via Piedemont Piano Company"This is an extremely rare and historically important instrument. The Storytone piano was built in 1939 in a joint venture between Story & Clark and RCA - the piano has normal strings and action but no soundboard - the sound is amplified by pickups and a speaker system making it the world's first practical electric piano. The sound is very beautiful considering its design during the infancy of amplified instruments. As you can see the design is striking - art deco at its most radical. In excellent condition. Height 36in. Serial number 175267."
I'm not seeing this one on 120 Years of Electronic Music. Check out the site for a historical timeline of electronic instruments.This one in via Jafafa Hots
Update: see the comments of this post for some links.
I love the CP-80...I wonder if this sounds anything like it.
ReplyDeletewould love to hear a demo
ReplyDeleteGoogle search turns up a few things. As I suspected, it was apparently released in conjunction with and appeared at the 1939 World's Fair.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.jitterbuzz.com/indtv.html
One for sale a few months ago:
http://www.piano-tuners.org/piano-forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8264
And there are others, a museum in Scottsdale apparently has one:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lenright/4946968037/
And there's also a YouTube video, but it only shows the keyboard and so if the name may have been generic at some point it may not be the electric one being tested.
Oh I love how that looks!!!!!! Design today is crap compared to stuff like this :)
ReplyDelete