ARP Instruments, Inc. was aLexington, Massachusetts[1] manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, founded byAlan Robert Pearlman[2][a] in 1969. It created a popular and commercially successful range of synthesizers throughout the 1970s before declaring bankruptcy in 1981. The company earned a reputation for producing excellent sounding, innovative instruments and was granted several patents for the technology it developed.
Alan Pearlman was an engineering student atWorcester Polytechnic Institute,Massachusetts in 1948 when he foresaw the coming age ofelectronic music andsynthesizers. He later wrote "The electronic instrument's value is chiefly as a novelty. With greater attention on the part of the engineer to the needs of the musician, the day may not be too remote when the electronic instrument may take its place ... as a versatile, powerful, and expressive instrument."[3]
Following 21 years of experience in electronic engineering and entrepreneurship, Pearlman founded the company in 1969 with $100,000 of personal funds and a matching amount from investors, with fellow engineering graduate David Friend on board from the beginning as the co-founder of the company.[4] The company derived its name from Pearlman's initials, and existed briefly as the ARP Instrument Division of Tonus, Inc.[5][6] Their first instrument, theARP 2500, was released the following year.[3] It was marketed for use in academic contexts as "The concert grand of synthesizers."[7]
TheARP 2600 began production in 1971. As an engineer, Pearlman had little understanding of the music industry or its potential audience. He felt the best market for synthesizers would be music departments at schools and universities, and designed the instrument to be easy to use for this reason.[8] David Friend and musicianRoger Powell toured the US demonstrating the 2600 to various musicians and dealers, and it quickly became a popular instrument.[9] The first significant user of the 2600 wasEdgar Winter, who connected the keyboard controller of the 2600 to the main unit via a long extension cord, allowing him to wear the synth around his neck like akeytar.Stevie Wonder was an early adopter of the 2600, who had the control panel instructions labelled inBraille.[10]
Odyssey (rev.1)
Throughout the 1970s, ARP was the main competitor toMoog Music and eventually surpassed Moog to become the world's leading manufacturer of electronic musical instruments.[11] Performers found that ARP synthesizers were better at staying in tune than Moogs owing to superior oscillator design. The 2500 used a matrix-signal switching system instead of patch cords on a Moog, which led to some performers complaining aboutcrosstalk between signal paths. The 2600 on the other hand, used hardwired ("normaled") signal paths that could be modified with switch settings, or completely overridden using patch cords.[12]
There were two main camps among synthesizer musicians—theMinimoog players and theARP Odyssey/ARP 2600 players—with most proponents dedicated to their choice, although some players decided to pick and choose between the two for specific effect, as well as many who dabbled with products produced by other manufacturers. Notably, the 2500 was featured in the hit movieClose Encounters of the Third Kind;[13] ARP's Vice President of Engineering,Phillip Dodds, was sent to install the unit on the movie set and was subsequently cast as Jean Claude, the musician who played the now famous five-note sequence on the huge synthesizer in an attempt to communicate with the alien mothership.[14]
Quadra
TheOdyssey was released in 1972. It was designed as a cut-down version of the 2600 for touring musicians, competing with theMinimoog, and contained a three-octave keyboard. Later versions featured a pressure-pad operated pitch control system.[15]
The best selling ARP synthesizer was theOmni, released in 1975. It was a fully polyphonic keyboard that used top-octave divide-down oscillators that had been used onelectronic organs, and competed with thePolymoog.[15] In 1977, the company peaked financially with $7 million sales.[16] TheQuadra was released the following year, and contained a number of synthesizer modules combined and controlled by amicroprocessor.[16]
The demise of ARP Instruments stemmed from financial difficulties following development of theARP Avatar,[17] a synthesizer module virtually identical to theARP Odyssey without a keyboard and intended to be played by a solid body electric guitar via a specially-mounted hexaphonicguitar pickup whose signals were then processed through discrete pitch-to-voltage converters.[18]
Although an excellent, groundbreaking instrument by all accounts, the Avatar failed to sell well. ARP Instruments was never able to recoup the research and development costs associated with the Avatar project[19] and after several more attempts to produce successful instruments such as theARP Quadra, ARP 16-Voice & 4-Voice Pianos, and the ARP Solus, the company finally declared bankruptcy in May 1981.[20]
Chroma Polaris (descendant of Chroma)
During the liquidation process, the liquidators ordered Philip Dodds, chief engineer at ARP, to sell the assets he managed to sell the 4-Voice Piano and a working prototype of theARP Chroma the company's most sophisticated instrument design to date—were to CBS Musical Instruments for $350,000.[21] Dodds reassembled the former ARP development team at CBS to complete the Chroma primary the software and manufacturing now asRhodes Chroma. It was produced from 1982 to late 1983. The instrument has a flexible voice architecture, 16-note polyphony, weighted, wooden keyboard action with 256 velocity levels, a single slider parameter editing system (subsequently implemented on theYamaha DX7); and the inclusion of a proprietarydigital interface system that predatedMIDI.[22] It was controlled internally by two processors, keybed scanning by Intel 8039 and a Motorola 68B09 generating all functions such as LFO, EG, etc.[1])
In 2015, almost three and a half decades after it closed its doors, the company's second flagship instrument, theARP Odyssey, was brought back into production byKorg, working in collaboration with David Friend, Alan Pearlman's co-founder at ARP.[4]
Todd Terje uses anARP Odyssey, an ARP Sequencer and anARP 2600 in most of his productions. He used the 2600 exclusively for hisIt's The Arps EP from 2012, which contains his biggest hit to date, "Inspector Norse".[62][63]
Eberhard Höhn (1979).Elektronische Musik: Klangfarben, Klangentwicklung, Klangspiele. Hueber-Holzmann. p. 120.ARP: Amerikanischer Synthesizerhersteller, benannt nach dem Begründer Alan Richard PEARLMAN. (German: "ARP: American synthesizer manufacturer, named after founder Alan Richard PEARLMAN.")
^Vocalist/keyboardist,Mark Mothersbaugh reported that the instrument broke down in such a way that it created an entirely new sound which would have been otherwise impossible to achieve. The "broken down" Odyssey is apparently featured in theDuty Now for the Future song, "Pink Pussycat".
^Kylee Swenson Gordon, ed. (2012).Electronic Musician Presents the Recording Secrets Behind 50 Great Albums. Backbeat Books. p. 184.ISBN978-1-476-82136-8.
^"ARP Sequencer".Music Trades. Vol. 124. Music Trades Corporation. May 1976. p. 31.3 FOR THE SHOW 1. ARP Sequencer The long-awaited ARP live performance sequencer is here. Loaded with elegant features, the sequencer interfaces with the ARP Axxe, Odyssey and 2600 synthesizers. ... MUSIC TRADES. MAY. 1976 31.
^Down Beat. Vol. 43. Maher Publications. 1976. p. 3.The new ARP Sequencer adds rich new textures to your music while it frees both hands for playing keyboards. Just patch the ARP Sequencer into an Axxe, ...{{cite magazine}}:Missing or empty|title= (help)
^Jackson, Blair (2006).Grateful Dead Gear – The Band's Instruments, Sound Systems, and Recording Sessions, from 1965 to 1995. Backbeat Books. p. 190.ISBN0-87930-893-1.
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