Tons of bonus content to this video: patreon.com/hainbach Thanks to Kyle Dixon for the interview! If you are interested in the Giallo disc, it will be up on optigan.com this week.

I would really like to own this, but I would also like to keep my kidney.

It doesn’t matter that I won’t ever have a one. The reason that I watch is that I like the feeling of child-like excitement about gear and making music. I can channel this same feeling to my Volca Keys or my Lyra or Digitakt. It’s about the approach more than the thing itself that feels special to me. The mindset. Well done as always!

Those dark drones are so cursed, I love it! 😻 "looks at price* 😱

My grandparents had an Optigan for a while, and while nobody would confuse it with any high-class tech, for me at 8-9 years old it was a blast. "If I had known then....." I am reading Karl Bartos' book right now, and I believe he mentions the Optigan along with the Orchestron, would have to go back & check...Definitely something to the whole optical looping thing, good reason it is coming back. I think that Singing Rhythm was an original 70s disc, as they released a few of the loops from the master tapes just as a sampling of what they had, I remember downloading this maybe around 1999-2000 or so. We need the chicken clucking loop on a new disc!!! Great work as always!

Ahhh, the Vako Orchestron. Kraftwerk's "Nashville connection". The instrument has some interesting connections. Dave van Koevering was still working with Moog when this was being developed, and his intention for it was for church bands. You could add one and get string pads, choirs, and other suitable church staples. Huh? See, Dave van Koevering was also running a consulting gig, consulting with churches to update their musical capabilities. Around Nashville (where van Koevering was based), many churches upped their music and audio systems with his advice. But the Orchestron sorta kinda took on a life of its own, especially after it first popped up on Kraftwerk's "Radioactivity". Then Patrick Moraz commissioned a custom one with FOUR manuals and drives. And...it never took off. Part of the problem was that van Koevering saw this as something that stays in the church sanctuary with the rest of the praise band gear. So WEIGHT never factored into his original design. No, it doesn't weigh as much as a CS-80...but it IS in that general hernia-inducing range. Dave DID pay attention, though, coming up with a collab with Calzone Cases that gave the instrument a roadable Anvil Case-type housing. It made it safer when hauling it around...but it didn't do much about that weight problem. The downfall of the Orchestron was primarily due to technological advances. When Vako released it, it had few competitors. The idea was that it was meant to compete with the Mellotron while eliminating some of the Mellotron's drawbacks. But when early samplers started becoming cheaper, such as in the case of eMu's Emulator, people flocked to the better fidelity of the digital samplers. Vako shut down in the early 1980s, not long before Ensoniq showed up with the Mirage. BUT...samplers (at least, in their early incarnations) lacked the not-quite-rightness of the Orchestron. The wobble, fidelity, etc could be programmed into a given sampler patch, but it never matched the "oddly flawed" sound that a Vako could spit out. The other issue with the Orchestron, however, was the scarcity. Estimates range from 50 to 100 or so "standard" Orchestrons being produced. So this likely explains why I've only ever seen ONE in the wild, even though it was manufactured in my old hometown, with its huge installed base of whatever tech you could think of. I've actually had more encounters with the Orchestron's predecessor, the Mattel Optigan, than the sole one I've had with the Vako. The worst problem still plagues Vako users to this day: the discs. The Orchestron used glass discs. As in "if you break this, you're utterly boned". And this is even more true these days, as we get further afield from the Vako's optical reader tech. But as on the Panoptigon, you could stack discs up with some interesting results. The Panoptigon is technically a fourth-gen instrument. Its start came from the Chamberlain, which begat the Optigan, which turned into the Orchestron, and that spawned the Panoptigon. A long, strange trip to be sure! But oddly, the price for a tricked-out Orchestron hot off the line and the price for a similar Panoptigon are not that far apart. Plus ça change...

07:21, Wow a knob that turns everything into Angelo Badalamenti darkness! :-D

It's great how companies like Quilter Labs are creating new record/vinyl players for sampling similar to the Vako Orchestron. I love the lo-fi tone of the discs played in the video, including the Giallo disc! Another awesome video Hainbach!

I can't wait to see what delights yah come up with using this thing! Thanks for sharing.

What an absolutely wild and unexpected instrument! I don't even fully understand it, but I love that it exists. I definitely love the Stranger Things soundtracks, it brings me back to my childhood in the 80s, very nostalgia-creating.

Wow I’m totally mesmerized by this unique piece of gear. You now have unlocked my next purchase obsession!

Karl Bartos was waiting for this for so many years. But Ralf didn't want to spend more money... 🤣 "Viel Spaß mit dein Vako (das hab' Ich dir frisch gekauft)!" - "Have fun with your Vako (that I just bought for you)!"

It’s so nice to see you and Kyle together talking about this inspiring machine. I absolutely want you new disk!

Ive been collaborating with another sonic artist recently. I have most of my most useful gear in a "touring" flight case. So one of the ideas we've been exploring is, that everything has a useful sound. The willingness to embrace this opens up many possibilities, as Kraftwork found. This has worked well as we've been putting together long form ambient work. We're able to find the right frequency gaps to fit in just about anything, with a bit of modulation and eq thrown in.

3:20 sample used on coil's "where are you?" and goldfrapp's "eat me"

omg I love it. I wish I had a some more fun instruments and sound design tools like that and even just a variety of Synths. But It challenges me to make sounds in ways most probably wouldn't even ponder on. I will definitely be going through your videos later to see what other fun eargasm causing things you have in your studio

Ooooooh! - looks interesting, thanks as always

Well, that thing sounds AMAZING

Very cool stuff!

That optical sampler kit has a nice gnarly sound to it!🙂🙂 Sounds cool🙂🔊🙂🔊

For the price of this machine you should be able to make your own custom optical discs. They should really offer a service that can make custom discs for you.

Great conversation!

I'm curious what it would sound like if you printed various patterns (checkerboard, lines etc.) on transparencies and played that :) (Not following the optical grooves)

Must say that the precursor of the orchestron was the Daphne Oram's "Oramics" system. She literally DREW the waveforms on transparent acetate stripes (a set of parallel ones). The concept is basically the same, only having all the stripes potentially synch-ed and same duration. While in a concentric wave, you have different durations depending on the circumference position. And probably they wouldn't sync very well.

absolutely fantastic

This is a dark ambient machine!

8:20 Portishead needs to get one of these and MAKE A NEW ALBUM

Nice one!

Fantastic!

Let’s just 🙏 they drop a vst version for us mere mortals!

Sounds great bro even if I don't understand all what you are doing with all these machines and vinyles 😂❤

top shelf content!

I really like the sound of this thing!

It looks like it's a large disc hard drive with interchangeable discs. Interesting and beautiful. EXPENSIVE.

Loving the opening track!

One for the ever increasing list of great gear I might never be able to afford but am happy is out there. Great days.

Oh yep. this deff going into the collection...

surprise surprise new find ....wunderbar

It was also used on Blue Monday (Kraftwerk sample)

This is definitely a cool tool. The closest thing I can come to what you're doing is playing with the "Simpler" in Ableton. Though it isn't as feature rich as a singular instrument, what it does let you do is feed your own tracks into the playback utility like it is a mellotron. I have made loads of tapes and transcribed them into digital and any of my weird old stuff I did i can now create an instrument out of it, with the warts and weird sounds intact. Great video!

Thank you Hainbach for another beautiful video. Thank you Kraftwerk for an amazing body of work. Thank you DETROIT for creating techno.

Love it❤ lets be patient, maybe in a couple of years 😊

Very interesting device 😃

Nice sitar tone!

It's got all the wow and flutter you will ever want. And then some.

Interesting electro-mechanical instrument with a nice sound. The physical manipulation is good and it's like a more accurate, smooth bit crunched Mellotron.

at the 05:55 mark i thought to myself that this sounds very dungeon synth/ambient black metal. Cool instrument!

Wow 16:00 is all I ever wanted my ears to hear. Could be used in black metal too

By the way, KW's "Uranium" choir was sampled by New Order for their "Blue Monday" master hit.

Wonderful! And also my career as a weirdo wedding entertainer can finally take off.

4K wow

that waltz time rhythm section is at warp speed...

I don't need a Panoptigon... I don't need a Panoptigon... I don't need a Panoptigon Damn it. It's not working. I want a Panoptigon

it wobbles!

the singing rythm was used in a song on epidemic sound ages ago, if you happen to have watched old seananners videos you know which one

Herrlich! suRRism cheers! ❤

pat quilter is a cool guy!

iOptigan for iPadOS does have a lot of those loops but not the famous choir sound on the keys.

Yea if I could. I like this box.

Love the Panerai watch also 😅

These would work really well in Rap, Soundtrack work or odd pop type music.

Looks interesting, a labour of love for the designer but for the rest of us a bit of a gimmick. Mellotron or Memotron is a better investment or if you want this kind of sound plus to be able to make your own sounds the Onde Magnetique is much cheaper and gives you the same vibe.

Very cool! Looked into it right away and then the price...sigh! I guess it's another instrument out of reach for now. Thanks for sharing it though

cool

If the part 6:44 where it slowed down had a saxophone on it I feel like it would’ve became a lo-fi version of Bohren & Der Club of Gore.

Ay 3:11 I immediately thought of Coil and the tune "Where are you? " from the Musick to play in the Dark Vol 2. I don't know if they used one of those but it wouldn't surprise me. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/mqiWlcWVz5a9lGw.htmlsi=2qyROVHXyAZg37kW&t=63

Did Vangelis use the Optigan? The choir in Popol Vuh's 'Aguirre' sounds very similar to the later added 'deckard dream sequence' of the unicorn in Blade Runner.

I love your channel. I really do. However, I become insane with envy seeing your studio. Fuck!

MORE GEAR!

Pea Hix is a Hero

I wonder if you could do something similar with a cd player by controlling the speed and its direction ?

2:32 don't put you thumb on that?? (But, I guess the resolution is much larger, so it's less of an issue)

Reminds me of those tracks which were intended to emulate someone’s descent into dementia

Sagenhaft🙏👌🎹🎹🎵🎶

Damon Albarn is another Optigan fan, he used one with Blur a few times.

Has got me wondering if I could rig up cv inputs to the pitch & somehow direction of my record deck 🤔

An optical disk system? I see what you did there.

Very cool, and quite a lot of money, I hesitate to call it expensive, as they are such a niche product. For us non pro cheapskates, it can all be achieved digitally 😅

Will you be bringing it on tour or is it too fragile? Looking forward to Colchester UK date next year 😊

i did not want to know about this i already have too much stuff :(

What does it take to create your own disks?

J&B spent far too much funding Gialli in the 70's for them to be called B-Movies.

Do you edit your videos yourself? Which camera setup you have inplace? Which editing software?

4k and in stock now. lol.

Someday someone will give us the way to print any sound on a Optigan/Vako/Talentmaker disk. BtW, do you know that a vast majority of the sounds you can find in these optical disks where also used to make the Chamberlain/Melotron tapes? (As point out K Dixon, the optical disks have this "superiority" to the melotron system as they can play loops, not just 8 seconds of tape, when you sustain chords like Kraftwerk did it's important!) "Uranium choir" is maybe one of them, with its indirect 3rd life as a sample in New Order's Blue Monday

I want one, but the price is a bit high for me at the moment. Considering that you can make samples for it, makes me want it even more. I would rather have this, than a Mellotron, due to the ability to make samples. This is one of the coolest/weirdest piece of gear, that I've seen in a long time. I love wonky and creepy sounds, with gritty textures. It would be cool if they could find a more affordable way to make them, and get the price down some. For example, I don't need FX. I basically just need the essentials, to do what I want.

I will stick with iOptigan. Used to have an actual Optigan, but it literally disintegrated after many attempts to fix it. A more robust modern version could be fun and hopefully less $$$$

Das Karl Bartos Buch wirklich meine Bibel, wie ich jetzt meine Leidenschaft und Philosophie in Musik besser benutzen kann. Nur ist beim Synths einfach so: man sieht ein Video von dir, man denkt "geil, brauch ich", und sieht das dieses Gerät 4000$ ist und einfach dabei ein Herzinfakt bekommt. Hainbach ist schon ein richtiger Atze

Always wondering if laser discs could be scratched with a giant cdj 😃

Grab an Optigan if you can't afford this. I picked one up just a few years ago with a bunch of discs for only $200 and a long drive.

I generally appreciate this channel without compromise. Also the content in this post, but I don't understand the headline - "The Optical Sampler Kraftwerk Loved Modernized". First of all, it's a sample-player, not a sampler (unless you are equally privileged that they put your sounds and samples on such discs). And secondly, I don't understand syntax and grammar. Thirdly, I don't understand the connection between Kraftwerk and 'sampler'. As far as I know they never used one, or even a sample-capable machine like the Fairlight. Looping & pitching yes, but sampling (technique/machines?! Could be, but I'm not aware of it so far. But that doesn't detract from the informative and pleasantly presented content here.

Nothing that can’t be done with other “tools”, nevertheless interesting how things were made 50 years ago.

Far in the future, aliens discover the Voyager 1 probe. They build a machine to play the Golden Record. An alien Hainbach uses it in his music. When you give the Panoptigon some thought, this is a real work of dedication and love to a mind-bogglingly niche machine.

If anybody is going to implement this as a VST plugin I would definitely contribute to it.

Very cool! I really want one, and I'm not really joking! $4,500.00? No! Luckily it's on special offer now! Sale price $3,999.00 😥😢😭😱

Are you publishing these tracks?

A very expensive investment, it's a shame you can't record your own samples on it.

Oh good lord - your Vocoder needs some tuning. The white noise support for the "s" is WAYYYYY too harsh. ;D

oooo

Nice ya can pitch stuff up and down for 4000 dollars! 😂. Just kidding.. it’s very 😎