Oratron

Vocal Synthesizer

Courtesy/Thanks to: Groove Electronics

Description: Info from an ebay auction:
What it is is a vocal synthesiser, based around the General Instrument SP0256 chip, which, I'm lead to believe, is somewhat different from the usual 'speech chip' type of approach.

When opened up, you can clearly see groove's usual method of doing things - a modified m2cv board (as per the stinger, which i also have one of : ) and an additional custom board with the synthesis chip on it.

The top interface has grooves usual "binary plus one" programming procedure, allowing midi channel to be set, etc. but hints at some other more interesting functions such as sequencing individual phonems into phrases, which ive never got to work (it may be me, it may have failed, or it may have never been inplamented at all!)
There are some stored phrases though, which ive never been able to edit or overwrite - such things as "Welcome to Groove Electronics", "I am not a man, i am an Oratron", some others, and a curious one, which, i guess may have been some private joke of the time "Can i pop your lemon?"

Midi triggering of phonems is entirely functional, with the machine responding nicely to the bend wheel