Donald Fagen

Mike over at Retrolinear restored all 3 of Donald Fagens 88 key Fenders, Lucy, Grace and Wilma. Lucy is demosntrated post-refurb in the video I linked but the otehr 2 pianos can be head on youtube as well as on documenting the process on Lucy (apparently Mike's favorite). You can read all about the restoration of Grace in 2011 and Lucy in 2013 in articles on teh Retrolinear website (http://www.retrolinear.com/new-stuff/you-go-back-jack-and-do-it-again.aspx http://www.retrolinear.com/new-stuff/steely-dan-round-2!!!.aspx).

Used "on the early Steely Dan records", as stated by Fagen in this August 2006 Sound on Sound interview.

Donald Fagen's interest in the ins and outs of recording technology might have grown in recent years, but when it comes to the tools of his trade — keyboards — the opposite is true. "From an instrument point of view, I find that the technical developments in keyboards since the '70s are not worth talking about. I experimented with all sorts of synthesizers at the time. I recall that my first synthesizer was an ARP Odyssey, which I used on the early Steely Dan records. Somebody gave me a Synergy and that had some interesting sounds that I used on The Nightfly."

At 1:10 in this interview with Fagen for the documentary Down the Rhodes: The Fender Rhodes Story, which was bonus footage published on YouTube on October 5, 2012, he reveals that it was an "early" Odyssey (and, therefore, the Rev1) and that is was destroyed.

Well here's a synthesizer story to go along with my antipathy towards synthesizers. There was an early commercial synthesizer called the ARP Odyssey, which was a, uh... uh, it was kind of a useful thing, it uh... Early analog synthesizer. It looked like, it was this kind of square little board that had a lot of switches on it and... it wasn't very flexible. You could do a few things with it. You know, you had a little ring modulator and stuff like that and the problem with a lot of those early analog synthesizers is they go out of tune, like, especially after a few six months or seven months, the, I don't know, something about the oscillators or the resistors or something and they start to drift like, you'd be doing a take and five minutes into the take, it would be a little flat. You'd have to retune and if after you'd had it for a year, like after five seconds they'd start to drift, you know, and I got so frustrated with this ARP Odyssey that I... You know, it's really into what I was doing, you know when you're doing a take, you're concentrating, and this started to happen so that, you know, I just, you know, took the thing and smashed it. You know, my rage got the better of me and then my partner started making suggestions as to what else we might do to the ARP Odyssey and, you know, we ended up getting lighter fluid and, you know, we set it on fire, we deface it in any other number of ways and then we went out on the balcony of the ABC Dunhill Records and just dropped it off the balcony and, um... the guy who ran the studio thought it was so funny that he had it framed and just like, it looked like artwork because it was essentially a destroyed musical instrument and he framed it and put it up in a studio hall there for everybody to laught at. [laughs]

" I do have a Triton and a Kurzweil K2500, and use them for special effects and when I can get away with only using part of the keyboard, like if I want to mimic a flute or a mallet instrument or an organ. Organs aren't tuneable, and are flat, weird-sounding anyway."

Used on The Nightfly, as stated by Fagen in this August 2006 Sound on Sound interview.

Donald Fagen's interest in the ins and outs of recording technology might have grown in recent years, but when it comes to the tools of his trade — keyboards — the opposite is true. "From an instrument point of view, I find that the technical developments in keyboards since the '70s are not worth talking about. I experimented with all sorts of synthesizers at the time. I recall that my first synthesizer was an ARP Odyssey, which I used on the early Steely Dan records. Somebody gave me a Synergy and that had some interesting sounds that I used on The Nightfly."

" I do have a Triton and a Kurzweil K2500, and use them for special effects and when I can get away with only using part of the keyboard, like if I want to mimic a flute or a mallet instrument or an organ. Organs aren't tuneable, and are flat, weird-sounding anyway."

Donald Fagen used the Lync LN 4 during several live performances after the 1990s, most notably while performing "Kid Charlemagne," as evidenced by the photograph shown below

Donald Fagen played the Yamaha P37d in several live apparences after the 2000s, he also played this particular melodica for his 2012 album Sunken Condos