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ARP Avatar

Analog sythesizer modul with pitch to CV converter

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ARP Avatar
ARP Avatar
2 000.00 street price

A kind of keyboardless modification of ARP Odyssey, designed to function with a guitar. This is one of the first guitar synthesizers (a guitar-driven synthesizer would be more correct) and one of the greatest failures in the history of ARP. The idea was simple: there were many more guitarists than keyboardists in the music industry, so why not grab this part of the market? ARP never did a real market research and didn’t suspect that the idea was a failure for a primitive reason: few of the guitarists were willing to shell out ($3,000) for a big, but still a gadget. And provided the imperfection of converting the guitar signal into a control voltage (CV) - the number of those who agreed to purchase it turned out to be very small. Thus, Avatar became one of the issues contributed to the collapse of ARP.

Interaction with the guitar occurs when using a special pickup with separate coils for each string, in other words the pickup consists of six independent ones combined into one. The signal from each string enters the synthesizer, where the conversion of the signal frequency to 1V/oct is carried out. The output section allows the pure signal to be mixed with the synthesizer signal.
All module controls are identical to those featured in Odyssey, except for the guitar signal processing unit. It includes:
Sensitivity control.

Six switches that correspond to each guitar string, allowing you to select the strings to be processed by the synthesizer.
A fuzz switch for the guitar, which is sent to the output section.
The polarity switch of the envelope generator or the choice of the envelope control with the foot switch.

There are connectors (inputs and outputs) on the rear panel of Avatar for working with CV and gate control signals, which allows the module to be used as part of a modular synthesizer system or with a MIDI-CV converter.
ARP Avatar was used by 808 State, ABBA, Bomb The Bass, Chick Corea, Cirrus, Gary Numan, Genesis, Herbie Hancock, Tangerine Dream.

Country of origin / production: USA

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Usage area
Synthesizer 
Archetype
Analogue (A) 
Polyphony
Monophonic 
Voices1
Tone Generator / Sound Synthesis
Synthesis Method Analog Additive
Oscillator Type VCO (Voltage Controlled Oscillator)
Oscillators per voice2
Waveform/ Spectral form (main generator) Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)
Waveform/ Spectral form (main generator) Saw
Filter
Voltage Controlled Filter (VCF) 
2-pole 
4-pole 
12dB 
24dB 
Envelope Generator (EG)
FilterADSR/AR
AmpADSR/AR
ADSR 
AR 
Modulation
LFO: LFO Count1
Effects
Ring Modulation 
External controllers
CV/ Gate IN 
Audio out
Mono 
Analogue: 1/4" (6.35mm)1
Power
Voltage 100V
Voltage 110V
Voltage 115/117V
Voltage 120V
Voltage 50Hz
Case/ body
Metal 
Color
White 
Black 
Production start1977
Production end1978
Production ended

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