Optigan.com has introduced a new Vako Orchestron disc, DREHORGEL.
DREHORGEL is a newly recorded sound for the Orchestron. It’s based on a small, hand-cranked street organ that plays punched music rolls, similar to a calliope. The drehorgel featured here is owned by Pat Quilter of Quilter Labs.
Here’s what they have to say about the new sound disc:
For this disc, we chose the unique “trill” sound of the drehorgel, which produces repeated notes. Great for playing creepy circus type music!
PLEASE NOTE: This disc WILL NOT play properly in an Optigan! They WILL play, but the sounds will NOT be mapped correctly to the keyboard- they will be mapped mostly haphazardly across the chord buttons. Please don’t order this disc expecting to easily use it in an Optigan. In the future we will be porting the Orchestron sounds to the Optigan- please be patient! 🙂
It’s unlikely that there will be sufficient demand to do a second run of 25 of these discs, so your best bet is to buy as many of these as you need while you can!
Pricing and Availability
DREHORGEL is available for US $99.99. See the Optigan site for details.
The orchestron/optigan is fascinating and this guy making the discs has got to be damn passionate since there’s no way it could ever be profitable.
I saw one on my local CL for $100 and was interested, but didn’t seem like the kind of thing I’d want to spend time restoring and upkeeping. Plus you’re paying as much for the discs as the instrument itself.