OBITUARY
58 Australian Hi-Fi
A
RP (his childhood nickname)
was, literally, a rocket scien-
tist. After serving briefly in
the US Army and then grad-
uating from the Worcester
Polytechnic Institute in Mas-
sachusetts, he started his career in electronics
working for NASA, where he was involved
in designing and building instrumentation
amplifiers for the Gemini and Apollo space-
craft. He left NASA to co-found (with Roger
Noble) Philbrick Researchers and then later
founded Nexus Research Laboratory, whose
primary business was designing and building
solid-state operational amplifiers. Both com-
panies were sold to Teledyne in 1966, which
created Teledyne Philbrick Nexus.
Three years later, after hearing Bob Moog’s
synthesiser, Pearlman and David Friend
established ARP Instruments to manufacture
synthesisers of their own design. This switch
to musical instrument production wasn’t
such a stretch for a rocket scientist, because
Pearlman was a proficient pianist and his sen-
ior thesis at Worcester Polytechnic had been
an envelope follower which could sense the
attack, volume, sustain and decay of any note
played on an electronic instrument.
Pearlman introduced his first synthesis-
er, the ARP 2002 in 1970. It was followed
then by the ARP 2500 and then the moreAlan Robert Pearlman,
designer of the famous
ARP range of syn-
thesisers and Moog’s
most famous (and infa-
mous!) competitor, has
died aged 93.
asaninstrument,assoftwareand,most
famously,asaniOSapp.
Despitehissometimes-acrimonious
commercialrelationswithRobertMoog,
whoclaimedthatPearlmanhadstolenthe
designforhisvoltage-controlledfilter,(ac-
cordingtoa storytoldinthebook‘Analog
Days,TheInventionandImpactofthe
MoogSynthesizer’,byTrevorPinch)Pearl-
manwashappytogiveMoogcreditwhere
it wasdue,eventothepointofpublically
admittingthatMoog’ssynthesisershad
‘moreinterestingsounds’thanhisown.
Pearlmanregisteredmorethantwodozen
patentsconcernedwithsoundsynthesis,a
listofwhichcanbefoundatwww.tinyurl.
com/AHF-ARPZ2
Ironically,atthetimeofARP’s
bankruptcyin1981,it wassittingona
goldmineintheshapeofa yet-unreleased
product,theChroma,a microproces-
sor-operatedtouch-sensitivepolyphonic
synthesiser.Asa partofthebankruptcy
settlement,CBSMusicalInstruments
acquiredthemanufacturingrightsforthe
Chromaandsoldmorethan$3mil-
lionworthoftheminthefollowing 12
months.
FollowingARP’s 1981 bankruptcy,
Pearlmanmovedintothefieldofcomput-
ergraphics,establishinga companycalled
SelvaSystems,andalsocollaboratedwith
RayKurzweil,helpingdevelopsynthesisers
forhiscompanyKurzweilMusicSystems.
HealsocollaboratedwithKorgonthede-
velopmentoftheKorgOdysseyandwith
WayOutWareonthedevelopmentofits
Timewarp 2600 emulator.
Ina mannerbefittingPearlman’sinitial
careerasa rocketscientist,anARP 2600
wasusedtohelpcreatethevocalizations
forR2D2,andanARPOdysseytohelpcre-
atePeterHowell’supdateofRoyGrainger’s
originalthemeforDoctorWho.successful ARP 2600, as well as a range of
other synths including the Soloist, Omni and
Quadra.
The early ARP synthesisers had the ad-
vantage of using matrix switches to inter-
connect the different synthesiser modules,
which meant users didn’t have to use patch
cords that were omnipresent on competitive
models. However, Pearlman knew that the
switches on the 2500 were noisy, so with
the ARP 2600 he re-introduced patch cords
that could be used optionally, for those users
wanting quieter circuitry.
One area where ARP initially started
clearly ahead of its competitors concerned
pitch stability. Early Moog synthesisers were
renowned for going out of tune, a problem
caused by temperature differences between
the different oscillator modules. Pearlman
solved this by putting both oscillators on
a single chip, so the temperatures were the
same. Pearlman was contemptuous of one
company’s solution, which was to moni-
tor the temperature of all the modules and
use heaters to equalise their temperatures.
‘Temperature correction devices? Ppphh!’ he
said in a NAMM interview (tinyurl.com/AHF-
ARPZ1).
Famous ARP 2600 users include Jean
Michel Jarre, Joy Division, Depeche Mode,
Weather Report, Xpando, Chemical Brothers,
Rick Wakeman, Pete Townshend, Stevie Won-
der, Nine Inch Nails, and Edgar Winter.
Despite the fame of the 2600 it was so
expensive that very few were ever built (in-
dustry estimates put total production at fewer
than 3,000). ARP’s best-selling synthesiser was
its Odyssey, introduced in 1972 and created
specifically to compete with the low-priced
MiniMoog. The Odyssey went through multi-
ple incarnations culminating in the MkIII in
1981, released just prior to ARP’s bankruptcy,
but in 2015, Korg re-issued its own version
of the Odyssey, which is currently availableAlan Robert Pearlman (ARP)
One area where
ARP initially started
clearly ahead of
its competitors
concerned pitch
stability.