Arp Rhodes Chroma Expander

images via this auction via Rob

"The Chroma was the last synth made by synth giants Arp Electronics, it was rebadged by the Rhodes company when they bought Arp out in the mid 80's. Rare synth, approximately 2000 Chroma keyboard's were made, but only around 200 Chroma Expanders were produced. The Expander has all the same superb sound as the Chroma keyboard, but fortunately none of the bulk. The Chroma keyboard is HUGE and weighs about the same as a CS80! [Update via Joseph in the comments: "Hi There the CS-80 Weighs 220 1/2 pounds (100.3 kg) And the Chroma weighs 71 pounds."] The Expander by contrast is very portable and takes up very little space which is great.

Here is a brief technical specification:
Velocity and aftertouch sensitive. 16 Oscillators. (Can be either 16 note polyphonic with one oscillator per voice, or 8 note, with two per voice) Pulse and Sawtooth waveforms. The PULSE and SAWTOOTH both have width controls, so the Sawtooth can be swept from a Sine wave through Triangle to Sawtooth. Multimode filter, 2 pole Band pass, 2 pole Notch, 2 pole High pass, 2 and 4 pole Low pass filter modes. White and Pink noise. 4 EGs. 2 LFOS with 16! different waveforms. Each VCO has independant portamento. Sync. Ring modulator. FM. Unison. It has a very flexible architecture much like a modular synth- but with patch memories.

Fab sounding synthesizer, great for string, pad sounds, resonant sweeps, vocal sounds, basslines, leadlines, FX. It can sound very percussive too, capable of cutting right through a mix. It has a recognisable classic 80's powerful analogue sound and was used on tons of records, Herbie handcock in particular is a heavy user, the lead line on Rockit was the Chroma.

To hear the sound of the Chroma in action i highly recommend checking out this Youtube video [see this post]: (Herbie plays the Chroma, 2:43 minutes into the video)

As well as restoring the electronics and case, i also added the new midi kit from the guys on Rhodes Chroma website, check out the midi kit specification here.

I recommend checking out the Rhodes Chroma website its an excellent resource!"