Premier Rock Forum

What the hell type of gear were these guys using to create Radioactivity? I've read they built some of it themselves, but I'm curious... how the hell did they make this album?

I wish those guys would make a 33 1/3 book about it.

Kickass. I was Googling around, but didn't look hard enough obviously.

What a great site. I would love to get my hands on an Orchestron.

John W. wrote:Kickass. I was Googling around, but didn't look hard enough obviously.

What a great site. I would love to get my hands on an Orchestron.

It is a great site, and it took me years of geeking to find it myself.

You will never find an Orchestron. Almost none were made. However, it's just a professional version of the Optigan.

The Vaiko machine was a failure, and finding discs for it would be impossible. Optigans were made for years and are still pretty cheap. If you can find a 35011, they are the best, but any of the models will do the trick. Almost all of them need work, but they are simple beasts and easy to clean up.

Sadly, the Optigan choir disc (a dead ringer for the Vaiko Orchestron choral disc)only came with the "Songs of Praise" disc pack, and will set you back $200 if you can find one. Most Optigan discs are about $20-30 or even less.

When we did Kraftwerk for a charity gig a few years ago, I just used an E-mu Vintage Keys module on a Melotron patch to do Europe Endless, Showroon Dummies, and other choir songs. It sounded perfect.

Most gear like this is for hardcore enthusiasts/fetishists only. The practical thing to do is get stuff like the E-mu module, sample discs, the Nord Electro, etc. Nothing sounds like a Wurlitzer 200a, but if you want reliability, easy of use, and lots of sounds for the money, you can get these Kraftwerk sounds by other, cheaper, more reliable means these days, with the excetion of the actual synths. The modelers get close, but there really is noticable difference with something like a MiniMoog.

-A

Thanks Alex. As usual you are a great resource for info as I believe we have some very similar tastes in music. My wife and I bought a house recently and soon I'll have room to actually buy a bunch of crap and call a section of the basement my 'studio' -- it's gonna be great!

Hey John,

I'd recommend a copy of Kraftwerk: Man Machine and Music by Pascal Bussy.

It's a pretty good read. I just pulled it off the shelf and I'll thumb through to see what's in it again when I've got a chance. I haven't read it in maybe seven years, but it's fairly thorough.


Faiz

The Busey book is very good! So is "I Was a Robot" by Wolfgang Flur, where he talks about how he thinks he got screwed.

He says he and Karl were band members, and he invented a lot of the electronic percussion.
Ralf and Florian claim they were hired hands in their two piece project.

I don't know, but considering how long those guys were in the band, it sounds like they got hosed.

Anyway, do you live near the west coast, John? If so, you can find Optigans fairly easily. They were straight outta Compton, so the closer you are to L.A., the more luck you'll have.
Possibly under $200, including a few discs.

The guy who runs the Optigan site, Pea Hicks, is well known and busy, but he still answers email questions. He's a good guy.

Last of all, if you have any monosynth, and you get the basic patch even close, a phase shifter will often get things much Kraftwerkier. Lightly used, most of the time, unlike Gary Numan, who cranked them and rarely turned them off.

-A

i think i prefer the older set ups, more analog the better!

Thanks for the info all... Alex, I live in the midwest, so not too close to Cali. Will check out those books for sure -- I think I read one of 'em and remember chuckling at some of the car talk.

konx-om-pax wrote:i think i prefer the older set ups, more analog the better!

Statements like this always crack me up.
I do own a fair amount of analog gear, but I'm curious, why do you say this?

The reason I ask is because analog gear is a real pain in the ass to use live. Oscillators have to warm up, then they go out of tune. Mellotrons vomit their tapes (ask John Paul Jones and Mike Pinder about that). Making gear "talk" to each other is a chore.

Yes, when it's working it's a fine thing, but there's a reason why all of the old timers don't haul that stuff around anymore.

Speaking as a guy with a few of these items I'll tell you, in this modern age, they are for fetishists.
If you insist on analog gear, buy the new stuff. Moog, Doepffer, and Serge are making some good pieces. If you can afford to mortgage your life to own it, good for you. I dumped all of my Moog stuff to buy a new Voyager and it was the smartest thing I ever did.

-A