ARP Avatar

The ARP Avatar was a guitar-controlled synthesizer manufactured by ARP Instruments, Inc. beginning in 1977. While innovative, being one of the first commercial guitar-controlled synthesizers, it was a commercial flop for ARP, and is widely credited with causing the financial collapse of the company.

Nearly $4 million was spent in the first year on production and R&D for the Avatar, and the $3000 machine sold only about $1 million worth of units over its lifespan. Guitarists were not quick to adopt the new technology, mostly due to the unit's price and technical eccentricities. The Avatar, however, did find a few advocates and paved the way for more successful guitar synthesizers. Because of its architecture - essentially an ARP Odyssey with a 6-way "fuzzbox" distortion effect - it has regained a little stature among collectors as a standalone synthesizer.

*This article is licensed under the |GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARP_Avatar