I was plenty impressed with the recently-announced Roland V-Accordion synthesizer as any right-thinking nerd should be, but I was perhaps most impressed by the originality of its design. How wrong I was! Russian bayan players (the Soviet Bloc-rockin’ accordion equivalent) were kicking out jaunty tunes on battery-powered squeeze boxes as far back as the 1950s. This Topaz-1, for instance, had a built-in loudspeaker and amplifier, tremolo and vibrato frequency control, register synthesis to emulate organ and flute sounds, and—for those about to rock indoors—headphone out.
TOPAZ – electro bayan (Formanta factory) [Geocities via ArtificeEternity]
Related
Roland FR-7 V-Accordian [Gizmodo]
https://gizmodo.com/roland-fr-7-v-accordian-23133
