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Who
Doth Dare Enter Ye Olde Optigan Archives???
[you
may wish to download adobe acrobat
reader if you wish to view any of the .pdf files listed on
this page.]
Collected
on this page you'll find a variety of documents and pictures related
to the Optigan. This stuff is mostly for the hardcore fan who
just ain't satisfied until they get the WHOLE story. I'll be adding
more items to this page as I get around to them (believe me- there's
LOTS of stuff to add!) so let me know which kinds of things you'd
like to see more of here and I'll try to accomodate.
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Photo
Essay: How To Make An Optigan Disc
When Miner Industries (Opsonar) began to start running into legal
troubles of all sorts, there came a point when they decided to
try to consolidate their businesses as much as possible, and this
plan included moving the disc-making works from the West Coast
back to the East Coast. Mike, however, refused to leave California,
and Miner responded by simply saying "Well, we'll ship the
equipment out here, pay you to set it up and show us how to use
it, and then we'll go our separate ways." Mike
Ledoux knew that all of this was MUCH easier said than done,
because by then he had developed Optigan-disc-making to an art,
and realistically he was the only guy suitable for the job. However,
at the insistence of the Miner brass, he put together a photo
essay on the step-by-step process of creating an Optigan disc
and took it to the East Coast to show them exactly what they were
in for. This is an html version of that photo essay, complete
with the original verbatim comments that Mike made in the margins.
As
it turned out, Miner's problems only got worse, and they shut
down completely before any further attempt to ship the equipment
was made. They still owned the disc-making equipment, though,
and Mike worked out a deal with them where he would personally
store the equipment in his garage for a monthly rate until the
Miner brass deemed it feasible to reclaim the equipment and liquidate
it. Of course, Miner never actually came through on their end
of this deal, and to this day Mike still has much of the equipment,
for which Miner technically owes him about $20,000 for 25 years
of storage fees!
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Optigan
Patents
When
Miner made their public warning to Chilton in the NAMM daily about
probable patent violations concerning the Optigan vs the Talentmaker,
they cited several patents which they legally owned. These are
most likely not ALL the patents, but probably the ones they felt
were most pertinent to their case at the time. I sent away for
these patents, and have converted them to .pdf format for your
downloading pleasure.
These patents offer several striking revelations. The first is
an absolute confirmation of something that Mike had mentioned
to me: that Mattel bought up all of Harry Chamberlin's patents
for the Chamberlin, presumably in order to avoid legal hassles
and also to cut out potential competition. Of course, they never
actually DID anything with these patents, and never utilized any
of Harry's designs, but they owned them and controlled them nonetheless.
Also, a very interesting patent appears here from 1965, which
may or may not have had a direct impact on the design concept
of the Optigan. It's for an instrument called the "Photoelectric
Organ," invented by Harold F. Rieth and patented by Packard
Bell. Essentially it works just like an Optigan, except that instead
of spinning interchangeable discs, it spins a permanently mounted
cylinder which contained several different kinds of sounds placed
side by side. The idea was that you could slide a lever to select
a new sound, and the light detector would simply shift over relative
to the cylinder and read a new set of tracks. I can only presume
that this instrument never got past the prototype phase. The real
mystery is whether or not this patent was the actual source of
the "optical rings of soundtrack" concept. Mike tells
me that the earliest design for the Optigan featured an Edison-Cylinder
type medium and a keyboard which lowered needles onto the grooves.
But he wasn't actually working for Optigan at that stage, and
does not know exactly how the switch was made to the optical format.
In any event, Mattel apparently bought the Rieth patent too, to
cover themselves legally.
The rest of the patents, of course, deal with the Optigan itself.
It's interesting to note the different kinds of disc drive mechanisms,
etc, that were invented and considered. There are even patents
for a velocity-sensitive keyboard and a disc-based tremolo effect.
Apart from their wealth of technical info, the patents also supply
us with the names of the folks who invented Optigan's various
components. I've had some luck in contacting some of these people,
and information about them may be found on the Optigan Employees
page.
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Optigan
3657459 Musical Instrument With
Variable Amplitude
3657460 Organ Keyboard Switching
System
3720415 Disc Drive
3724860 Optical Disc Drive For
Organ
D224444
Keyboard For Musical Instrument Or The Like
D224270
Cabinet For Keyboard Instrument Or The Like
3694660 Radiation Sensitive Readout
Head With Circuit Board Construction
3647927 Electronic Organ Wherein
Musical Sounds And A Tremolo Effect Are Provided By Electro-Optical
Apparatus
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Chamberlin
3272907 Electrical Musical Instrument
Having Pre-Recorded Tape For Tone Generation
3567840 Tape Drive Mechanism For
Electrical Musical Instruments
2910298 Sound Reproducing System
3278188 Multi-Tape Reproducer With
Single Pickup Head
3250847 Musical Instrument With
Record Type Tone Generator
2940351 Magnetic Tape Sound Reproducing
Musical Instrument
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Packard
Bell
3250844 Photoelectric Organ
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Prototype
Optigans from a Parallel Universe!!!
When Miner industries acquired the Optigan, one of the first things
they started to do was to try to improve it, both technically
and cosmetically. While their efforts in technical improvement
largely led to the development of the Orchestron, their attempts
at re-designing the Optigan cabinet had somewhat less impact.
Here's a small photo gallery of shots from the 1974 Consumer Electronics
Show in Chicago. I, personally, would KILL to own that "Grand
Piano Lounge Bar" Optigan!
[click on one of
the images to see a larger version]
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The
Optigan Master Reels
Here
is a Microsoft Word .doc of the index
I made when I transferred the Optigan Master Reels to DAT. By studying
this index you can get an idea of the scope of the tapes, and the
nature of the material that never actually made it onto Optigan
discs. Also, I've put together a
little audio collage of some random moments from the master
reels. Keep in mind that I didn't put much thought into choosing
these excerpts, and the result does not necessarily reflect the
character of the tapes as a whole. This mp3 is only about 5 minutes
long, whereas the tapes themselves comprise nearly 40 hours!! What
you'll hear is the click track in one channel and the music in the
other channel. If you need an mp3 player, go here
for PC and here for Mac. |
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