The Alto Melodica is a nice and easy to use reed instrument made since 1958 by the german company Hohner*.

The sound is generated by blowing air thru a mouthpiece into fine brass reeds like those used in Harmonicas.

This underrated instrument was used by musicians like UB40, Depeche Mode, The Gorillas, The Hooters, Supertramp… too name a few!

We are very happy to get our hands on one of these rare old instruments in a very good, maybe never used, condition. This is one of the very first Melodicas ever made.

Recording

We have recorded this old, deep and fat sounding beauty with four different types of microphones thru well selected preamps after some time consuming experiments:

• Piezo Mic (attached to the chassis)
• Condenser Mic (placed 30 cm in front of the instrument)
• Dynamic Mic (placed 30 cm in front of the instrument)
•  Stereo Mic (placed overhead)

Each microphone can turned in separately in the master area at the head of the instrument. So you can take advantage of the different characters of the four microphone types and mix your own original redma sound until it fits your taste perfectly.

The noise from blowing air into the Melodica was separated from the musical material and made usable thru an extra mixing knob.

The same processing we did with the clicks which were produced by pressing the keys on the Melodica. So you can now add/reduce the noise from blowing by turning the noise knob and add/reduce the clicks from the keys by turning the click knob.

Specifications

• 20 Kontakt Instruments
• 305 Samples (44.1kHz / 24Bit)
• Four Mics (piezo, condenser, dynamic, stereo)
• 17 sec long notes samples
• 19 sec long noise samples
• long notes and noises were looped carefully
• extra click samples
• Three different playing styles recorded
• 335 MB Filesize
• Formats: Kontakt and WAV