Stylophone Theremin

Stylophone Theremin Synthesizer

With the Theremin, Stylophone is expanding its range of gadget instruments with a Theremin synthesizer that goes its own way. For the longest time, the theremin synthesizer was the only electronic musical instrument that could be played without contact. Its history dates back to 1920, when it was first introduced in the USA by the Russian Lev Termen and was continuously developed further from the 1960s onwards by synthesizer pioneer Bob Moog. The Stylophone Theremin breaks with this tradition to a certain extent, as it wants and needs to be played at least partly by hand.

As has been the case for over 100 years, the pitch can be controlled contactlessly with the antenna and/or with the slider, which targets notes in the range of almost two octaves. Instead of a second antenna to control the volume, there is an optional drone mode or you can press the large trigger button to trigger a decay envelope with a downstream VCA. The analogue sound generation consists of two oscillators, the pitch of which can be adjusted independently of each other. For oscillator Orange, the waveform can be switched between sine and square. A switch is used to select whether one or both oscillators are played with the antenna, and a two-stage modulation between the oscillators is also implemented, which provides metallic FM sounds. This feature alone is a really cool addition to the sound palette that has never been seen before in a theremin.

Of course, there are also effects on board! On the one hand, a simple but effective vibrato effect can be switched on, and on the other, a delay effect is included that can be adjusted in terms of time, mixing ratio and Feedback.
The housing has the charm of an old laboratory device, a loudspeaker is built into it and it can be mounted on a standard microphone stand. Instead of the loudspeaker, the instrument can be connected to the outside world via the line or headphone output.