John Leimseider

John Leimseider (21 July 1952, Brooklyn, New York — 14 September 2018, Calgary, Alberta, Canada) was a renowned American synth & electronic instruments technician, keyboardist, and instrument designer. He worked in Los Angeles for almost twenty years, with many acclaimed musicians as his clients, from Ray Charles and Lenny Kravitz to Tom Waits, Yanni, and even Aphex Twin. Since 2002, Leimseider has lived in Canada, serving at the National Music Centre in Calgary, Alberta, until he passed away at 66. One of his original instruments, JELatron Synthesizer (c. 2005), is in the NMC's permanent collection. Leimseider grew up in Westport, Connecticut, equally interested in music and electronics since early childhood. John graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with an electrical engineering degree before pursuing a professional music career. Most notably, JL was a touring keyboardist in 1978/79 and 1981–82 with an iconic hard rock band, Iron Butterfly. In 1984, he relocated to Los Angeles and began working as a repairman at MusicTek Services in North Hollywood. Over the next eighteen years, Leimseider became a highly sought-after technician, specializing in rare and obscure analog synthesizers and other vintage electronics. In 2002, John Leimseider relocated to Canada to work at the National Music Centre in Calgary, Alberta. He was responsible for repairing some of the museum's most prized possessions, including the Hammond Novachord in 2009, one of Dick Swettenham's Helios consoles inside the iconic Rolling Stones Mobile trailer in 2014, and the Trident 'A' Range recording console (2015). In 2017, Leimseider restored Hugh Le Caine's Polyphonic Analog and reverse-engineered his unique Electronic Sackbut, Canada's earliest synthesizer. Leimseider's final project was a multi-year restoration of T.O.N.T.O., a multitimbral polyphonic analog synthesizer created in the early 1970s by Malcolm Cecil and Bob Margouleff; JL was about to inaugurate TONTO with Cecil at the NMC's newly-renovated Studio Bell when he passed away. Besides his work at the National Music Centre, John Leimseider operated an independent repair workshop in Calgary, JEL Keyboards, and played in a local R&B/jazz/funk band, Blue Rhino.