Elettronica Kastelfidardo.

Elka’s name is a contraction of “Elettronica” and “Kastelfidardo” — the accordion town spelled with a K. It was founded in 1965, in part of the old accordion factory on via Matteotti that had belonged to Sante Crucianelli, by members of the Crucianelli accordion family led by Piero Crucianelli, with partners including Nazzareno Orlandoni, according to the Castelfidardo collector Claudio Capponi. Sources differ on which Crucianelli was the founder, so we use Capponi’s account of the shareholders; Italian Wikipedia and the music site Accordo.it give the same derivation of the name.

It began with organs. Capponi says Elka hired two English technicians, started with about forty staff and made as its first product the Capri, a portable organ built to compete with Farfisa’s Compact. It later moved to a new plant in the Squartabue industrial zone at Recanati, and by the late 1970s employed about 150 people.

Its range grew to string and piano keyboards such as the Rhapsody, organs such as the X-55, X-705, Solist 505 and Artist 707, Elkatone amplifiers and electronic accordions — eleven models, Capponi says, with more than 35,000 units in all.

Its founder was young. Piero Crucianelli, born in October 1935, was not yet thirty when Elka began, and held 60 per cent of the shares, Capponi says; the others were Nazzareno Orlandoni, Mario Crucianelli and the heirs of Filippo Crucianelli. The move to Recanati, Capponi adds, made Elka the first industrial settlement in the Squartabue zone. A different firm, Orla, was founded the same year by Orlandoni with Alfio Monaci; the two were separate companies, not a merger.

The Synthex.

Elka’s most famous instrument was the Synthex, an eight-voice analogue synthesizer with a joystick and a built-in sequencer, introduced in the early 1980s. It was designed by an independent Italian engineer, Mario Maggi, with Elka’s financial backing. Sound On Sound wrote in 1999 that it launched at more than £3,000 and was later cleared at about £500, and that its UK sales suffered because the Elka name meant home organs rather than professional synths.

Its users made its reputation. Sound On Sound documents its use by Jean-Michel Jarre on Rendez-Vous in 1986, by Stevie Wonder on “Skeletons” in 1987 and by Geoff Downes of Asia; the sound of Jarre’s laser harp is widely reported to be a Synthex factory preset.

The company did not last. In 1989 the Elka brand and logo passed to Generalmusic. After Generalmusic’s bankruptcy, the Finnish company Soundion bought the Elka name with GEM and LEM in 2014 and announced a Synthex reissue at the Musikmesse in 2015; its crowdfunding campaign closed without reaching its goal. The Elka brand has been dormant since: Soundion’s websites are parked, and we found no new Elka instrument on sale in the sources we checked.

The Synthex’s specification explains its appeal. It had digitally controlled oscillators, a multimode filter, a joystick for bending and modulating sound, and a four-track sequencer. English Wikipedia, citing Keyboard magazine, also records Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran among its users, and quotes Martin Gore of Depeche Mode: “I love my Elka Synthex.” Production dates differ — 1981 to 1985 in one source, 1982 to 1987 in another — so we say only “early 1980s.” The reissue site, now closed, said the new version would be hand-built in Salo, Finland, and showed Jarre with what it called “his 3 Elka Synthexes.”

From accordions to electronics.

The accordion boom on Italy’s Adriatic coast ended quickly. Italian Wikipedia, citing the national business-archive portal, records that accordion exports fell by about half between 1952 and 1962; an analysis by Franco Foschi, quoted in a 2012 presentation by the guitar maker EKO, estimated that the trade had employed at least 13,000 people while it lasted.

The district’s answer was to change instruments: in the late 1950s and 1960s, several accordion firms, and people who had worked for them, turned to electric guitars and electronic organs. Italian Wikipedia credits the guitar maker EKO with lifting Italy’s share of world guitar exports from 0.8 per cent in 1956 to 12 per cent in 1965.

Electronics followed. Farfisa, formed in 1946 from three accordion firms, made its first electronic accordions in 1962 and its Compact organs from 1964; the Castelfidardo collector Claudio Capponi puts its workforce at about 1,800 in 1963. Crumar, founded around 1970–71 by Mario Crucianelli of the accordion family, grew to about 300 staff, according to an enthusiast history based on interviews with former engineers, before it stopped trading in 1986 or 1987 — sources differ.

The industrial district of Recanati, Osimo and Castelfidardo, which covers fourteen comuni, went into crisis again at the end of the 1970s, Italian Wikipedia says, under Asian competition, and diversified into lighting, photovoltaics and telecommunications. Further north, in Romagna, the Galanti family of Mondaino made a parallel journey from accordions to organs and keyboards.

The history is kept in small places. Recanati opened a guitar museum named after EKO’s founder, Oliviero Pigini, on 22 May 2004; Castelfidardo’s international accordion museum opened in 1981; and an annual Farfisa Day, organised by Capponi’s cultural association, shows historic instruments in Castelfidardo — its fourteenth edition was held in September 2025.

Elka is that journey in its name: an electronics company that kept its accordion town in the word, and started inside an accordion factory.

A town’s name, spelled with a K.

Elka’s brand is a piece of wordplay: a hard “K” that made an Italian town sound like a technology company. Its history is the district’s history in miniature — an accordion family, an organ to rival Farfisa, a synthesizer designed by an outsider and loved by famous players, then sale and dormancy. The Synthex, with its joystick and sequencer, is the image that has outlived the company.

For a design guide, Elka shows how a name can carry place into technology. Compare Crucianelli, the accordion family behind it, and Farfisa, the rival its first organ was built to meet. We say plainly that Elka no longer makes instruments. For this guide we use a panel black and a signal orange with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no instrument or logo is reproduced.

Keep Elka’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.