Excerpted from page 9 of the 1971-06 issue of The New Lightning Empiricist Teledyne-Philbrick

More about Ed Maddox and his Novaline piano from Ebay auction 313556828372, June 2021: (info pointed out by John Vivian)

Piano has a slight hum, two keys are a bit glitchy. It could use servicing. There’s a repair manual on the internet (27pgs) Watch my YouTube video. Channel (Robert413) or search “1978 Novaline piano” thanks for your interest.

Novaline 64p “Used" Up for bids is this ultra-rare synth/electric piano made very briefly in the late 70s in Norwood MA. If you know these type of synth pianos I would liken this to a super high quality Crumar Compac Piano. This piano was made with real piano keys, excellent action and some serious attention to detail. The "professional" units had a built-in amplifier and speakers. One cool detail is that the sound from the right side of the keyboard comes out of the right speaker and the left side out of the left. The inventor Ed Maddox and his partner designed the piano circuit for the Wurlitzer organ company to be integrated with their products. When the company didn't buy the design from him, he and his partner gave a go a producing the pianos themselves. I believe sales were not adequate to keep the company around for long but the piano is an excellent instrument. Novaline was founded in 1972 by Edward Maddox and David Ludwig.

Quoting company founder Edward Maddox: "The Novaline piano was produced by our company named Crestech. Dave Ludwig (deceased) and I formed the company to do something. We didn’t know what we would produce but we knew it had to be something that we could design and that would have a market. We actually started Crestech on the side while we were still working at Teledyne Philbrick. Dave was Chief Engineer and I was Principal Engineer at Teledyne Philbrick.

More from Edward Maddox: "I've done some digging for Novaline history. What I find shows Novaline starting in 1972 and ending as a separate company in 1977 . Novaline was unable to find an investor to provide capitol for continued design efforts and production increase, so it was merged with Gervais Electronics, a parts distributor located in Providence, Rhode Island. Gervais had been selling Novaline many components that went into the pianos.

Gervais had money and proceeded to improve the drawing sets with plans to up production efficiency and production quantity. The pianos were continued until 1981 when  Gervais was acquired by Leesona Corporation, where management promptly announced that they saw no future in electronic pianos, so they stopped all work on improvements and stopped all production.

Also go to www.radiomuseum.org and put Novaline in their search box. Novaline was the piano invented by Ed Maddox