Vermona Piano-Strings
1978 built in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the former east German. And although all the lables are in english, it was sold to the UDSSR mainly. There was also a version in the same look, but without the string section. Named Vermona Piano.
There is a nice (german only) page about them on the official Vermona page:
www.vermona.de/htm/strings.htm
The note name lables on the keys and the little dots left of them are now gone. By using pure alcohol I was able to remove the permanet felt tip marker writing.
It is build like most of the string machines from this time. A high frequency top-oscillator is divided into 12 freqeuncies that make up the top octave. Each of the 12 notes is then divided down by 2:1 several times to create the different octave found on the keyboard and in the footages of the different registers. All this is done with square waves. These are then mixed, filtered or shaped to generate the the sound. Yws, this is just like an typical organ keyboard.
But then comes the very special sections that makes to sound different from a simple organ:
the multiple analog chorus unit.
You can see it under the keyboard action in the picture above.
The top oscillator and the top-octave divider ?
This is one of the three nearly identical chorus FX boards. they are used as a single chorus in three different presets on the piano sound. Or (if not cheated by pressing two preset buttons at the same time) passing two of them for the string sounds.
The transistor emitter brigade analog delay used for the few millisecond chorus effect is a well known western world one: TDA1022. It is the very same analog chip as found in nearly all other string machines I got here.
I wonder why they put the chip on a tiny sub-board. Anyone?
The blue flag under the instrument is an original flag of the "Junge Pioniere", a former east german youth organisation ruled by the goverment. The words in the flag under the flames of the torch translates to: "be ready". No this is history here in the reunited germany for more then 17 years.
Read more about this part of the newer german history here.
zu den Synthies
to the Synths