Monday, September 7, 2009

ARP Axxe, Contemporary Keyboard 1976


ARP Axxe synthesizer ad from inside back cover of Contemporary Keyboard magazine October 1976.

Keeping with my promise to play catch-up with ARP ads, here is another ad that featured a free ANVIL road case, this time with every ARP Axxe purchase.

The one thing I like about this ad is that it is in colour, something not that common for ARP ads in the very early years of Contemporary Keyboard. And I wouldn't be surprised if ARP decided to run this ad in colour just to showcase those multi-coloured slider caps in all their rainbow glory.

The slider caps, found on many early ARP synthesizers (and often lost during or shortly after your first gig), provided a splash of warmth and humour within an industry that at the time was still gravitating towards very scientific styles and designs.

I bought my Odyssey with over half the slider caps missing, and while doing research on picking up new caps, came upon Mark Smart's slider cap Web page. He also has another page devoted to Axxe mods (and as Mark states - he's not responsible if you mess up your synth :o)

Online references of the ARP Axxe could use some updating from Axxe enthusiasts - but the basics can be found on the usual sites. Explore Google for more.

2 comments:

Davecat said...

The first analogue keyboard I had was an Axxe. I'd bought it second-hand, so most of those slider caps were missing, and the ones that were left were faded. I later sold it for a Moog Rogue, but now I kinda miss it, as it had some serious screaming high-end.

Fab site you've got here! Thanks for posting this!

RetroSynthAds said...

Thank you for reading - glad you enjoy it!

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