Here’s an unexpected reissue: Japanese music maker Suzuki is celebrating the company’s 70th anniversary by bringing back the original Omnichord, a unique 1981 electronic answer to the autoharp.
Wait, sorry, I’m explaining one niche instrument by mentioning another. But the Omnicord really does clearly have its roots in the autoharp – basically what happens if you start with a zither and add a mechanism that allows you to easily strum chords. For anyone who bristles at iPad apps and what doesn’t make it easy for beginning musicians to avoid wrong notes, the autoharp was the 1882 German-American immigrant idea of

