ARP Odyssey v GForce Oddity v ARP Odyssei
ARP were founded by Alan Robert Pearlman plus cofounders Lewis G. Pollock and David Friend in 1969. As the main force behind the company, Alan got to use his initials as the company name (so much better than LGP or DF would have panned out). He also set out a clear direction for the company: to produce affordable – well, for the time anyway – stable and practical synthesisers, realising that the modular systems of the 60s were a million miles away from all three of these considerations.
The first thing to do was to invest in decent oscillator research, the fundamental core ingredient of synthesis, and the one variable that you could design to be not so variable and so stay in tune. The first fruits of this stability came in the form of the 1970 released ARP 2500, a hit with universities and research facilities (the main synth users of the time) and also with a certain alien species (see Ten Great ARP Appearances on p34).
The company’s next synth, the ARP 2600 was era-, tech- and synth-defining. It was portable (OK, not that portable),
