For the handful of Talentmaker owners out there, here’s a rare chance to add a few discs to your collection:
Beguine (sold for $159.50, 5 unique bidders)
Bossa Nova (sold for $203.50, 4 unique bidders)
Organ (sold for $177.50, 3 unique bidders)
Waltz Guitar (sold for $405.00, 4 unique bidders)
For the record, I didn’t bid on any of these, [...]

See the auction results here. Looks like the only two discs missing from the set were Polka & Mazurka.

I heard a bit on NPR yesterday about a new album that’s a collaboration between David Lynch, Dangermouse and Sparklehorse. Lynch sings on one of the tracks, and is accompanied mostly by the Optigan’s “Blues Sweet & Low” disc. I’m assuming Sparklehorse was mostly responsible for this track, since Mark is a big Optigan user/fan. [...]

Thanks to Tony for the heads-up on a brief but very clear bit of Optigan at the beginning of the video for Britney Spears’ song “Circus.” It’s from the “Big Top Marching Band” disc.

Thanks to Micheal Wookey for a heads-up on this one. Here’s a track by Lily Allen featuring the Optigan’s Pop Piano Plus Guitar disc.
Greg Kurstin produced the album. I see that Greg inquired about my Optigan sample CD about a year ago, but my records don’t indicate that he actually bought a copy. Maybe I [...]

Just thought I’d post a link to this eBay auction for a double-manual Orchestron. These are definitely very rare- I’ve only ever seen one other for sale. As for his comment about all the Orchestron discs going back into production, though, that remains to be seen. This is definitely a project we want to undertake, [...]

Michael Junck has produced a German language radio show about the Optigan. It features lots of music he made (covers, mash-ups, etc) using time-stretched Optigan samples. Here’s a version of the Spice Girls “Wannabe” that he made. Maybe I should brush up on my German- I took four years of it in highschool but can [...]

Yes. Many. They are listed on the Optigan Discography page.

Optigan.com is selected by Yahoo as one of its Picks of the Year for 2000. Optigan.com was also featured by Yahoo on June 26, 2000.

The Jan. 2001 issue of CMJ has an article about strange/obsolete musical instruments in it. Pea contributed some info about the Optigan and some other instruments as well.