There was a lot of great new tech released in 1982 - the CD player, the Commodore 64, the Atari 5200 - but there was also, it turns out, the Sony Chordmachine.
Available only in Japan, this bizarre hybrid of boombox and groovebox has been plucked from obscurity by YouTuber Techmoan, who’s taken a deep dive into its features and inner workings.
With a clamshell design, the top section is devoted to a pair of speakers. The bottom section of this strange device has a cassette deck and radio on the left-hand-side, but it’s over to the right that things start to get weirdly interesting.
This is because the Chordmachine also has a preset rhythm player and 12 pads that can be used to play notes and chords. Your performances can be recorded to tape, and you can also plug in a mic and guitar.
As Techmoan says, the end result feels like neither one thing or the other, and we’re not surprised that the Chordmachine didn’t achieve Walkman levels of popularity. With old-school tech all the rage, though, maybe there’s still time for a revival…
