Sure, it looks like an old answering machine, but to serious synth dorks, the Stylophone has full-on legend status. Invented in 1967 by Brian Jarvis, it’s an analog synth with a curious interface tweak: you use a stylus to play it. That contributed to the Stylophone’s wonderfully compact form factor and cool, immovable keypad. Sure, Steve Jobs may have hated styli, but musicians like David Bowie and Kraftwerk dug the Stylophone so much that it was rebooted in 2007 after initially ceasing production in 1975.Because a famously quirky — the first generation stylophone didn’t have a volume control, I guess “loud” is always the best option — portable synth is about as Motherboard a musical device can be, we sent some of our English compatriots to chat with Jarvis in 2009, along with Stylophone revivalists like Little Boots and the Stylophone Orchestra of Great Britain. Throughout our mucking about in Stylophone history, we had just one question: How is it that a goofy synth became known by some as the “greatest little instrument of the century?” It’s a wonderful look at the days of analog synth experimentation that, with the advent of software circuit bending, may never be replicated.Follow Motherboard on Twitter: @motherboard.
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