Wersi is a German manufacturer of electronic organs, keyboards, and pianos. It is named after the communes of Werlau and Simmern in

Rhineland-Palatinate Rhineland-Palatinate ( , ; ; ; ) is a western state of Germany. It covers and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the sixteen states. Mainz is the capital and largest city. Other cities are ...

. They were used by organists such as Franz Lambert and

Klaus Wunderlich Klaus Wunderlich (18 June 1931 – 28 October 1997) was a famous German easy listening organist. Biography Wunderlich was born in Chemnitz. He played the Hammond organ model C3 then mid 60s changed to model Hammond H100. Wunderlich also tried ...

. The brand's current range of instruments uses the Open-Architecture-System (OAS), which is a GUI that runs using a

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...

computer, enabling the keyboard to support third-party programs, such as

music notation Musical notation is any system used to visually represent music. Systems of notation generally represent the elements of a piece of music that are considered important for its performance in the context of a given musical tradition. The proces ...

programs,

software synthesizer A software synthesizer or softsynth is a computer program that generates digital audio, usually for music. Computer software that can create sounds or music is not new, but advances in processing speed now allow softsynths to accomplish the same t ...

s, and

digital audio workstation A digital audio workstation (DAW ) is an electronic device or application software used for Sound recording and reproduction, recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software pr ...

History

Wersi was established in 1969 by two brothers, Wilhelm-Erich Franz and Reinhard Franz, near Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis,

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. They built the company's first instruments in the basement of their parents' house. Below is a timeline of the company's development: * In the 1970s, the company established a successful kit development system, which allowed customers to build instruments in their own home. * In the 1980s, two factories were constructed in the Wersi-hometown of Halsenbach, Rhineland-Palatinate. * In the 1990s, Wersi developed the digital Grand Piano line as well as digital sample based instruments. * In the late 1990s, Wersi developed the OX7 drawbar module. * In 2010, Wersi was purchased by both Medeli (a Chinese musical instruments producer) and Music Store Professional GmbH (the largest music store in Europe), and the latter became the official distributor of Wersi instruments. * In April 2011, the Pegasus Wing keyboard was launched at the Musikmesse Frankfurt. This event was the world premiere of the new Wersi keyboard line, made in the facilities of Chinese keyboard manufacturer Medeli. Wersi organs are still assembled in Germany, and development has been moved to the Music Store facility in Cologne.{{cite web , author=Wersi Direct Ltd , title=Half-Year Activity Report 2011 , url=http://www.wersidirect.com/WERSI_Direct_Ltd/News_Blog/Entries/2011/5/21_WERSI_Direct_Ltd_-_Half_Year_Activity_Report_-_Press_Release._files/Wersi%20Direct%20May%202011%20Press%20Release.pdf

References

External links

Wersi Netherlands home page

Wersi manuals download

Wersi USA home page

Wersi international home
Electronic organ manufacturing companies Musical instrument manufacturing companies of Germany Companies based in Rhineland-Palatinate