Question for Soft Machine Fans

Does anyone know what Mike Ratledge's keyboard setup was? (In specific, what is the keyboard he uses with the electric guitar fuzz sound?)

I am not positive on this, but I believe Mike played a Lowrey organ on most Soft Machine albums. On their first two albums it sounds like he might use a Hammond some as well.
It sounds like he runs the Lowrey through a distortion pedal and then plays one note at a time producing that odd trademark sax like sound of his.
Lowreys are more associated with home organs, whereas most rockers at that time used Hammonds and Farfisas.

Edited by Easy Money - January 01 2008 at 21:04

He definitely uses a Lowrey (infact, a Lowrey Holiday Deluxe), let me find out what model...

*does some searching*

From a Richard Sinclair interview:

"Mike Ratledge played Lowrey but he used to have a pedal that would drop it a semi-tone, which is a sound very particular to Mike."

He also played Wurlitzer Piano and Fender Rhodes.

Here you go:

"Ratledge's first organ in Soft Machine was a Vox Continental, which he soon replaced with a Lowrey Holiday Deluxe, relatively inexpensive compared with the Hammond he would have preferred. The Lowrey had a number of features that Ratledge put to good use (e.g., note bending), but suffered from a "weedy" quality (Ratledge's word) that the keyboardist remedied by using a fuzz box. With this setup plugged into a Marshall stack, seriously deranged volume levels were possible, but feedback was hard to avoid in the silences between notes. In a real-world example of the cliché about necessity being the mother of invention (and perhaps an inevitable Zappa reference as well), Ratledge found he could prevent feedback by avoiding the between-note gaps and forging on with his solos in a legato style, relentlessly pushing forward like a circular-breathing saxophonist who never takes a gulp of air until his solo is completely finished. Brian Hopper is quoted in the Bennett book describing the Ratledge soloing approach as "uncompromising strings of notes, leaps of musical structure and texture, and complex time signatures that all characterize a style not heard before or since." Bennett himself notes that, although they had famously been used with guitars in rock music, "it was Mike Ratledge who apparently first thought of using a fuzz box with an organ." And fuzz organ soon became a signature sound of Canterbury-related keyboardists like Caravan's Dave Sinclair and Dave Stewart of Hatfield and the North and National Health. It should also be noted that, after replacing Kevin Ayers in Soft Machine, former band roadie Hugh Hopper was prompted to plug his bass into his own fuzz box in order to match the powerful overdriven burning tone of Ratledge's Lowrey."


Edited by Geck0 - January 01 2008 at 18:01

Geck0 wrote: rileydog22 wrote: That's the best pic of his rig I could find.  The one he's playing looks like a Hammond to me (correct me if I'm wrong), but I have no idea what the one to his left is.  I'm no expert, but it could be his Fender Rhodes... By the way, the trouser area of Bobby needs censoring!

It is - with the left part of the Swingtime logo showing next to his elbow.

That would appear to be it.  

Oooh, i love that fuzzy sound

I know what you mean!