP Explorer front.jpg|Explorer I
File:Solina String Synthesizer (right).jpg|String Synthesizer
File:ARP Solina String Ensemble.jpg|String Ensemble
Notable users
Some notable ARP users and endorsers include:
- (in alphabetical order by group name or family name)
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Tony Banks of Genesis played an ARP 2600,
[ an ARP Pro Soloist (on the album Selling England by the Pound) and later an ARP Quadra.]
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David Bowie is listed as using an "arp" in the album Low.
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The BBC Radiophonic Workshop's Peter Howell used an ARP Odyssey II for the lead sound in a version of the Doctor Who TV theme in the early 1980s.
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Brian Eno is listed as playing "report arp" in David Bowie's album Low.
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Jean Michel Jarre played an ARP 2500.
[ On the album Equinoxe he played an ARP 2600 and an ARP sequencer.]
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Elton John played an ARP String Ensemble on the album Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, and played an ARP on "Funeral For a Friend" on the album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.
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Kraftwerk used an ARP Odyssey on the album Autobahn.
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Rick van der Linden of Ekseption played an ARP 2600 on the album Trinity.
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Kerry Livgren and Steve Walsh of Kansas use an "Arp" on the album Song for America.
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Jimmy Page played an ARP 2500.
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Anthony Phillips played an ARP String Ensemble and ARP Pro Soloist on his 1977 album The Geese and the Ghost. The album's title derived from Phillips' nicknames for two sounds he produced on the Pro Soloist, both of which feature on the title track.
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Skinny Puppy played an ARP 2600 on their early releases
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Éliane Radigue played an ARP 2500 on the album Triptych.
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Todd Terje uses an ARP Odyssey, an ARP Sequencer and an ARP 2600 in most of his productions. He used the 2600 exclusively for his It's The Arps EP from 2012, which contains his biggest hit to date, "Inspector Norse".
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Pete Townshend of the Who wrote the song "Won't Get Fooled Again" on an ARP 2500.
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Joe Walsh played an "Arp" on the album Barnstorm.
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Edgar Winter used the ARP 2600 on the rock classic "Frankenstein".
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Stevie Wonder used a custom Braille-labeled ARP 2600.
Notes
External links
