50 Years of Gear: The keyboard instruments I’ve owned and used | Part 1 (1976-1979)
I’m really not a gear junkie. All musicians require the tools of trade, be it guitars, drums, microphones, recording gear or, in my case, keyboard instruments. It’s true that many players do move from player to collector, endlessly acquiring well beyond their actual musical needs. This is particularly true of guitarists who will tell you that guitars are a thing of beauty, with no two the same. Even I’m guilty of this, with more guitars in my possession than my meagre abilities could ever justify. Some instruments will, if selected astutely, or if held onto for long enough, increase in value over time. I have parted with a few items over the years that would be worth a small fortune now, but my mindset was always to move out the old to make way for the new.
I started out very modestly, purchasing my first electronic keyboard from Tuffins Music in Canberra, an hour's drive from my hometown of Goulburn. I had saved earnestly for this purchase, my recollection being that it cost me around $800 at the time. It was my pride and joy, right up until the time of my next purchase, which then took over that mantle. I didn’t always buy astutely. A couple of them were poor decisions, made in haste. Others that I’ll detail here were rented or hired for a specific session or tour. But they’ve all contributed, in some way, to the sound of the music I was making, be it my teenage band in Goulburn - Abbey, The Radiators, Modern Primitives or my current covers band in Brisbane – Vintage Vinyl.
Here’s a tour through all those that I can remember…….
Crumar ‘Crucianelli’ Compact Piano
This was the first purchase from Tuffins. Crumar was an Italian manufacturer, building electronic pianos, synthesizers and organs from the late ‘60s to the early ‘80s. This simple 61 key, polyphonic instrument had only three sounds – piano, honky tonk piano and clavichord. I don’t recall using the honky tonk sound much, but the clavichord was useful. The keyboard wasn’t touch sensitive, so it was difficult to play with any dynamics. I have no idea where it ended up. My assumption is that I sold it on the second hand market or perhaps to a younger musician in Goulburn.
Wurlitzer 200 Series Electronic Piano
The first truly iconic instrument I owned, and I actually bought a few of these through the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. I wish I’d kept just one of those. Along with the Rhodes stage piano, this is the classic electric piano sound of the ‘70s. Despite being called an electronic piano, the sound was actually created by a hammer striking a small metal rod called a ‘tine’. This was problematic for me at times, as I tended to play very hard during those early Rads years and would often break the tines, causing the broken part to fall into the electronic components and cause an awful, distorted noise, which, when amplified through a Radiators size PA system, was pretty offputting. I’d have to immediately turn off my piano and stop playing until I could dislodge the broken piece. I’d also spend an inordinate amount of time on tour tracking down replacement tines in music stores. Each tine was specific to each note, so this was not always straight forward.
Hammond L100 Tonewheel Organ
Another classic, the same organ used, at times, by many of my early keyboard heroes, including Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman. They were manufactured from 1961-1972 and I bought mine second hand, from somewhere near Campbelltown, around 1977, when I was in Year 12 at High School. It weighed around 100kg, and my young bandmates would mysteriously all go missing when it was time to load it in or out of the van. Another one that I wish I still had.
Roland SH-1000 Synthesizer
You can read the full and unusual tale of how I acquired this instrument in my memoir, Life’s A Gamble. This was the first keyboard synth made by the Roland Corporation of Japan, a company that would feature heavily in my life, as I worked for them for over 30 years. Yes, I wish I still had this one too, not so much for its sound or features, but for its place in history and my own nostalgia.
Roland SH-5 Synthesizer
As I said, rather than accumulate instruments, my approach was to replace and upgrade, so shortly after I moved to Sydney in 1978, I bought the much newer SH5. Whereas the SH-1000 was primarily a preset instrument, the SH-5 was fully programmable, with a host of knobs, sliders and switches to manipulate the envelopes, filters and amplifiers. It sounded smoother and fatter than the SH-1000 and was more akin to the famous Mini Moog, the synth I really aspired to own. This is the instrument that plays all the synth parts on the Radiators Feel The Heat album.
Roland VK9 Organ
It didn’t take long for the Rads crew to start moaning about the size and weight of my Hammond organ, so with the advance from our first record deal with WEA, in mid 1979, I purchased the Roland VK-9 dual manual organ, which had been launched the year before. Packed into a road case, it really wasn’t that much smaller, but it was certainly lighter. It also didn’t sound anywhere near as good. The organ sounds on Feel The Heat and Up For Grabs feature this instrument, though in hindsight, I wish I’d sourced a Hammond for recording, as I did on subsequent records.
Roland VP330 Vocoder
I never actually owned this instrument but there was one on hand at Trafalgar Studios during the Feel The Heat sessions, and we experimented with it, primarily on the song Reason. For the uninitiated, a vocoder allows you to manipulate the sound of a human voice while simultaneously re-pitching that sound, by triggering notes on the keyboard. It’s that sort of robotic vocal sound that you hear on many records, though these days it’s often software versions rather than a hardware keyboard like this. Roland have more recently released a mini version called the VP-03 and their vocoder technology has found its way into many of their other synth products. There is even a standalone Boss FX pedal version, the V-01.
In part two of this article I’ll move onto the instruments that shaped and underpinned my playing throughout the 80’s and beyond……..
BC
