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Vako Synthesizers, Inc.

BiographyThe Orchestron was initially manufactured by Vako Synthesizers, Inc. (later changed to Viking Keyboard Systems), who purchased the technology of the failing Opsonar Optigan in 1973. In April 1973, the former president of the Optigan Corporation (the original manufacturer of the Optigan), F. Roy Chilton of the Chilton Corporation in Torrance, California, revealed a new instrument called the TalentMaker, which employed the same technologies and similar layout to the Optigan; Optigan would later sue for patent infringements. A few months later, the Optigan project was formally abandoned on account of declining sales; the rights to the Optigan trademark, its patents, and discs, were subsequently sold to the New York-based organ manufacturer, Miner Industries, who briefly established the Opsonar subsidiary in New Kensington, Philadelphia to continue production. The technology was again picked up by a former Moog Music technician and salesperson, Dave Van Koevering, and his Vako Synthesizer, Inc. company (the name taken from the ‘Va’ and ‘Ko’ of his surname), who sought to produce the more professionally minded Orchestron throughout 1974 and 1975. The name ‘Orchestron’ was given to reflect the instrument’s intended competition with the hugely popular tape-based analog sampler, the ‘Mellotron’. Very little else is publicly known about Van Koevering.