Stylophones 6 – The Soviet Stylophone

With the help of a correspondent to my blog I was lucky enough to get hold of an early 80’s ‘Stylophone’ from the Soviet Union.

Entitled the ‘Gamma’, I’m told it was made in the city of Chernivtsi, a part of the Soviet Union now in western Ukraine.

Larger than a Dübreq Stylophone, it came in a neat plastic box measuring about 25x20x5cm.

Inside, the Gamma Stylophone itself has a 20-note keyboard at the front, a stylus – more complicated than a Dübreq Stylophone stylus – on a twin lead, a volume control on the left-hand side, and a speaker in the top left-hand corner.  A coloured label indicates the notes of the scale represented by each section of the keyboard.

There are also 3 strange slots above the keyboard, which are slightly wider than the keyboard and just deep enough to be accessed by the stylus.  This close up of the keyboard shows the middle of two of these slots:

The stylus, as mentioned above, is more complicated than the Dübreq Stylophone stylus in that it includes a combined press and slide switch.  It turned out that the press switch had to be pushed for the stylus to work; the slide switch turned the vibrato on or off.

Helpfully, my correspondent had cleaned the instrument before sending it, so there wasn’t a lot for me to do!  I opened the case – just 4 slot-headed screws underneath – and examined the insides.  The circuit board was attached to 4 mounts on the base; the speaker had 4 mounts on the front.

Turning the circuit board over, I could see the components and the layout.  Everything seemed neat and well made, with a good solid loudspeaker.

The components on the circuit board weren’t quite the same as their Western equivalents, but quite recognisable, nonetheless:

I removed a little more of the disintegrating foam – and replaced a speaker wire, which I had inadvertently detached – and then turned to the power cables.  The battery fittings had been removed, but I could see from the booklet which came with the instrument, that these had been designed for a pair of Soviet-style 4.5v batteries: my correspondent explained to me that these were similar to a group of three 1.5v batteries – not unlike the kind of thing we used to have inside cordless phones – but which were, in any case, now uncommon.

I just added a PP3 battery clip, similar to the type one would find in an old-style Dübreq Stylophone, which worked fine.  I hadn’t intended to ‘circuit-bend’ this device, but I pondered on adding an on/off switch, as there isn’t one in the original design.

I attached the battery and tried it out.  The push switch needed a bit of attention – a few squirts of contact cleaner helped – but all the notes sounded perfectly, and the vibrato turned on and off.  I wasn’t able to check that the notes were in tune, and there’s no fine tuning control, which you would find on a Dübreq Stylophone, but I’ll look into that later.

The booklet that came with the Gamma Stylophone was delightful – the paper and printing quality weren’t high, but the illustrations were beautiful and the colourful instructions on how to play the many songs were attractively set out.

Read the Gamma Stylophone Booklet.

I’m told that Chernivtsi is in the region of Bukovina, which lies partly in the Ukraine and partly in Romania, and that the costume of the dancer in the picture is from this region.

The serial number in the booklet and on the back of the instrument is ‘304’.  It is normal, apparently, for these instruments to have 6-figure serial numbers, so this could be a very early example.

There is no circuit diagram in the booklet, but this is said to be unusual in the Soviet era when it was common for these to be included.

Here’s a short video of me testing the Gamma Stylophone.  You can see from this clip how the stylus switches function – and also what the 3 extra slots are for!