Joseph Byrd

A Baldwin Electric Harpsichord can be seen in this December 1967 photo of The United States of America recording their eponymous album in the Columbia Records studios in New York. The harpsichord is to the right in the picture. Byrd also references the electric harpsichord in this interview.

We ended up with a bank of Acoustic amp/speakers. I had an electric harpsichord (great with fuzz and distortion) and a Farfisa organ (useless except as a pad). We had a synthesizer like the one I’d commissioned from Tom Oberheim (the beginning of his business career), made by Richard Durrette, and similarly pretty random in terms of controls. What made it work was an Echo-Plex, which gave tape delay. We also bought two eight-track decks, on which I recorded the electronics from the recording session. So we were able to replicate everything live. We played with other stuff, contact mics, etc., but the state of technology meant that the more stuff you had, the more opportunities for broken cables and performance disasters.

Joseph Byrd can be seen playing a Vox Super Continental in this December 1967 photo of The United States of America recording their eponymous album in the Columbia Records studios in New York.