Perched to the left of my Wurlitzer electronic piano, and directly across (through me) from my venerable Korg MS-20, was the Crumar Performer, a two-instrument, lighter version of the Crumar Multi-Man. This is one of those many attempts by mainly Italian companies like Farfisa, to build a polyphonic, affordable keyboard able to do synth brass sounds as well as strings. And the machine never did a bad job at all for a paraphonic - single filter for all voices - sound machine.The Performer is a polyphonic analog Strings and Brass machine produced at the end of the 1970’s by the Italian synth company. With just 49 keys it was fully polyphonic and you could play all 49 notes simultaneously.

Programming is simple and clearly laid-out with just 15 sliders and a few buttons. A solid black chassis and wood end-cheeks round out this classic and often overlooked string machine. In the middle we find the String Section and although it was not as smooth-sounding as an ARP it was pretty good and had16′ and 8′ push buttons to switch on two octaves. There was also a three band EQ to change the sound character a bit and not just a tone knob like so many others. And the strings could be “attack mode,” labeled Crescendo and there was also a Sustain slider. Two of the bulky sliders - the volume fader included - were shaved off by a previous owner and I used a guitar pick in the slot to move it.

Crumar Performer

There is also a fader for delay length where you could make the strings and brass swell and one for VIBRATO where the vibrato came in slowly during the length of a note.

What the Crumar had over the Logan and ARP was the ability to easily mix an orchestra on the fly simply by using the slider. And if I wanted - but I never did - I could have used the optional Brass output jack and EQ’d the horns separately.

Just another different axe I owned for a while.