My Favorite Synth is From ...1939(!)

[Keith Phillips]

I ran into this recently and fell completely in love with it. The Hammond Novachord.

(Before and after restoration)

Apparently manufactured for a few years starting in 1938 and hitting the market in '39, it wasn't received very well by musicians. It was a technical nightmare and the parts were hard to come by because of World War II. Only 1,069 were produced, and they had nearly 200 vacuum tubes and over 1,000 capacitors!

A 72-oscillator, 72-note polyphonic synthesizer is pretty damn amazing for 1939! Way ahead of its time back then. They lacked fuses or proper grounding, so I am sure trying to restore one of these or to even attempt to operate an old one for testing is very dangerous.

This guy did an AMAZING job restoring the one above by replacing (literally) tons of components to working factory spec. The restored unit looks fantastic and sounds like a dream. I'm sure it sounds a bit different than an original unit *in* 1939, but, after 70 years probably none of the remaining original units work 100%.

http://www.discretesynthesizers.com/nova/intro.htm (Warning: a bunch of pictures)

I think it has to create some of my favorite sounds ever. Definitely worth a quick listen:

http://www.discretesynthesizers.com/nova/mp3/nova3.mp3 (2:34)
http://www.discretesynthesizers.com/nova/mp3/nova2.mp3 (1:32)
http://www.discretesynthesizers.com/nova/mp3/nova9.mp3 (3:13)

This is another one with the Solovox in it. Really nice.
http://www.discretesynthesizers.com/...3/solovox2.mp3

Enjoy.