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[Muso] Look what's back in Styl...

Started by mayer, November 23, 2008, 11:56:09 AM

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mayer

I was looking in the Maplin catalogue for Christmassy gifts and gadgety fun, when I happened across an entry for this:



From reading around here, here and here I discovered that the Stylophone was relaunched last year, and that you can pick it up for around £15 in quite a few places. The new version has three sound options, as well as a volume control and MP3 input, which sounds pretty swell.

As an instrument it's forever tainted as being horribly of its time and associated with Rolf Harris as a "novelty" instrument, but it's been used on some great songs over the years. It's probably most famous for its use in [noembed]Space Oddity[/noembed], which is a great, novelty song, which I guess makes its reputation a fair one!

I always thought Del Shannon's fantastic [noembed]Runaway[/noembed] and the nastiest love song ever [noembed]Hats Off To Larry[/noembed] used the Stylophone, but apparently they used the much more substantial Musitron, a souped-up version of the clavioline which preceded analogue synths. This review of the re-launched Stylophone promises something approximating the Musitron sound on one of the settings, which has clinched the decision for me to buy one the next time I get paid.

Has anyone here picked one up since the relaunch (or have one from the old days?) Am I likely to enjoy it for five minutes, struggle with the notes on [noembed]So Why So Sad[/noembed] and [noembed]Pocket Calculator[/noembed] and give up by January, or is a Stylophone not just for Christmas?

I'd heard they were back.  Oddly enough, the other week, I saw an original one, with Rolf on the box in a charity shop.  They wanted a stupid amount of money for it and they appear to have sold it too.  It didn't have the original 7" record with it though.

Lfbarfe

You people need to listen to Wednesday night CaB radio a bit more. I've been playing my reissue Stylophone over records for months. The reissue is identical to the original in every detail that matters (sound, etc), differing only in battery compartment design, etc. Before they came out, I nearly pressed the button on a hideously overpriced original on eBay, and am now glad I didn't. As well as the repro instrument, I have a copy of the 7" that came with the original here somewhere. I'll digitise it if anyone's interested.

actwithoutwords

I got one of these 6 months ago. It's a great little thing. Part of the novelty wears off after a while obviously. But I still dig it out to play along with my music collection regularly.

Lfbarfe

Tagger: Mine was bought for me by my wife, who'd managed to miss out completely on these first time round. As such, she didn't know what it sounded like. About 3 minutes after I'd unwrapped it, she said "If you don't put that back in the box right away, you'll find me only too happy to break your present in front of your eyes". I now use headphones.