Vako Synthesizers Incorporated, founded by electronic instrument pioneer and former Moog technician and salesperson David Van Koevering, started to build improved versions of the Optigan under the name Orchestron in 1975.
[1] The Optigan was an organ that played its sounds from light-scanned graphic waveforms encoded on film discs.
While the same fidelity limitations of the Optigan applied to the Orchestron, these instruments were built to be more reliable and were used successfully in commercial recordings.
[1] The band Kraftwerk made heavy use of the Orchestron on their albums Radio-Activity (1975), Trans Europe Express (1977) and The Man-Machine (1978).
[5] The Orchestron uses basically the same principle as the Optigan: each note of the keyboard is recorded onto a short, looped track on a pre-recorded, interchangeable optical disc.
Like the Mellotron, the Orchestron experienced a revival or sorts in the early 1990s, and many musicians embraced using the instrument for the first time since the late 1970s.
The downside of this was that the attack transient was lost and occasionally an audible thump could be heard on the discs when the loop point came around.