A Pianomate has come up for sale on TradeMe. I had one of these from the music shop to try when they came out in the early 70s. It was designed to "augment the natural sound of the piano", and in fact it couldn't do much else as you can hardly play a piano and have it silent too! A good description of it is here and as well as photos there are two audio examples. As soon as I heard them I remembered why I took the thing back to the store!
Also mentioned on this page is the Stylophone as it was also marketed by Dubreq. We had one of these and it is really no more than a toy. Interestingly David Bowie wrote Space Oddity on this little wonder, and the glissando heard at the start of the bridge of the song is the Stylophone's big moment. And it just keeps getting weirder - none other than Rolf Harris was the person responsible for making the Stylophone popular. There is a BBC doco that features it here.
Also mentioned on this page is the Stylophone as it was also marketed by Dubreq. We had one of these and it is really no more than a toy. Interestingly David Bowie wrote Space Oddity on this little wonder, and the glissando heard at the start of the bridge of the song is the Stylophone's big moment. And it just keeps getting weirder - none other than Rolf Harris was the person responsible for making the Stylophone popular. There is a BBC doco that features it here.
