Is this cheap organ a string synth in disguise?
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- čas přidán 15. 08. 2023
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This cheap marketplace find isn't exactly the most desirable keyboard, but with a bit of tweaking, could it be the vintage string synth of my dreams?
Well, I made a video about it so probably, yes.
Huge thanks to Behringer for sending over the Xenyx 502s for me to take a look at!
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Featured gear:
- Bontempi HF-201
- Arturia MiniBrute
- Behringer Neutron
- Behringer 2500 Modules
- Dotcom Modules
- Waldorf Streichfett - Hudba
What shines here is the Small Stone phaser by Electro Harmonics (the Behringer one you have is a clone of it). It's the one J M Jarre used in the 70's. It'll make any crappy polyphonic synth sound like a million bucks. ;)
As a string synth obsessive, I can confirm that a typical stringer is just a divide down electric organ with a bucket brigade chorus to give it the magic sound. Throw in a phaser effect and it's instant JMJ territory. If you decide to get an analogue chorus I'd actually recommend the Boss BF-2 - it's remarkably versatile and can create chorus effects as well as flanging.
With enough effects pedals, even toy keyboards can be turned into great synths
This starts off showing a humble and unassuming bontempi instrument and turns gradually into a pretty good studio flex.
The bontempi was probably the cheapest thing in the signal chain ...
I love this kind of sound design ! Remember me the time i started. With my dad's guitar effect pedals and my little PSS-140 from my childhood pllugged direct in my Sound Blaster Live... Great times !
After that, i worked and... bought a Rhodes :)
And now my living room is half full of gear (Yes my fiancee is very comprehensive, she's a nerd too).
Great video ! Subscribed !
This just goes to show, just how powerful the use of outboard effects is for making underwhelming gear, sound extraordinary
Its important to remember that many of the electronic music pioneers back in the 70s had really crappy equipment, and were forced to experiment with all sorts of gear which at the time meant using lots of then newly designed effects pedals. The use of crappy organs through lots of studio processing to sound extraordinary has a long and noble history with bands like early Pink Floyd and Tangerine Dream to name a very few
I always remind myself , when im programming sounds, that an electric guitar plugged straight into the mixer always sounds like thin weedy crap, and its the amp sound, and the effects/processing that make it sound good.
Why should i treat my synth sounds any differently?
Just that, my ESP Horizon Custom with Duncan Pickups and new strings straight into a DI box is the absolute best sound you'll hear :) Just add a bit of compression and a hair noise gate, +2dB hi +1dB lo and -3dB @400Hz and then a wash of stereo modulated delay and plate hall reverb on your 2 auxes - best clean electric, el-acoustic guitar or synth piano around!
Fabulous..only thing it was missing was the bucket brigade ensemble found on all string machines
ah, Bontempi... an italian instrument manifacture not far from home. This was a good keyboard back in 1980 (Bontempi HF 201)
With enough post-processing you can turn a bookshelf into a Solina.
Sounds like Jean Michel Jarre.
Old crummy electronic pianos like univoxes and crumars and things from this era are cool too, stick an unconnected quarter inch plug in sustain pedal Jack, and suddenly you have a really cheezy but cool sounding electronic organ string thing that sounds a lot like this. Props on the tomsline. Good to know it will work with a poly signal. Cool vid, man...rock on
Wow. I inherited one of these in the 70's when my granddad died. Not seen it in 40+ years. Totally amazed to hear it sound like something out of JMJ's studio. Well done!! 😎
Well done, Scott! That was fab! A proper lesson!
This keyboard would be perfect for generating your own video game music.
Instant Jean Michel Jarre! Love it!!
Wow. what a transformation.
Youve just doubled the market price of the bontempi, now everyone can be jean michelle jare, now where did my sisters bontempi go?
I fell off my chair watching this! Genius sound design. Looking for a Bontempi now.
This is a really good emulation of the classic Jean-Michel Jarre sound. It's amazing what you can do with a crappy keyboard when you have the right equipment to go with it. Perhaps there's more lame keyboards that can work this way also?
Could be worth exploring!
Next: how to make a Casio VL-tone sound like a Yamaha CS-80.
What a breath of fresh air😉.
Sounds great! When you think about it what you have here is a string synth without an Attack/release and the bbd chorus. They are literally the same architecture aside from that.
I haven't even got to adding effects or tweaking the sound yet and I'm already sold just from the possibilities of that ridiculous tempo slider
I used to love finding a really boring patch, and running them through effects. Great video. I sampled a sustained note from a Zylophone for a bit of fun, then could play it polyphonic from my Sampler, tiny bit of Phaser/flange and reverb sounded gorgeous. 😊
Hi Scott, that is absolutely amazing sir. Thank you so much for this video, I had a bit of a bad day and you really brought a smile to my face. I started out with a Bontempi Chord organ, one of their reed organs which had a very loud motor which was often louder than the sounds the keyboard made, but it started me on my keyboard playing and now some 50 years later synthesiser collecting obsession and I will always be grateful to that little Bontempi. As you say the thing sounds completely awful on it’s own, but with effects, wow it sounds amazing, plus of course your keyboard skills really bring it to life. The track at the end was so ‘Jarre’ it was untrue! Oh and I love the nails by the way, they look fab!! Anyway just wanted to say thanks from one keyboard geek to another for such a brilliantly inspiring video. I have an old Casio in the cupboard, one of their early 80s models and must dig it out and hook it up through some effects to see what happens. Keep up the great work sir. 😊
Hey thanks mate! Lovely comment :)
I had one of those reed organs too! My grandma picked it up from a car boot sale, I reckon that kicked things off for me as well
Beautiful sound! 👏👏👍🎹🎶🎛
Great video, can hear the intro to I feel love on this 🎶
Wow! So even a Bontempi can aspire to grace. Who would've thought? Some of these old analog circuits are probably worth attempting to clone. I'd love to build a paraphonic string machine some time. An envelope-controlled phaser might make it even more interesting.
Sounds lovely. Liquid pearls
I think almost anything would sound good through these effects.
this is very true... I did a gig in Poland on a childs keyboard through cheap Behringer fx and somehow got through it... :)
I was about to write the same. Why use all that money on expensive effects to improve a bottom of the line organ from a toy company, when a top of the line 1980s organ can be had for free and it has most of these effects build in. (I saw a free Technics E66 organ today but I already have the portable version SX-C600.)
@@organfairy because it's fun to do it. Not usre these organs had an integrated phaser like this though.
@@MrCrrispy Some organs did have a phaser but they were often integrated into a preset and could only be used for this. Technics organs had a preset called "Synthebrass" that had a phasing effect.
I love this a lot. This is the premise I am following at the moment while setting up my first home studio. A yamaha mk-100, and a library of too many pedals.
Great educational video. Mission accomplished! Also nice to see somebody with positive experiences of Behringer mixers.
I bought a used Bontempi Minstrel a few years ago. It's like an old portable Casio. The sounds are goofy, but it's fun to play around with. Thanks for showing me some more fun tricks for the little guy!
P.S. Love the nails!
Thanks!
Yeah, I probably wouldn’t be making music today if it wasn’t for that little mixer!
Thanks!
Yeah, I probably wouldn’t be making music today if it wasn’t for that little mixer!
Thanks for this very informative video. 👍Seeing a reel-to-reel machine running without the VU meters moving at all is a bit "strange". 😂
The left VU was moving! I was using the machine in mono mode.
But at quite a low level :)
It sounds such fuller than the Solina clone
You nailed dude 👍🏻
id like to find a decent sounding organ with a ar envelope to turn into a string machine
You could have just gone behringer clone, but You went the quirky vintage way, which is always better! I really appreciate that, and I will definitely look out for weird bontempi string machines from now on!
By the way, congrats on pronouncing the "ch" in streichfett correctly! As a German, I appreciate it. The "St" in the beginning is pronounced "Sht", though :)
Ha ha, danke! I normally do OK with German pronunciation, thanks for catching that one :)
To be fair, when I picked up the Bontempi, Behringers Solina wasn’t out yet and I needed a classing string machine sound for a film I was working on. Hence this experiment.
Very happy with the results though, I’ll be hanging on to this for a while!
Sounds great! I wonder how the underwhelming bass keys would sound through fuzz and distortion effects?
Try running a Casio SA-10 trough those effects, You will be surprised!
1:34 Love the brief cover of Star Trek: The Next Generation
Ah, the keyboard Joy Division used before the ARP Omni and Transcendant.
Yes! There's even a very early live version of Love Will Year Us Apart where they used the Bontempi before getting an ARP Omni II.
@@chriswarehamJoy Division and Bontempi? I’ve never read about that anywhere.
I think it's mentioned in Peter Hook or Bernard Sumner's books about their time as Joy Division. They also had a monophonic Powertran synth that Bernard built from a kit, but which never worked properly. Atmosphere was recorded with a Solina that was in the studio - the song was pretty much written on the spot when they had some studio time left over. This inspired them to go out and buy the similar ARP Omni II which they then used on Closer and Love Will Tear Us Apart.
Wow that hand transplant went well, she must have been a hand model
Gone with the wind
Gone with the small stone
Great vid, just shows what a few effects & some imagination can do even with the crappiest gear !
Very impressive, very Jarre esque. I like that a lot.
Excellent video!
Some phaser and Jean-Michel Bontempi is there 😉
The name 'Bontempi' roughly sounds like 'good times' in Italian. I haven't cross-checked with anyone yet but it's an awesome learning experience. I didn't even know anything about this keyboard till now! ❤❤❤❤
People talk a lot of smack about Behringer's interfaces and mixers. My 302 USB is the sturdy heart of the studio from 2015.
And Bontempi is not that bad either, they just need proper companions 😊
The Bomtempi I had was older Brown/beige organ. It had a rather noisy blower, and it used plastic reeds similar to how a melodica works. It even sounded much like a Melodica other than the blower noise. But it was a stepping stone for me to eventually getting a real piano. My mother got it for me when I was 9 or 10 and made a deal if I had shown interested she'll get a piano. I still have that piano, 45 years later. The Bamtempi organ I had, is long gone, though, the motor for the blower died. Sadly, though, since it had no electronics, the only way to record from it is with a microphone, which would also record the noisy blower.
Oh yeah, I had a couple of those too!
My grandma got them for me as a kid, from a car boot sale :)
My first keyboard! 😂 🤩
I taught myself how to play on one of these in the late 70s, happy memories.
Hey Scott - definitely prefer the 'after' 😊
Bit Jean Michelle jar sound.. at the end... of this video..
And early 70s dystopian SF movies like clockwork orange sound etc..
Really enjoyed that you have a new sub
With the Solina String Ensemble the attack portion is monophonic, all notes go thru one VCA at the end of the signal path. The decay, on the other hand, is true polyphonic.
This gave me an idea to noodle around with my tascam
Audio interface and VCV2 rack to process audio and my Yamaha MM6 as sound source got some nice sound textures both with the MM6 string sounds both with the synths DSP on and off
PS, seeing you using the Neutron as a"Bubbles" effects synth, made me extraordinarily happy, as that is exactly what I got mine for.
I see them as sort of a modern/poor man's EKS Synthi/VCS3.
Yeah! I’ve always found the Neutron to be VCS3-esque. Great little bit of kit!
“Lipstick on a pig”
That is a genuinely fucking naff keyboard and I kind of love it. Shame it has no envelope controls.
Thank you for the tips, I just bought my self an Octopus at Wish!
A fun way to play with those electronic toy-like keyboards. I started messing with a Bontempi HF22247 which I believe makes the same sounds but the whole control layout was at the left. Using a wah pedal before long delay sounds awesome. Cheap-ass overdrive pedals + chorus make this toy sound like a fully energetic synth
Bontempi's are quite simple but fun. I believe they're not worth modifying the guts to make them sound anything way different than what it already gives. Anyway, If you take the top off you'll notice a couple of trimmers on one side and a lone-one a few inches of them. The couple control the volume of the "hihat" and the "snare" of the rythmn sounds, and the other one fine-tunes the vibrato rate.
I have been thinking about putting a couple of wee mods in. Mainly a tuning pot, because it isn’t exactly at concert pitch right now :p
As said many times already, I hear jarre! Sounds awesome 😊
real nice video. I've owned a Solina and VC340 for many years and played all kinds of string machines in the 80s and 90s.
I recall hearing JMJ in 1977 as a kid and was enthralled by the phasing sounds.... by 1980s it was old hat to most people but nowadays in this everything goes world it sounds great again. Mind you back in the 80s it was incredibly expensive to buy even the cheapest pedal effects... took a long time until the cheap Alesis units came along...
so amazing what pedals can do to a basic synth... lets' goooo
We use a crap 60's Italian chord organ for pads. A few effects and you can't beat it.
I would use a chorus, a delay and a cheap reverb on this one. Boss Super Chorus, Dod rubberneck delay and Azor reverb. Thats pretty much is it for me, my phaser does not sound good at all (might even have sold it). My Bontempi organ has become quite noisy and hissy but I still love it :) The thing with Bontempi organs of the late 70ies/early eighties era is that they often sound good with a bit of effect and even decent as a rock/stage organ for 60ies rock or even modern indie pop applications (tried it) with no effects at all.
Subscribed immediately when you played the Star Trek TNG theme
🖖
sounds perfect for a dungeon synth record :)
This is the exact keyboard we use to have at home in the 70s - My mother used to play many tunes with the 'auto accompaniment'.
It's a shame you have to diss old technology and keep calling it 'crap' - It's all we had available at the time for electronic music production.
Sounds remarkably similar to an Elka, effects do lift the mundane into something interesting. Nice with a Memory Man as well
They're both Italian and probably have lots of the same components
@@wiseradical3386 Probably, Ancona was a big centre for organs back then. They made some great stuff, but a lot of shite as well. Mind you, effects can transform most things
5:24 - instant Equinoxe 😀
my first synth was a bontempi, a similar to yours, but it was out of tune. a half pitch over i think. is there a way to tune it correctly?
I like the way you think.
I myself have a Casio Keyboard that have hooked up to a wide array of different Effects pedals, it’s let me breathe new life into a keyboard that many people would dismiss as cheap.
Seeing this video has made me want to try this for myself.
It’s amazing what you can do with effects.
I just completed a film score where one of the signature sounds was from an old Yamaha VSS-200!
@@ScottAmpleford sweet
One handing the TNG theme like it’s nothing!
Proof that a turd can in fact be polished.
The real title should be: How to instantly jack up the price of an old organ on the used market :)
Jean Michael Jarre or Vangelis?
nice!
I haven't washed all of it yet but why am I thinking Pink Floyd Echoes?
Boy itsa wonder:what a bunch uh stompbox efx can do for kitshitsa's of all varieties dude😎
this is great, personally think it sounded best at around 5:45
Very nice!
So... at the end... what was the final order of effects?
Bontempi -> octave pedal -> phaser -> delay -> chorus -> auto-filter ?
Cheers! Close, it was: Bontempi -> chorus -> autofilter -> octave pedal -> phaser -> delay :)
Thanks! 👍@@ScottAmpleford
Any divide down synth + phaser = stringer
Super on different short
Sounds like a Jean Michel Jarre setup lol.
So basically you have a really bulky DCO module.
What happened, six months have already passed
You got this sounding pretty good, though I always fail to understand why anyone regards spring reverbs as aurally pleasing. Back in the 80s I had a Great British Spring reverb (long, black, springs-filled tube that was attached to the wall) only because digital reverbs were new and expensive. It made everything sound worse.
It depends on the use case and the style of music you’re aiming for. I just did the soundtrack for a film that was about 70s music, springs were the only artificial reverbs used on that whole project and it sounds fantastic.
But I certainly don’t use it on everything. Use it where it’s suited!
@@ScottAmpleford Ah well, that's exactly my point. If you're trying to get a specifically retro sound, then you'll use the tech that was around at the time. As someone who grew up using it because I had no choice, I feel very differently about it. It's like romanticising poverty. All I wanted was a Yamaha SPX-90 but had to make do with a spring reverb that went Boing.
@@RebeccaTurner-ny1xx Sure it helps evoke specific eras, but I’ve also used it in modern film scores. It can be a useful tool for sound design, beyond adding space. Especially with electronic sounds, the way they can be overdriven can add some much needed grit to certain sounds. Even/especially if it’s not the last link in the chain.
Starting to get very Jean Michel Jarre
Way too much phaser at the moment, especially as a solo instrument. But I think it could ve used at this level for short atmospheric bits of songs with other instruments in the mix.
Yes, the phaser depth could come down a few notches…
I look after logan string melody
is that an Akai 4000DS mkii i see there in the background?👀
I have both a MkI and MkII :)
@@ScottAmpleford nice! I might be getting the mkii myself tomorrow for 120 :D gonna make a 3 houd drive to give it a look first.
@@norjia it kind of scares me how pricey they got. I got both of mine for £20!
I’ve been thinking of trading them both in for a Revox A77, but part of me worries I’ll miss having 2 machines…
I am inspired. I am going to retrieve my old badly sounding Medeli home keyboard and Zoom guitar multieffect pedal and try this tommorow.
Also - that Bontempi has really bad sound. My old Czechoslovak Delicia organ has better sounds in it (and it's also somewhat piece of crap).
I’d love to hear your results!
8:27 I thought Behringer didn't send equipment to CZcamsrs anymore. 👀
I actually received this several months ago, before they changed their policy.
I’ve just never gotten a chance to feature it in a video until now.
This is really fun, but useless 😂 I was after some cheap 70s/80s sounds like Bontempi when I stumbled upon a sample library that had it all. So, practically, using samples is often free and easier, and you can create a sample instrument in most DAWs. Of course, owning the Bontempi is kinda fun. Sometimes you’ll find one at Goodwill for $10 or at the side of the road on garbage day.
Oh I don’t know, there’s something about the dodgy broken keys and generally poor condition of the Bontempi. It sounds slightly different every time I turn it on, I find that quite charming.
I wouldn’t say useless though, it’s on my latest album!
@@ScottAmpleford Sure - if you have room for it. I’ve got my own silly keyboard purchases…czcams.com/video/_xR66SslRvU/video.html
I hear 'Jarre'
"strings" lol
What an eccentric unit. Very cool. The drum machine component was just hateful. Yikes.
Twice on different keys
What's that watch you're wearing?
It’s just an old Apple Watch.
JMJ vibes