Many years ago I had a machine that had these LP-sized clear floppy plastic disks with patterns arranged on them. You put these disks on a turntable inside the machine and I think it used a light shining through a hole in the turntable onto a photo-conductor (or something like that).

I am struggling to remember the name of it - I think it was called a 'Celestron' ??

Anyone remember this thing and was that what it was called?

I think I traded it off because I couldn't get any new disks for it - but it had a great sound - strings, flutes, choirs, etc.

sounds just like an Optigan.

kind of trendy at the moment with more experimental bands (Low, Blur, Sparklehorse...) using them on records.

Also an excellent group called 'Optiganally yours' doing the rounds, initially used purely Optigans to produce their sounds but have expanded to use other long-forgotten instruments.

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GaryG wrote:

sounds just like an Optigan. kind of trendy at the moment with more experimental bands (Low, Blur, Sparklehorse...) using them on records. Also an excellent group called 'Optiganally yours' doing the rounds, initially used purely Optigans to produce their sounds but have expanded to use other long-forgotten instruments. .g[/url]

Orchestron!!! That's it! Thanks Gary! (should have known you'd know)

I only had the thing for a couple of months back in the late seventies/early eighties - just a glitch of a memory in the old bean pan these days, but it did sound unique. Cool idea too.

I guess old machinery like this died swiftly with the advent of the Prophet & DX's, etc., but it was way cool.

I remember I had the 'Gospel Rock' and the 'Latin Fever' disks

Optigan/Orchestron

Definitely not a Celestron. That's a brand of Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope.

A few Optigans are still around and working, but due to the Trendiness Factor you'd pay about eight times too much to buy one. Sounds like that's not your plan though (a good thing, too)...

Meffy

they have optigan samples at hollowsun.com

www.optigan.com has an Akai sample CD of all the Optigan, Orchestron, and Talentmaker discs. I belive Daniel who is occasionally around KVR has it and likes it. It lists all the correct BPMs for the rhthyms and also has all the melodic sounds. The only functional difference is that in the orignal instruments the disc was constantly rotating this way when you hit a new key on the rhthym it would be at the correct point in the rhthym (i.e. wouldn't start from the begining of the sample). The other difference is that since the samples are noisy (the instrument was) the more polyphony you use the noisier it gets, though this may have been a feature of the original (maybe someone here can comment). Supposedly the Optigan.com people will be putting out a VSTi version that does this, but considering how long it took them to release the Akai set, I wouldn't necessarily hold my breath. Or you could do what I do and just pester Squids to do this. Doing that with Sampletank 2's Time algo and tempo sync would be amazing.

Meffy wrote:

Definitely not a Celestron. That's a brand of Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. A few Optigans are still around and working, but due to the Trendiness Factor you'd pay about eight times too much to buy one. Sounds like that's not your plan though (a good thing, too)... Meffy

Well I knew it was a 'x-tron' something or other

Thnaks guys - good info. Actually I could tell an VERY interesting story about me and my Orchestron, but I'll refrain at the mo

Xander wrote:

Actually I could tell an VERY interesting story about me and my Orchestron, but I'll refrain at the mo

Aw, rats. Hope I notice when you do get around to it.

Meffy
who loves a good story