One of the World’s Largest Collections of Vintage Electronic Music Gear is in Montco

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Image via Electronic Music Education and Preservation Project.

One of the largest collections of vintage music gear saved as part of the Electronic Music Education and Preservation Project is housed in a warehouse in Harleysville, writes Peter Crimmins for WHYY.

The collection is crammed with amplifiers, synthesizers, guitar pedals, mixing boards, and various other electronic eccentricities.

Image via WHYY,
at the Electronic Music Education and Preservation Project, housed in a warehouse in Harleysville.

It is rich in analog electronics that were mostly used during the 1960s and 1970s but also spans the early age of synthesizers from the 1930s to the late 1980s.

The Electronic Music project has no computers in the building intentionally, other than a few rare digital prototypes created in the early 1980s.

And each piece in the warehouse tells a story.

There is “a Sennheiser Vocoder that belonged to Kraftwerk,” said executive director Drew Raison. The contraption has 50 knobs and about 30 cable ports.

Among the electric organs is a Hammond B-3 that used to belong to John Entwhistle of The Who, along with the organ Rick Wakeman of the band Yes used to record “Roundabout.”

According to Raison, the entire Electronic Music collection comprises 2,000–3,000 treasures.

Read more about the Preservation Project in Harleysville at WHYY.

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