The “Hohner Multimonica” is a combined double-manual keyboard instrument consisting of a monophonic synthesizer (sawtooth oscillator, vacuum tube technology) and a polyphonic harmonium with fan-driven reeds. This electro-acoustic musical instrument comes from the German postwar era. It was produced in two main variants (“Multimonica I” later “Multimonica II”). The “Multimonica I” even had a built-in AM radio for local station reception. But there was also a version available without radio.
Its tube technology suggests that tthe Hohner Multimonica I was released in the1950s. The short newsreel report from 1952 in this video supports this fact.
Hohner modeled its musical instrument after an electro-acoustic instrument by the German company “Siegfried Mager & Co.” and the harmonium manufacturer Johannes Straube (“Mager-Straube-Kleinorgel”).
via MonoThyratron
So when is it going to be released as a softsynth? 😛
Kids–you damn punk kids!–out there might not remember this, but in the old days of tubes, when a tube blew out in a TV or amp or something, you could just take out the bad tube, go to a hardware store, and look through a big display of tubes until you found a replacement with the right number. Nowadays when something breaks, good luck! Everything gets shipped back to the factory to have a board swapped out. (And even though some products now use tubes, there are no tube displays in hardware stores to get replacements.)
softsynth schmoftsynth. I want to build one of these as a kit.
My OP-1 has an FM radio…