Birotron - Worlds Rarest Musical Instrument

Worlds Rarest Musical Instrument

Both Rick Wakeman and David Biro were financially ruined during the project as an estimated £50,000 (upwards of £322,500 today) disappeared into it. Today the Birotron is considered most likely the "world's rarest musical instrument" - being intended for factory mass production, having been used successfully on records and tours, but now - so extremely few in number and impossible to find as noted in a 2007 Believer Magazine article.

Birotronics USA Director of Sales and Marketing, Ed Cohen states that even back in the '70s he never even saw any B-90 Birotrons himself, and that he used flyers and descriptions of the machine when making sales presentations in America.

By 1979, some American keyboardists and music industry professionals - still enticed by the 1976 / 77 ads for the Birotron, had begun quests looking for it through business management and sales agents, and in music stores around the country - only to be told nothing had come in or had ever been seen. Concerned about what was happening, A & M Records business executive Derek Green journeyed to the Birotron factory to personally ask Rick Wakeman "What's happened to the Birotron?"

In a 1979 issue of Keyboard magazine, the constant frustrated question of when and where can musicians get a Birotron? was listed as the most 'Frequently Asked Question' to editors of the magazine.

Rick Wakeman also comments on the Birotron in a 2010 interview with Metal Discovery saying "They are unbelievably collectable; they really are."

"It was a different sound to the Mellotron, and it was a great sound. It was a very, very unique sound. If I’d have known what I know now I’d have mothballed it and brought it out ten to fifteen years later. It’s the ten year rule again. We make this huge mistake that when someone brings out a new instrument that means everything before it has got to be crap. That’s why some of the young bands are going back and finding all the gear from the seventies and eighties. They’re not buying new stuff anymore."

EarthStar's keyboardist Craig Wuest also comments on the sound in a 2010 Hartford Courant interview saying "I was taken by the Birotron because it doesn't sound like anything else, it just doesn't."

The Birotron's designation as the "world's rarest musical instrument" would not be only for the 5 or 6 surviving units (of which only 2 are known completed instruments), but also because its rarity was caused by natural circumstances and not artificial low production as an intended collectable. The Birotron also likely remains the only instrument in the world with an entire sound library that's never been digitally salvaged. Four sounds have emerged as digital samples from a surviving Birotron, but all are of extremely poor quality, being taken from partially erased and magnetized 8 track tapes playing at the wrong speed. With only four sound samples from faulty tapes playing at incorrect motor speeds (due to improper settings of the 10 turn pitch knob), accurate software-based Birotron sounds continue to remain unobtainable for musicians. Only the surviving original Birotrons are considered representative.

Streetly Electronics has a tape set available that features the Birotron Choir which is substantially better than any digital samples offered so far.