An original RCA theremin was listed for sale on eBay today, complete with an RCA speaker and a colletion of spare tubes! This one appears to be in decent physical condition. The listing says it "Works well and sounds very nice".
The auction is set to end on September 27th and has a current bid of $1000 at the time of this posting.
Of course, if you already have enough RCA theremins, why not look for other theremin bargains on our theremin auction page.
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Jason, good luck on getting the owner to donate the theremin. :)
If the seller DOES wish to donate this theremin to Theremin World, we'd be happy to give it a good home and we promise not to dissect it for the sake of science! Well, if we do, we'll put it back together just the way we found it - promise!
I only hope there are still some for sale when I have enough money to buy one.. :-(
Off topic.. Does anyone know of a source for quality recordings of a RCA played through its original amplifier / speaker? Ideally this would be without any backing music, in a studio environment, recorded with a high quality microphone by an engineer who knew what he/she was doing, and without any equalisation or coloration of any kind applied.. Also, with the recordings covering the full range of the Theremin. ? . This is the main reason I want a RCA or access to a RCA - I want to sample these waveforms, analyse them, and be sure my Theremin is able to replicate them.. It is difficult to be sure when working with waveforms derived from old recordings with backing music.
I would be more than happy to pay for a comprehensive set of good recordings.. Free is better ;-) but to do a task like this well will take a lot of time and effort. If one wants to buy a CD of good quality, comprehensive samples of other instruments, one expects to pay for it (prices for some can be quite high).. I have not seen any sample CD's for the Theremin.
In fact, there is probably a reasonable market for a sample CD containing samples of a collection of Theremins - RCA, Moog (particularly the rarer ones), and others.
If the samples started at the lowest note, played for a few seconds with volume going from softest to loudest, without vibrato (so that any harmonic changes occuring as a function of volume were captured) and then did the same for a following musical interval (ideally a semitone), and continued this right up to the highest note, such a set of samples could possibly be used in a sample player.. This is not what I plan to do.. but I see no reason why others shouldnt.
Given that the paper cones in vintage speakers degrade over time, how close will the sound of an original theremin speaker be after eighty years?
I would imagine that a good condition original, or a properly reconed speaker in the original cabinet might at least give one a better idea of what it sounded like then just sitting around thinking about, though.
I'm not trying to discourage you. These are all minor issues. I just think it needs to be mentioned.
*Or "coloured" for some of you.
but since they're so hard to come by, recording and digitizing would be in order.
I'm just thinking it would be cool and useful to have a good, clean, solo recording of the first commercial theremin "setup" available for all to analyze, sample, what have you, for a price or free as long as it's out there.
Probably one recording with the speaker and one direct or through a full range setup would be even better for comparing and such.
I'd hate to see some day in the future when all the first theremins are dead and gone and someone goes "Man, I wish someone had made a really clean, technical recording of one of those".
But mainly I just want to hear it through the speaker :)
Nothing had been changed. The "vintage" sound all had to do with the equally vintage recording equipment used in the 40's & 50's. In order to emulate that sound, I put the modern digital recording through an FX program called "Vintage Radio" and the RCA sounded exactly like it did 50 years ago.
What I did on the recording, was to start with the original Mickey Mouse Club soundtrack, and gradually fade it into the modern version.
It might be fun to do it again sometime on video. I could place the instrument in the same position as it was for the show in 1957, using the same camera angles, and cross dissolve the audio and video from the old to the new - maybe in B&W......