Anyone ever hear of or own an Optigan?

[Beware the Beast Man]

An Optigan was a home organ made in the 70's that played samples of real recordings as rhythm tracks. It sounded like garbage, but has a really neat, kitschy feel to it.

http://www.optigan.com/sitemap.html
The creators of this website have a band called Optiganally Yours. I'd really like to pick up one of their CDs.

[azmouse]

1. That looks like something one of my parents' friends owned.

I remember being 'treated' to a concert of sorts.... ugh!

[asthmaticeog]

2. I only drink Optiganal water.

:tinfoilhat:

[Squeech]

3. Heard of it

Never owned one, but I would like to. The closest I got to it was, they had one in the studio where Cul de Sac recorded Crashes to Light.

The idea was essentially a parlor version of a Mellotron, except instead of capturing the sounds of real instruments on tape (which is how the Mellotron does it), they were encoded in optical form, like the soundtrack on movie film-- whence the "opti" of optigan. The optical tracks were printed on clear plastic discs, and you changed sounds by inserting different discs. There were boatloads of available sounds, from sustained notes on orchestra instruments (to compete directly with Mellotron) to ridiculous lounge combos (I'm thinking of one sound where the "note" is represented as a small vocal group going DA-da-DAH-dah in unison over a vibrophone and cocktail drum).

Samplers have made this sort of thing obsolete nowadays, but there's still a place for that ineffable goofiness factor...