Farfisa, an Italian company known for innovation, refused to go gently into that good night. The TS (Transistor Sound) series was their answer to the synthesizer boom. While the TS 600 was the entry-level sibling, the was the flagship. It was marketed as a "Transistor Synthesizer," a bold claim that suggested it offered the expressiveness of a synth with the robust infrastructure of an organ.
It was one of the last professional instruments produced by Farfisa before the brand ceased production of high-end organs, making it a swan song for an entire generation of Italian engineering. What makes the TS 800 so distinct is its architecture. It is not a sampler, nor is it a pure analog subtractive synthesizer in the vein of a Minimoog. It is, at its heart, a divide-down transistor organ. 1. The Top Octave Synthesis Like its ancestors, the TS 800 uses a "divide-down" architecture. This means the keyboard generates a high-frequency master oscillator for the top octave and divides the frequency down for the lower notes. The primary advantage of this system is polyphony . Unlike early synthesizers that could only play a handful of notes at once, the TS 800 is fully polyphonic. You can mash your forearms across the keys, and every note will sound. 2. The "Synthesizer" Section This is where the TS 800 earns its model name. While a standard organ simply turns on and off a waveform (like a sine or square wave), the TS 800 allows you to shape that sound. Farfisa Ts 800
The front panel is dense but logical. Unlike modern menu-driven screens, the TS 800 offers "one knob per function" functionality (though they are mostly sliders). This tactile interface is a joy for sound designers. You don't have to scroll through a tiny LCD screen to change the filter cutoff; you simply grab the slider and move it. The TS 800 came with a bank of presets, a necessity for gigging musicians of the era. However, these presets often showcased the more... questionable tastes of the early 80s. Cheesy "Latin Flute" and "Banjo" sounds are common. The magic, however, lies in the Programmable User Banks . Farfisa, an Italian company known for innovation, refused
The TS 800 allows the user to store their own creations into its internal memory. Finding a TS 800 with dead battery memory is common today, but the real joy of the instrument is creating sounds on the fly, thanks to the intuitive layout. So, what does the Farfisa TS 800 actually sound like? If you are expecting the warm, Hammond B3 growl, you will be disappointed. The TS 800 has a colder, more clinical character. It sounds electronic—undeniably, unapologetically It was marketed as a "Transistor Synthesizer," a
In the pantheon of vintage keyboards, the name Farfisa usually evokes images of the swirling, garage-rock sounds of the 1960s. One thinks of the Compact Deluxe or the Fast beating away in the hands of acid rockers and proto-punks. However, by the late 1970s and early 1980s, the musical landscape had shifted. The synthesizer was king, and the traditional electric organ was in danger of becoming a relic.
Enter the .