John Entwhistle's Steiner Parker EVI

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"Extremely rare 1970's STEINER-PARKER Wind Synthesis in superb condition, complete with controller, synth, footpedal and cables. Formerly the property of bass and brass legend, JOHN ENTWISTLE. Complete with original transit packing addressed to John!!!

As an instrument in its own right, this is a valuable collectors item. As a piece of history for WHO afficianados, this is unique!"
Update: some more info on the EVI via Mark Glinsky:
"For those unfamiliar with Nyle Steiner here is a short bio.

Nyle originally conceived of the concept of a brass-style electronic synthesizer in the 1960's. He began prototyping the concept in the early 70's and in 1975 Nyle completed his first playable electric valve instrument- the 'Steiner Horn'. A woodwind version was developed soon after. Around 1971, Nyle started working on this new idea. The prototype was finished about a year later, while it was not much to look at, it worked. The first production models were offered in 1975 with the rest of the Steiner-Parker product line. According to Mr. Steiner, around 200 were produced between 1975 and 1979. Most of them were sold to University electronic music departments and pop groups (one of the first systems was sold to Earth, Wind and Fire).

"I developed my own transducer using whatever- I tried a lot of things out. A lot of the main parts I had to build myself. The first one was just a switch. You blew and it turned on and off - just like pressing a key. Later I built a proportional transducer."

"The EVI (trumpet like interface) was a shoot off from the modular synths etc. At first I was not real serious about the EVI because I did not know how practical it would actually be. I started experimenting with it because I knew how to make the circuit work and I also could not play keyboard very well. It was not until later after a lot of experimenting that I realized that the EVI was worth really putting some energy into. I started experimenting with the EVI in the very early 70's but in about 1978 or so, it had finally evolved into an instrument that could be used at a professional level." - Nyle Steiner

How did they work? The first EVIs had a dedicated synthesizer module. It looked to be a single oscillator synthesizer with very simple controls (5 knobs and 4 switches). The first EVIs outputted a gate and a single control voltage. The gate was triggered by an air pressure sensor in the mouthpiece. Air was not actually blown through the instrument but through the mouthpiece, which measured the air pressure inside. Just like a trumpet, the harder you blew, the more air pressure was registered. The EVI outputted control voltage based on the keys which were depressed and the position of the cylinder at the end of the instrument. A combination of rotating the cylinder and thumb rollers selected the octave and the notes were selected by the three springed switches on top, positioned similar to a trumpet valves.

His instruments (the EVI and EWI) were well accepted by several top musicians including Michael Brecker. They were each hand made by Nyle Steiner himself.

In the mid 1970's, Nyle set up a small Salt Lake City Utah based synthesizer company named Steiner-Parker. The company produced various analog synths as well as the original Steiner EVI from approximately 1975 to 1980. In 1980, Nyle won the Linz prize for his EVI. In designing the original EVI, Nyle comments
"I found it was best to design my own synthesizer. With MIDI and some of the more advanced designs, there are some synthesizers that work pretty well with it without having to modify them, but it used to be that I had to modify the synthesizers so much that I just gave up and designed my own."

By the time Steiner-Parker disolved in 1979, many new and improved features had been incorporated into the EVI, including the ouput of control voltage from the air sensor(for volume), the "bite sensor" (for portamento), a vibrato sensor and even a pitch bending plate retrofitted later by Steiner. Also by the end of the 70's several interfaces had been developed to use the Steiner (as it was called by then) EVI with other commercially available synths and keyboards. The "canister" underneath the unit switches octaves / half octaves as you play through the "keys" (which cover about half an octave, as on a trumpet, before repeating patterns on the next set of notes, one half octave down or up).

Nyle Steiner eventually took his designs to Crumar which produced the Crumar EVI which debuted in 1980. Crumar was reported to have sold around 500 of these units. The Steiner company hooked up with Crumar at the end of the '70s and Crumar marketed the EVI for a while.

Around this time, Nyle's career was beginning to take some new turns. In 1979 he worked on the movie "Apocalypse Now" while commuting from Salt Lake City. He demonstrate the EVI for the producers and they really liked the sound. Nyle soon after moved to California and began to make a career for himself playing in the studios.

"Most of the film composers use EVI in one way or another - it's really good as an expressive melody instrument; the vibrato flexibility, the bending - it's really easy to play that way. The Steiner Microcon is a complete synthesizer (less keyboard) in a single module. It has its own power supply, VCO, LFO, VCF and envelope generator, thereby combining all of the most needed parts of a synthesizer in one unit. It can be used with synthesizer accessories such as sequencers, electronic valve instruments, guitar slave-drivers, pitch followers, or with a keyboard. Multiple units can be combined with a guitar controller to form full polyphonic synthesizers at a fraction of the cost normally expected. Combined with a regular synthesizer, it adds an extra 'voice' to your present system. "

"Oscillator stability and tracking are the best that state of the art will allow. Numerous inputs and outputs are available on the front and top of the unit. Other signals available inside can be brought out for special applications, and connected to other equipment in a variety of useful ways."

The Microcon truly packs alot of synthesizer into a small space (which looks to be about 4-inches by 6-inches). There are 8 knobs and 6 switches. The VCO has knobs for course and fine tuning and switches allowing selection of "three waveforms". The LFO has knobs for rate and level and a switch for beat and is available for vibrato. The VCF has knobs for frequency and gain, as well as a switch for resonance. The Envelope Generator has knobs for attack and decay, as well as a switches to enable damp (a quick release decay) and sustain. The VCA is described as a "trigger controlled audio gate". Connections include positive and negative trigger out, VC filter in, calibrated and uncalibrated voltage control ins, a signal out (which "can be paralleled"), and a trigger in. According to the product literature the "beat function causes the VCO to sound like to sound like two oscillators beating together."

The Microcon was rumored to be used as the synthesizer innards of the Hagstrom Patch 2000 guitar synthesizer, and is essentially the same synthesizer module that was included in the Crumar / Steiner EVI where the synth module was built into the EVI carrying case. In this situation though, having the Microcon as an external module allows much greater patching and expansion capabilities.

Much more information about the EVI and other wind instruments can be found at the EVI - EWI Site."