My Etherwave Pro arrived yesterday, Serial # 0026. The reviews thus far have been overwhelmingly positive, and mine will join them.
Prior to singing this Theremin’s praises – a note for everyone who’s yet to receive one: I found a point on page 8 of the manual that could use some clarification. Under Step 9, Tuning the Pitch, the second sentence states:
“Set the Standby switch to “on.”
The manual then goes on to describe movements of the left and right hands and the corresponding sounds.
The problem is that if Standby is ON, the Theremin is completely muted. The writers of the manual have mistaken the name of the switch. It is actually labeled the OUTPUT switch on the Theremin itself. The Output Switch has two settings: ON and STANDBY. The manual should read:
“Set the Output Switch to “ON.”
That said, everything else from the manual to the Theremin itself is excellent. The instrument is very responsive, and having played a standard Etherwave for years, it does take a little getting used to, but that’s to be expected.
The standout features are:
5 Timbre Presets, all of which yield very refined sonic textures that are tricky to achieve manually.
The Register switch allows for a tremendous amount of freedom with octaves, particularly in the higher registers.
The Manual Timbre controls – Waveform, Brightness and Filter, which, with a little practice, also offer a lot – what’s more, if you change the Register setting but keep your manual timbre settings the same, the sound texture changes, sometime in some really surprising ways.
Finally, There are two other great features: the Pitch response Adjust, and the Volume Response Adjust. Each of these fine-tuning features is an inset screw that can be tweaked with a small flat-head screwdriver. And here is the only area that I thought fell short – The Volume Response Adjust. This setting determines the “distance from the Volume Antenna at which the Theremin’s notes begin to sound.” I found the factory default setting very disconcerting; the threshold from silence to sound is so close to the antenna that I was practically touching it. I tend to like it set at about three to four inches above the antenna. So, I used a screwdriver and experimented with Volume Response adjustment’s maximum distance, but I was only able to get the threshold to sit around two inches above the antenna – still very close. I would have liked the adjustment screw to have a wider range capability.
The instrument is shipping with a separate sheet containing Addendum/Errata. The first two items deal with the height of the stand and the alignment of the pitch arm. The third, however, deals with a change to the Headphone Output that was a feature I was looking forward to – a PRE-VOLUME SIGNAL feature that fades in as the left hand draws closer to the Volume Antenna. That feature has been scrapped.
Everything else is astounding. Was it worth the long wait? It was definitely worth the money. The wait is a different matter, since I’m still waiting now for the Road Case that the Pro was supposed to arrive in. In the long run I suppose it will have been worth the wait, too. It’s an amazing piece of work, from its otherworldly design to its myriad capabilities.