Say „Solton" and older disco and pop musicians immediately think „Italo Disco Machine" — the famous Programmer 24. The company was founded in 1972 in Pocking, Bavaria, by Josef Sperl, and its first business had nothing to do with keyboards at all — it started with tube guitar and bass amplifiers and speaker cabinets, gear solid enough that Bill Haley himself toured Europe with it in 1976. The real turning point came in 1979, when Solton entered the electronic organ business in partnership with the Italian company CRB Italy, and two years later founded an Italian sister company called Ketron to jointly develop arranger-keyboard technology.
That German-Italian collaboration gave birth in 1985 to the legendary Programmer 24 — an early keyboard workstation with an analog bass section, an 8-bit PCM drum section, and a built-in sequencer, sold under the „Solton by Ketron" badge. Its distinctive, gritty bass and drum-machine sound would go on to become inseparable from the entire Italo Disco aesthetic. Solton didn't stop at synthesis, though — in 1983 it launched a line of acoustic pianos under the Klug & Sperl brand, and in 1992 partnered with Czech manufacturer Petrof, one of Europe's oldest and largest piano makers. In 1994, the company released the MS 50 and MS 60 keyboards, which went on to become its best-selling products worldwide.
At Wired Tunes, we value Solton primarily as a piece of synthesizer history — a company whose analog sound helped shape the entire aesthetic of 1980s Italo Disco. It's a name for vintage-gear collectors and producers chasing an authentic, gritty character in their productions, rather than the perfectly polished sound of today's plugins.
Solton
