Cherry Audio's brand-new... Novachord?

[David Emm]

Of all the odd choices, the new offering is a Novachord and Solovox, as a pair. These seem more like a historical oddity than a broadly useful tool set. They're such antiques, recreating the grainy, mosquito-y, band-pass-y sounds would be a snap. It feels like a completist piece, whereas their Elka-X keeps surprising me with interesting twists & turns.

 

Between this and the Theremin, I smell a lot of heavy latex monster action. Aside from the obvious novelty uses, where would you apply it? I'm still stroking my beard, mentally grazing for an answer. Hmmm.... 🤔

[Mark Schmieder]

Yeah, I'm finally going to skip a new Cherry Audio product. I despise both instruments, and already have them well-covered anyway. To my ears, they sound worse than the worst imaginable string machine.

[Mighty Motif Max]

Interesting variety of reactions! I for one may make this the first Cherry Audio VI I pick up. I could see the Novachord as a pad machine - I never have gotten to play one but have long appreciated the sound. Also thinking this could be a nice addition for folks making R&B music and such - all sorts of sounds get sampled and turned into pads or synths, so this would fit right in that category.

[Reverend Rhythm]

I think we are going to see a wide variety of opinions on these new CA instruments.

[Justin Havu]

7 hours ago, Mark Schmieder said:

Yeah, I'm finally going to skip a new Cherry Audio product. I despise both instruments, and already have them well-covered anyway. To my ears, they sound worse than the worst imaginable string machine.

 

Same here.  I'm not seeing or hearing anything here that I wouldn't be able to do with a virtual string machine (Arturia Solina V, or the myriad of free Korg emulations from Full Bucket.

[RABid]

5 minutes ago, justin_havu said:

 

Same here.  I'm not seeing or hearing anything here that I wouldn't be able to do with a virtual string machine (Arturia Solina V, or the myriad of free Korg emulations from Full Bucket.

Same for me. I bought all of the products through the GS-80 and a lot of modules for the virtual rack synth. I didn't enjoy the GS-80 at all and have not loaded it since the week I bought it. I'd like to see them take the Artura route and go back to improve some of their current products rather than keep pushing out new synths every month.

[David Emm]

Where a Mellotron (usually) sounds evocative, the Novachord sounds like a neutered home organ too often for me. Most of the movies in which it appeared are older than a lot of Cherry Audio's buyers. Half of them are people old enough to have fondled a real CS-80. The other half are people fascinated by the tales of the first. I can only imagine what a 20-something might think of hearing U.K.'s "Alaska" for the first time, after which they sit at a GX-80 and try to decide where the hell to take it.

 

Besides, the realm of un-ported instruments is shrinking fast. There's been no Digital Keyboards Synergy, an additive synth that might be a good choice. It was woefully underpowered by modern standards and it could only store 24 presets per cartridge, but imagine amping that x 100. It only had 32 oscillators, but a patch could use up to four layers, like a D-50. If I can't get Chris Hugget's jaw-dropping Supernova, a Synergy could be tempting. Wendy Carlos sure wrung it out beautifully.