Studio 250

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THE COLLECTORS
THE
Collectors
> What do you do when your synth collection runs into hundreds? Build a synth
museum, of course, which is exactly what music shop owner Andy Horrell has
done. He treats FM to a private guided tour…
Words: Jonathan Miller
Andy Horrell runs EMIS
music store in Bristol and
has been collecting
synths since he first
bought a Roland SH-09 in
1979. He’s now
accumulated over 400
vintage synths.
>
Crumar and Odyssey
synths, plus loads of
rare modules
FM: What was it about the SH-09 that
gave you the collecting bug?
AH: It was amazing. All the patch charts
at the back of the manual were for things
like trains, trumpets, explosions… I’d
never heard anything else do that. The
shop I worked at was an ARP dealer, so I
remember an ARP Omni costing £1,000
and MiniMoogs cost £1,000 new, but the
SH-09 was only about £300.
FM: Do you still have it now?
AH: I traded the SH-09 in for the PolySix;
in those days you had to have either a
PolySix or a Roland Juno 60. I got it
because it was analogue and had portamento, whereas the Juno had digital
oscillators. I then replaced the PolySix
with a Yamaha DX7… I remember someone selling everything in their studio to
finance buying a DX7, and I suppose I did
the same when I bought a Roland D-50!
However, when it got to a point where
money wasn’t quite so much of an issue,
that’s when I properly started collecting.
FM: Can you explain such an addiction?
AH: I think everyone collects something,
to a degree. I was just intrigued by synths
and also I’d had this great idea that I’d
collect every synth ever made and
started to build up a database. Back then
I thought, ‘Right, I know of 10 Roland
synths, five or six Yamahas and five or six
Korgs… I’ll have them all!’ But then the
database ended up with something like
4,000 synths listed! At that point it
became obvious that it’d be impossible
to collect every single one.
It’s quite easy to collect all the obvious ones, but it gets worse when you
start looking into other countries. There
are lots of instruments in America and
Germany that never left those countries,
like all the EML stuff; nobody ever
brought that over here. [Andy’s referring
to Electronic Music Labs who made the
first sub-$1,000 portable synth (ElectroComp 101) which they allegedly stopped
building upon receiving a government
contract to build weapons!]
There are also all the variations to
contend with, like the SH-3 and SH-3a.
Roland also made two versions of the
SH-1000, each with different electronics
inside. And with the MiniMoog, you’ve
the first one, the second one, the one
with the gold plate on it… I think you
have to settle on one and leave it at that.
FM: Have you had any great bargains?
AH: The boom was seven or eight years
ago, when instruments turned up for 30 or
40 quid! It was ridiculous how unwanted
they’d become. But now they’re worth
more again, I haven’t sold any. I could
make a lot of profit, but for me, the
enjoyment is in owning them.
For instance, the Roland Jupiter 8
cost £4,000 in 1982, which was
>
102 FutureMusic
Andy crams his collection of
over 400 synths in the mezzanine
floor above his shop
>
THE COLLECTOR
BACK IN 1974, Andy Horrell was triggered into his vintage synth addiction by
the groundbreaking tones of Kraftwerk’s
Autobahn. Four years later, he landed a
job perfectly suited to his talents: repairing keyboards, organs and synths at his
local music store. Within a year he had
bought himself one of the first genuinely
affordable synths – Roland’s SH-09 – and
from then he started collecting vintage
synths. Nowadays he balances running
his own music shop (EMIS in Bristol) with
continuing to grow his collection, which
now numbers over 400! Andy honoured
us with a tour round his synth ‘museum’.
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MUSIC
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MUSIC
>
worth a good year’s wages back
then, probably the equivalent of
£20-grand today. But a second-hand
Jupiter 8 is now worth about £1,000.
That doesn’t sound expensive, but in
1988 you could probably have bought a
Jupiter 8 for 300 quid! What on earth
were they doing at that price?!
Everything seemed to go out of fashion so fast but then people realised their
true worth. The interesting thing is that
there is something like a quarter of a
million DX7s out there, a quarter of a
million D-50s and even more M1s. But
there were only something like 4,000
Jupiter 8s made, and probably less than
that now, because a few must have died
over the years. The scarcity means that
prices will gradually go up again.
Synton Syrinx
could do with them was make a loop
that went fast, because there wasn’t
enough sample time available to make it
any longer, and that’s the reason jungle is
so fast. Once cheap sampling drum
machines like E-mu’s SP12 are now
worth thousands!
FM: Now that you’ve got so much
stuff, is it ever tempting to sell some
of it to make a profit?
AH: A few years back, someone tried to
buy my 1983 Synton Syrinx [a rare Dutch
analogue monosynth]. I was offered
£1,700, which is an awful lot of money
for a little monosynth, but no one would
have been paying me that unless they
were going to ask someone else
to pay even more for it. I paid several
hundred pounds for it myself, but I didn’t
buy it to make money; I bought it
because it’s rare.
I did succumb to the temptation
of flogging my TB-303 though. I
Andy might show
you round his museum
if you ask nicely
>
FM: And what do you think about the
TB-303, which commands ridiculous
prices these days?
AH: Some things did go silly, and I have a
problem with the fact that a TB-303 or
TR-909 can be sold for £1,200! It’s a case
of people thinking, ‘We’ve got to have
one!’ They get an advance from a record
company, so they go out and buy a
TB-303 for £1,200, but don’t really know
why they’re buying one. The original
reason was because its pattern-based
programming allowed you to create
interesting patterns, which was very
techno at one time. Nowadays, people
think it’s all about its sound!
And the samplers too. With cheap, old
samplers, the only thing some people
>
Korg 770
Andy
and his
Stylophone
Wires
everywhere
Thunderchild
SZ3540
Solina String Synthesizer
ETI International 4600
E-mu
Modular
Korg PS3100-
SUS synth
I.N.Mitchell Microsynth
A full house
Scorpion
Stage Synth
Maplin Stereosynthesizer
Roland 100M modular synth
PPG 390 drums
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Russian
Polyvox
Sequential Circuits Split-Eight
Jellinghaus MS
DX7 Programmer
Roland SH-1 and
Kawai SX-240
Racks of modular synths
Various organs
>
didn’t pay much more than 30 or 40 quid for it, but once
they started going for 800 quid, second-hand, it was just
too much of a temptation!
SMS Multivox
Too many more to mention
FM: How do you make room for such a huge archive
of machines?
AH: The collection was originally scattered around my old
shop. When I bought this old schoolhouse to use as a shop, it
was 17 feet high inside, so I put in a second floor to house
the museum. The second level isn’t tall enough for proper
It makes FM programming a dream, with a switch and a light
for every parameter! And it has a wooden keyboard. I could
never part with it and nothing else does what it does. There’s
just something about a DX1 that makes you want to sit there
and play it.
FM: And are there any interesting histories attached to
any particular machines?
AH: All the Fairlights, being so expensive, were obviously
owned by somebody famous, but my Fairlight Series II used
“EVERYONE COLLECTS SOMETHING, TO A DEGREE, & I HAD THIS
GREAT IDEA THAT I’D COLLECT EVERY SYNTH EVER MADE!”
Caterpillar keyboard
with 360 Systems synth
Synthex synth
Andy next to the
Roland modular synth
Korg ‘Blackboard’ MS20
Wasp Special
Stramp Synchanger 2
shop use because the beams are too low, but it’s absolutely
fine for the museum.
FM: You call it a ‘museum’ but does that mean it’s open
for view?
Ah: I don’t charge anyone to go up there. Martin Newcomb
[one-time owner of the Museum Of Synthesizer Technology]
proved you could spend as much as you like on a museum of
synths, but try charging visitors a tenner, and nobody comes.
It’s odd.
I get loads of people phoning up saying, ‘I hear you’ve got
a synth museum, I’d love to come and see that!’ And I always
say, ‘No problem; come and have a look.’ But nobody ever
does. So you could never make it work as a paying museum.
It’s a private collection of synths. That’s all it really is.
FM: What would you say are the best bits of kit in such a
huge collection?
AH: I’ve got some great rare things, like the Ondes Martenot
(similar to the Theremin and used a lot by composer Olivier
Messiaen); several obscure Vermonas (East German keyboards); a Russian-built Polyvox (another Cold War casualty);
a Thunderchild (designed in collaboration with Jeff Wayne of
War Of The Worlds fame); and a Korg ‘Blackboard’ Synthesizer
(an MS20 monosynth built into a large, flat casing, designed
to be hung on a classroom wall for teaching applications).
FM: What’s your personal favourite?
AH: Anyone’s favourite synth has to be the one they use the
most and for me that has to be my Yamaha DX1! They didn’t
worry about the cost, so there are very few of them around.
to belong to Sarm Studios, who’d used it on the early Frankie
Goes To Hollywood records.
I bought a lot of stuff from Sky’s former keyboard player.
Although he wouldn’t sell some of it at first, over a period of
several years I actually bought the lot off of him! The Oberheim OB8 I’ve got up here is the one that was used on
Toccata. Certainly the Syrinx, the Oberheim DMX and DSX
were used on their recordings.
I’ve got quite a few of Bronski Beat’s bits and pieces, and I
bought a lot from Howard Jones when he had a mega
clearout. The TX816, TX802, drum modules and digital mixers
were his, because Yamaha used to give him stuff and say,
‘Please use this on stage.’
I don’t know who owned the PPG, but it must have been
someone famous; no one else could afford the eight or ten
grand it was originally priced at!
FM: As you can see from our photos, these synths are
stacked in Horrell’s ‘museum’, floor to ceiling, but does
that mean there’s enough space for the collection to continue to grow?
AH: “Seven or eight years ago, I didn’t have enough synths to
fill this space up. That’s when the collecting thing went a bit
mad. I could buy synths cheaply, business was doing quite
well and I had the space: three dreadful ingredients for an
enthusiastic synth collector!
Sometimes I imagine what I could do with the money if I
sold all that lot, but I know I’d regret it. Maybe I’ll do the
opposite: get another building and make it bigger! FM
★ Find out more at Andy Horrell’s website:
www.emismusic.com/museum/museumhome.htm
Electrocomp EML 500
ARP Quadra
Voice 430 and 430R
Korg PXR77 & various pedals
EML Syn-Key
Fairlight CMI