WELSON BAND : Analog, Hexagonal and Spectacular

video upload by Vintage Audio Institute Italia

"Chapters
..................
00:00 intro
00:19 features
01:12 demonstration 1
03:01 auto accompaniment demonstration
06:41 organ mode and arrivederci

WELSON BAND (1976?)

There are quite a few cool machines we've managed to track down after searching for years, but very few have fallen into our laps.
But the Welson Band did just that.
We hadn't even heard of this stunningly beautiful machine at all when we bought it on a Google Alert whim - considering our obsession with auto accompaniment units - that's a rare first.

Acquired for next to nothing we managed to locate a PDF of its schematics - the only trace of this machine on the web - and swiftly failed to understand how one was supposed to control the harmonies of the accompaniments, meaning the bass, chords and arpeggiator.

The back does sport a connector, to hook up a potential bass pedal, accordion or controller keyboard to, but it's marked "Switch Board".
Remember, this was about 10 years before MIDI was invented so this machines for sure needed an external something to decide the key and harmonies.

We had our dear tech Andrea bash together a controller keyboard and it works and looks pretty well apart from being a bit crooked and not triggering all the time.

The video explains everything well so please read the text if you have any questions - in short the machine is fully analog, great drum sounds and the arpeggiator is to die for.

The VINTAGE AUDIO INSTITUTE ITALIA website is pretty much a catalouge of photos and descriptions of cool Italian synths and drum machines so head there : https://www.vintageaudioinstitute.com/"