THE SOLTON DISCO 64

video upload by Vintage Audio Institute Italia

"On a sunny afternoon a few years ago we hooked up the Solton Disco 64 to make a co-hesive demonstration of its capabilities just to see the machine literally start smoking due to burned transistors.

The attempt was aborted and it's not until now that we've managed to get the machine fixed so we can give it a second try.

Boy this thing is as rare as it is cool - complete with SSM filters it's the predecessor to the more famous and common Solton Programmer 24.

This is not really a disco machine per se - it has 4 Disco rhythm patterns on board indeed but Waltz, Bossa Nova and all the standard rhythm patterns of most drum machines of the era.

Quite a few machines featured Disco in their names for no other reason than the hype and coolness of the genre at the time of production.

The Disco 64 has more features than most auto-accompaniment units: there's the chords section, a string machine, a monophonic bass synth with individual volumes for each section, mute options, 4 bass line variations, cut-off and resonance filter, different chord sounds and of course an analog drum machine with individual sound mute options. You can play the string machine and bass synth like a keyboard, independently from the auto comp section so it's a monophonic and polyphonic synth as well as an auto accompaniment unit.

Apart from separate outputs for the drums and auto comp section, this one came modded with a separate output for the string machine, very useful for running it through effects."

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