betcha Brian Eno's gonna snap this baby up...

September 24, 2014 9:23 AM

If you've got 20,000 to 30,000 bucks burning a hole in your pocket, you might consider purchasing the world's first electronic music synthesizer: the Helmholtz, which is up for auction.
posted by flapjax at midnite (22 comments total)

I need this so I can write some original tracks to accompany my DJ sets, which are performed on wax cylinders.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 9:29 AM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

(my synths are so vintage they have brass fittings)
posted by escape from the potato planet at 9:33 AM on September 24, 2014

They don't say whether or not it still works.
posted by benito.strauss at 9:43 AM on September 24, 2014

Eno? He'll have to fight Ralf Hütter for it.
posted by SansPoint at 9:44 AM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Anybody know of any links to examples of what the Helmholtz sounds like? I'm curious to know.
posted by Strange Interlude at 9:45 AM on September 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

I would absolutely bid on this if I could afford it.
posted by LooseFilter at 9:51 AM on September 24, 2014

Here's an interactive page where you can hear the sound of a Helmholtz "apparatus." Not the same machine that is shown on the auction page, of course, but clearly related.
posted by tg72657 at 10:04 AM on September 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

Oh my god, that is the most steampunk thing on earth!
posted by Naberius at 10:09 AM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

What, no USB? LAME.
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:13 AM on September 24, 2014

Sheesh, you kids. If it's not beaten out of the dried skin of an animal you killed with your bare hands it's not music. I'll play a sewn buffalo bladder filled with the teeth of my enemies any day, before I'd lay my hands this glittery brass nonsense.

Get outta my cave!
posted by CynicalKnight at 10:30 AM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

tg72657, that's certainly close enough for my purposes. Thanks! I wonder if anything was ever composed for it, although I imagine it would certainly be great for some Philip Glass or NEU! riffs.
posted by Strange Interlude at 11:03 AM on September 24, 2014

That is so beautiful, I wish I could afford to blow 20 grand on it.
posted by marienbad at 11:11 AM on September 24, 2014

No sampling. Less patches than a Moog. Lame.
posted by the painkiller at 11:19 AM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Something like this belongs in one of these places, where lots of people have access to it. It's amazing to me that the "first" of all kinds of electronic music instruments don't seem to hold the same cache' as the "first" of many different kinds of technology objects, or various other art objects.
posted by Vibrissae at 11:38 AM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

It's older than I would have imagined.
posted by el io at 12:10 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Eno? He'll have to fight Ralf Hütter for it.
posted by SansPoint at 12:44 PM on September 24 [1 favorite +] [!]

AND Mark Mothersbaugh.
posted by SPUTNIK at 12:36 PM on September 24, 2014

With all that brass, though, the damned thing goes terribly out of pitch whenever the temperature drops by even a few degrees. The metal shrinks, and the pitch goes up, and the intended "vowel sound" shifts unrecognizably. Anybody who's messed around with it soon learns to recognize the unmistakable oooooouuuuuuueeeeeeee sound of the Helmholtz contraction.
posted by Wolfdog at 2:29 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Naberius: "Oh my god, that is the most steampunk thing on earth!"

I'd say it's the second most steampunk thing. I'd argue that this is the first.
posted by symbioid at 2:33 PM on September 24, 2014

Sputnick is my hero today. I came to say that this should join Raymond Scott's Electronium in Mark Mothersbaugh's collection. Still haven't found any samples of this baby but if I find some I'll, as the man famously said, be back.
posted by cleroy at 2:52 PM on September 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

What, no USB? LAME.

Look, all you need is a simple and cheap USB to serial converter. It's not like this thing is so obsolete it uses vacuum tubes.
posted by localroger at 4:21 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yeah. But no, these would surely take the prize for desirable collectible devices of antique audio assemblage.

None survive. But some have been recreated. Track 3 is my fave.
posted by Devonian at 5:26 PM on September 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

betcha Brian Eno's gonna snap this baby up...

As long as he doesn't simply copy photos of it and claim it as his own ...
posted by filthy light thief at 7:31 PM on September 24, 2014