Elka ( acoustic ) accordion

[JerryPH]

What Iorio called the Syntara 2 (I have one of these) used the Elka electronics called fisa midi 2. The schematics for which have a draft date of 1986. I also have a nearly identical instrument that was sold as a “monarch”. With the same electronics. I’ve seen quite a few of these with different brand names including Piermaria.

'86 is definitely at least 1-2 years after the Elka 83, which is around '84. No doubt it is the later unit.

 

[Ventura]

cool.. wasn't Monarch an upper mid-west brand ?

it was sad to see ELKA die.. but there were some very arrogant people
making decisions there at the end

would it suprise you to know a couple of those people ended up
a decade later on the Roland FR project ?

 

[Ben-jammin]

cool.. wasn't Monarch an upper mid-west brand ?

it was sad to see ELKA die.. but there were some very arrogant people
making decisions there at the end

would it suprise you to know a couple of those people ended up
a decade later on the Roland FR project ?

I don’t have any good data on monarch. The unit I have came with a kinda tacky laser etched plastic for the monarch name plate. It was glued over the remnants of glue for letters that originally spelled Colombo. Recently on eBay there was another unit with same laser etched Monarch nameplate.

 

[JerryPH]

it was sad to see ELKA die.. but there were some very arrogant people
making decisions there at the end

would it suprise you to know a couple of those people ended up
a decade later on the Roland FR project ?

Same people... same results??