OptiTron

The world's most highly prized, kitsch, home entertainment instruments

Recorded from our own Optigan®, the OptiTron Expansion Pack for M-Tron Pro® offers 25 rhythms, a plethora of sound effects and a sprinkling of lead sounds from one of the world’s most highly prized, kitsch, home entertainment instruments, the Optigan.

This add-on pack contains 30 New tape banks as well as over 150 patches for M-Tron Pro including 5 Lead, 25 Rhythms all looped.

OptiTron tape banks include

• Banjo Singalong
• Big Band
• Big Top Marching Band
• The Blues Sweet & Low
• Bossa Nova Style
• Cathedral Organ
• Cha Cha Cha
• Champagne Music
• Classic Guitar
• Dixieland Strut
• Down Home
• Easy Does it With Vibes
• Folk & Other Moods
• Gay 90s Waltz
• Guitar in ¾
• Latin Fever
• Majestic Pipe Organ
• Nashville Country
• Polynesian Village
• Pop Piano
• Rollin Easy
• Romantic Strings
• Singing Rhythms
• Sleigh Ride
• Vox Humana

as well as the following lead sounds

• Choir
• Flute
• Harmonic Extra
• Marimba
• Organ

From the Optigan to the OptiTron

Originally manufactured by toy maker Mattel^®, the Optigan was an attempt to break into the burgeoning ‘home entertainment’ market of the 1970s.

The Optigan used LP sized plastic discs on which sounds, backing tracks and effects were stored and these were read by an optical sensor on the instrument itself. The idea was simple. Pushing a button gave you a backing track in a variety of keys and you then played the keyboard to accompany these backings.

Although there were several different Optigan models available, ranging from the single speaker 34001 to the ‘Stereophonic’ & ‘reverb’ laden 35011, the operating principle of the instrument remained the same throughout its existence.

The Optigan came with a set of discs that included; Big Organ & Drums, Pop Piano Plus Guitar, Latin Fever and Guitar in 3/4 Time. Additional discs could then be purchased and, stylistically, these ranged from bona-fide classics such as Singing Rhythms & Classic Guitar (the latter used to great effect by Jon Brion on the film soundtrack to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) to the toe-curling Nashville Country and truly epic Romantic Strings.

It’s fair to say that the lo-fi sound and general poor build quality never really captured the public’s imagination and subsequently a large percentage of Optigans either ended up as landfill or simply being sold on for a pittance.

Steve Hackett had made use of the Big Band disc on his Sentimental Institution track on the 1980 Defector album, but by-and-large in the UK the Optigan was unknown.

Indeed, our love affair with the instrument only started when we heard one in the USA at the turn of the century. There was something about the instrument’s backing tracks that took us back to our teenage days of the 1970s. The same instant nostalgia that the M-Tron Pro rhythms imparted and we knew we had to acquire one somehow.

Our friend Scanner contacted us to say that the UK based band Coil not only had an instrument but a massive collection of discs too. Several phone calls later, Coil’s Peter Christopherson and Jhonn Balance invited us to their studio to begin the recording process and we jumped at the opportunity.

ALSO AVAILABLE AS PART OF

OptiTron is also available with new purchases of the “M-Tron Pro – Complete” bundle which includes the M-Tron Pro and all the Expansion Packs. That is a superb 11.5GB+ sound library with 500+ tape banks and 2000+ presets.

Compatibility