Hammond Novachord - The original synthesizer

[qube_TA]

As a big fan of electronic music I've always been fascinated with the weird n wonderful synths of old, particularly the really old ones.

The Novachord was used on old horror & sci-fi films to create the spooky sound track, came out in 1938 so arguably the first ever synth! Fantastically over-engineered.

Stumbled across this website where some crazy chap has completely restored one!

http://www.discretesynthesizers.com/nova/intro.htm

Amazing amount of work, but OMG listen to how it sounds!

http://www.discretesynthesizers.com/nova/mp3/nova3...

Difficult to imagine that such soundscapes were possible 70 years ago!

[MitchT]

[Parrot of Doom]

What a beautiful sounding instrument

[MitchT]

My Novachord Restoration Project CD arrived this morning. Sounds awesome!

[qube_TA]

Is it any good, was tempted to buy that?

[MitchT]

qube_TA said:

Is it any good, was tempted to buy that?

I think it's well worth buying. Phil Cirocco does a great job of exploiting the Novachord to produce some pieces that are highly illustrative of its character - You'll be stunned that you're listening to an instrument that was first manufactured in 1938. If musicians of the Novachord's era had possessed the imagination to produce music that did justice to the Novachord's sounds we'd have had the definitive electronic album nearly fifty years before Oxygene was delivered!