ARP Instruments, Inc.
ARP Instruments, Inc. was founded in 1969 in Newton, Massachusetts by electrical engineer Alan Richard Pearlman (born 1925 in New York, New York). The company derived its name from Pearlman’s initials, and existed briefly as the ARP Instrument Division of Tonus, Inc. The company seems to have first been located at 45 Kenneth Street, while later documents list 320 Needham Street, both in Newton.
Pearlman initially sought to develop high quality instruments that could compete directly with the commercially revered Moog systems that emerged in the late 1960s. The model 2500 system was the company’s first product, and remains the only fully modular instrument they ever designed. Released in 1970, it featured a unique matrix of patchable sliders, which distinctly separated Pearlman’s design aesthetic from that of American competitors Robert Moog and Donald Buchla, who employed the more conventional patch cables in their systems.
Pearlman began his career in electronics design as an engineering student at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. Following completion of his studies in 1948, he undertook several successful entrepreneurial ventures – including a merger with fellow engineer Roger Noble called Nexus Research Laboratory, which grossed at nearly 4M USD before being sold to Teledyne in 1966 – that allowed him to gain enough personal capital and investor support to form his own company. During this time, Pearlman also worked as an electrical engineer, designing amplifiers for NASA’s Gemini and Apollo space programs.
The practical experience he gained in working with, testing, and repairing devices designed for precision functionality can be seen to have been highly influential in his refined approach to instrument design: ARP instruments, especially when compared with the more primitive systems released by R.A. Moog Co. and Buchla & Associates in the late 1960s, have been historically lauded for the reliability and stability of their oscillator components and the sophistication of their implementation. With Buchla & Associates grounded primarily on the West Coast, ARP remained the New York-based R.A. Moog company’s foremost competitor throughout the 1970s. The model 2500 was released in response to the earliest Moog modular systems, while the more compact models 2600 and 2800, the latter of which was more commonly known as the Odyssey, were in direct opposition to the highly successful Minimoog.
Following the model 2500, ARP released an array of electronic instruments, including: the Soloist (1970), which is a compact, preset-based monophonic synthesizer; the 2600 (1971), a compact, semi-modular and patchable synthesizer that is arguably the company’s most iconic product; the 2800 or Odyssey (1972), a small, duophonic performance synthesizer that was also widely used throughout the 1970s; the Pro Soloist (1972), an revised version of the Soloist; the String Ensemble (1974), a polyphonic string synthesizer that is often referred to as the Solina after the company that manufactured it; the Explorer (1974), a small, monophonic preset-based synthesizer; the Omni (1975), another polyphonic string synthesizer with expanded tonal capabilities; the Axxe (1975), a single-oscillator analog synthesizer; the Avatar (1977), an Odyssey-inspired synthesizer module modified for control with an electric guitar; the Quadra (1978), a digital-analog hybrid synthesizer that combines four separate synthesizers into one; the Solus (1980), an analog monophonic synthesizer; and, a prototype for the Chroma (1981), a sophisticated polyphonic, digital-analog hybrid synthesizer that was later subsumed under CBS Musical Instruments, who released the instrument under the Rhodes moniker.
ARP began its decline into bankruptcy with the development of the Avatar, which, despite its technological forthcomings, was a commercial failure. The company had invested a significant amount into the research and development of this instrument and, as a result of an inability to overcome surmounting financial difficulties, discontinued business in 1981. The company’s assets and manufacturing rights were liquidated shortly thereafter, with the Chroma prototype being sold to CBS for a reported 350 000 USD. The instrument was dubbed the Rhodes Chroma with its release in 1982 and employed many groundbreaking features for the time, including sixteen-note polyphony, a weighted keyboard, a pseudo-digital interface, and the slider parameter editing system that was later implemented on synthesizers such as the highly influential Yamaha DX7. A revised version of the Odyssey is slated for release by Korg in 2014.
