ARP Odyssey v GForce Oddity v ARP Odyssei

Our second mono to take on its equivalent desktop and iOS software is the ‘other’ 70s classic, the ARP Odyssey. This not only went toe to toe with the Minimoog in that decade, but featured in many a synth pop classic (thanks to just one man), and its forefathers even took on a bunch of aliens, twice… and won!

ARP were founded by Alan Robert Pearlman plus cofounders Lewis G. Pollock and David Friend in 1969. As the main force behind the company, Alan got to use his initials as the company name (so much better than LGP or DF would have panned out). He also set out a clear direction for the company: to produce affordable – well, for the time anyway – stable and practical synthesisers, realising that the modular systems of the 60s were a million miles away from all three of these considerations.

The first thing to do was to invest in decent oscillator research, the fundamental core ingredient of synthesis, and the one variable that you could design to be not so variable and so stay in tune. The first fruits of this stability came in the form of the 1970 released ARP 2500, a hit with universities and research facilities (the main synth users of the time) and also with a certain alien species (see Ten Great ARP Appearances on p34).

The company’s next synth, the ARP 2600 was era-, tech- and synth-defining. It was portable (OK, not that portable), had three oscillators, built-in speakers and its own spring reverb. Much loved by everyone from Stevie Wonder to Underworld, it went through less than ten revisions over a ten-year period, and only sold around 3,000 units, but made such an impact that it is being emulated widely to this day by Korg and others in hardware, and many more in software. In fact it will get its very own feature like this one over coming months, but now to the start of the Odyssey’s, er, odyssey…