MATRIXSYNTH Visits Synthorama

I recently had the privilege to visit the Synthorama synthesizer museum in Luterbach Switzerland. My synth buddy Georg Muller, aka swissdoc was gracious enough to pick me up from my hotel and take me to the museum where I met the curator, Martin Hollinger. Thank you Georg! I also want to thank Martin for his hospitality and for making such a place available to the public.

The experience was overwhelming to say the least. I have never seen so many rare synthesizers in one location. The museum is impeccable and the majority of synthesizers are hooked up and ready to be explored. I of course took pictures and video. Unfortunately I did not gather much audio for three reasons. First, time was limited; my visit was approximately for four hours and trust me that was not enough. Second, I have a Flip Ultra video camera which is very convenient for travel, however there is no audio in. And third, the majority of synths in the museum are not hooked up to monitors or amps. There is a VERY good reason for this. The synths sit on tables and visitors are free to explore all of them. Too many visitors playing synths over speakers and monitors.. well, you get the idea. You instead use headphones to listen them. This is very nice as you can surround and isolate your listening to one specific synthesizer at a time.

As for the images, I will be posting sets over the next few days as time permits. Being the synth obsessive I am, I took 756 images, that's approximately 1.44G of photos. I took about 40 minutes of video. The video is a literal walk through the museum. I'll explain more when I put them up, but first the photos. Note that I created a synthorama label below specifically for the posts I plan to put up. I will of course continue to put other posts up. As I finish sets of posts for a given run, I will upload another set or two as time permits. I will put Synthorama in the title of these posts for easy identification as well. If you are into synths, you are in for a very special treat.

BTW, I need to call out the enormity of synths on display. I went in expecting to spend a few minutes capturing the synths on video and taking pics followed by digging in. I ended up spending TWO HOURS taking the pics and video (oh, what I sacrifice for you, my readers... :). I had two hours after that to play. If you plan on visiting the museum, I strongly recommend you come prepared, give yourself enough time, and be patient with yourself if you plan to take pics, video and/or capture audio. It is overwhelming.

Martin is an extremely gracious host. He makes you feel more than welcome and he encourages you to just go off and explore on your own, at your own pace, and for however long as you like. Note that the museum is only open on the first Saturday of every month and I believe the doors close around 4PM, so be sure to check with Martin on the hours before you go, or just show up knowing you have until roughly 4PM or so. I like to think there are a few synth meccas out there - places where if you truly appreciate synths you must go at least once in your lifetime. Synthorama is definitely one of them.

To close this post, I want to again thank Georg (swissdoc) for taking the time out to take me there and of course Martin Hollinger for his hospitality and of course for making such a fantastic place even possible.

P.S. A quick note on the images and video. In general, I will be putting them up in the order that I took them to give you a sense of the time-line for my journey. The file names of the shots are numbered so if you are OC like me you can see them. As for this last shot, Martin also appreciates skate boarding! How cool is that? There's actually a cool synth connection coming up.