Vintage Audio Institute
Italia
Curating one of the biggest collections of Italian vintage synthesizers in the world.
Photo : Marina Denisova
Location : C/O Bardi
Italian Synthesizers
Italy has an unrivaled cultural heritage - its history of arts, music, architecture and engineering spans thousands of years.
The invention and production of instruments began in the pre-Roman era with the manufacturing of refined bagpipes and various percussive instruments.
The Renaissance opened the flood gates of creativity with the birth of the Opera as musical artforms in Florence, while the production of mandolins and stringed instruments culminated in the workshop of a certain violin maker in Cremona called Stradivarius.
But there is a more recent chapter of Italian culture and instrument manufacturing that hasn’t yet received the respect and attention it deserves.
By the 1960s, Italy’s economy was booming, and many new instrument manufacturers were introduced while existing ones diversified and scaled up their production to include electronic instruments such as organs, guitars, amplifiers and echo effects. In the early 70s, these companies wanted to match their foreign competitors by introducing synthesizers, drum machines and effects units to a mostly domestic market.
Vintage Audio Institute
Italia
V.A.I. is a vintage gear collection and recording facility in the hills of Florence run by Swedish music maker and producer Pontus Berghe.
With a career in music spanning more than two decades he’s performed live with artists like Thieves Like Us and Lykke Li, while remixing bands such as The Drums, Stereo Total, Miss Kittin & the Hacker, scoring commercials for brands such as Prada, H&M, Sony, and Huawei.
Amassing one of the world’s biggest collections of 1970’s and 1980’s Italian synths, drum machines and effect units, V.A.I.’s mission is to let the machines unlock the creativity and playfulness that can be elusive in a typical music studio environment.
Italy has a long history of instrument production, and a wide range of original synthesizers and drum machines that were introduced and limited to the domestic market — the heart of the V.A.I. collection, which ranges from the better-known string machine classics by Crumar and Elka to the much sought-after Logan Vocal Synthesizer and the Farfisa Polychrome.
The monophonic part of the collection includes the characteristic Eko synths, the Farfisa Clavioline tube synthesizer, as well as powerful rarities like the CRB Oberon and the Steelphon S900 — both of which are among a just handful of units remaining in the world today.
The Vintage Audio Institute collection will continue to expand our collection with new instruments arriving in 2025.
