An OG Cat was my 2nd synth. I had to resurrect it due to its having lived in an unfinished basement for years. But when I was done that kitty could squeal; that filter and the keybed were the hardest part of the rehab. Sadly gone now.
Love it! Having been playing with an SRM for the past couple of days I can testify to the quirky, wonderful ness of these synths. They really do sound huge!
Alex Ball Well if you ever find yourself on the south coast, you’d be welcome to stop by. I’m only borrowing this one though so not sure how long I’ll have it for.
I started with an ARP Odyssey in 1980, then a Prodigy. I had to sell both to pay for a repair to my Ford Capri. Once I could afford I restarted my collection with an Octave CAT.
The dynamic pulse sounded like sine wave PWM to me. I modded my ARP 2600 to replace the default pwm connection (the noise generator) with the ADSR for a similar effect. I know it's only a patch cord away but I used it so much on bass patches that it saved time and freed up a patch cord for other things.
They went into software and interfaces, yep. Synths had to be left in the past :( The Sound on Sound article in the video description goes over the whole thing.
Have always been very happy to be the owner since 11 years old of a Kitten II and now at the age of a bit older ... another Kitten II and the Cat SRM II. Oh ... and to have had direct communication with none other than Carmine Bonanno.
A trick used as far back as the EMS Electrocomp that was added to the Odyssey and then the CAT. An explanation from a qualified tech: "there is a chain of resistors in the keybed that work as a voltage divider. When a note is pressed the voltage charges a low leakage capacitor which is followed by a high-impedance op-amp buffer that effectively keeps that precise voltage in place, hence this is sometimes referred to as analogue "memory". Press a second key and the difference is added to the voltage stored in the capacitor with the lower voltage directed to the first oscillator and the higher to the second. Voilà - duophony."
Can you imagine... I mean with a dedicated built in vibrato technology and everything. It's like your very own radiophonic workshop right there in the front room.... and you don't even have to wear a brown lab coat. ..all on one master keyboard... truly we -are- _were_ living in amazing times.
Synth reviews here on RU-vid? Naaaaah... records and brochures - that's how it's done! 'Cilckbait' included: they heavily played on the CAT analogy - they were far ahead! ;)
You'll enjoy David's interview for the ARP documentary as he was big on the marketing thing. Pulled off some clever moves long before clickbait was invented.
you could show how to work from a score of a string or wind quartet ... even if it is something short of 20 measures ..... and how to work with the different joints in the DAW ,,, from a sibelius for example .. ..thanks since now .
Maybe I'm taken by the announcers smooth confidence, but seems like this was in certain ways speced better than the some of its competition, Minimoog for example?
Yeah, David was very successful at the marketing thing! Minimoog is actually a pretty limited synth as it was so early. The CAT is kind of an extended version of the ARP Odyssey, but without ring modulation. So guess it was pretty decent for the time, but not leagues ahead of competing products (Roland SH-5/SH-7, Yamaha CS-30/30L etc).
@@AlexBallMusic I somehow thought it as old as the Minimoog but after reading the description I see it was later , looking forward to the ARP documentary, the Roland one was fantastic!
"Now what is that our customers REALLY want from their instruments?" "The ability to badly emulate the sounds of various forms of transportation." "That's right, musicians want to... sorry, what?"
In was 1977. Musicians and sound designers wanted to be able to make lots of sounds easily and there was no such thing as samplers. A lot of the 70s synths boast that they can do "violins" and "tubas" or emulations of machinery as well as the synth sounds (that have been what actually endured) So, as comical as it seems, the sales pitch was effective. David helped sell a mountain of synths in the 70s (2600s, Odyssey, Omni, Solina, CAT etc)
This video is LITTERED with PURRFECT sounds, but is CATastrophically marred by the 1977 era record technology. It's a bit SCRATCHY and full of HISS, and the TAIL on the reverb definitely suggests springs. I had to PAWS it several times and go back to FURther analyze what I was hearing. You might try a WHISK, ER, I a mean a soft brush to NIP that missing part in the bud. PURRhaps for a FEE you can LINE up someone to CLAW that sound out out of the noise.
