Old keyboards and synths!!

I remember seeing Beck doing some incredible things with a battered, gaffer-taped CZ101 in Paris in 1995. He was running fat bass sounds through heavy distortion and it really rocked.

I abandoned my CZ when I got into analogue synths. Now I lust after the Korg string machine Laurie Anderson used in her early recordings.

I'd love a Farfisa one of these days. and one of those ARP synths like wot Andrew Prinz from Mahogany uses. Mmmm.

If anyone has a cupboard full of Farfisa Duo Compact combo organs that need rehoming, well, I could probably bring myself to assist... (what do you mean, just owning a Farfisa wouldn't magically turn me into Laetitia Sadier as she was 8 years ago? Oh. Oh well.)

I met a guy who bought a reconditioned Fairlight for 2000 uk pounds. He seemed totally happy with it. You draw the wave forms you want on the screen with a light pen! It's all green vector graphics like Tron!

I have a Yamaha CS-5, a Yamaha CS-40M, a Teisco 607, an Etherwave theremin, a stylophone and a Casiotone 403. One of these days I'll get round to recording my masterpiece...!

The Casiotone's obviously terrible but makes a great sound source.

I would love to get my hands on an Optigan:

http://www.optigan.com/

but I've never seen one come up for sale in the UK.

The old EMS synths are great:

http://www.ems- synthi.demon.co.uk/

and still seem to be being made.

Other highlights:

The Vostok:

http://listen.to/concussor/

which is like a Synthi for the 21st Century

Bob Moog's new Minimoog:

http://www.bigbriar.com/cgi- local/SoftCart.100.exe/spec/voyager.html? L+scstore+nnxs3446ffa73aa7+1024011012

The Andromeda from Alesis:

http://www.alesis.com/produc ts/a6/

and the Doepfer A100:

http://www.doepfer.com/a100e.h tm

Mmm, goodies...

By the way, this is my first post to I Love Music!

Robbie

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Spaced Out - the Enoch Light Website
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Sarah -

Yes, I used to do a show on occasional student radio station Fresh Air FM:

http://www.freshairfm.co.uk/

The show was called Moon Base Alpha:

http://www.rcb.easynet.co.u k/space/

and was an extension of a club I used to run here in Edinburgh called Space Safari...

The station is back on the air in May - hopefully I'll be on again.

In the meantime there's an archived show on Live365:

http://www.live365.com/

(search for "bongoboy")

So this is ILE? What a terrible faux pas - I'll try not to make that mistake again...


Robbie "Mr Links" Baldock

I am jealous of the amount of recording and music making stuff this woman has! ...lalala>/a>

This is good music (sorry, can only find sites in German) barbara morgenstern

I have:
1. Casitone MT-400v = great keyboard! If you set the buttons right, it can do glitch!
2. Concertmate 500 = sampling keyboard, doesn't store samples, but oh well
3. Casio VLtone = looks like an old fashioned pencil box, has calculator function with which 'weird' sounds can be created.
4. Casio Pt 10 = very basic.

Cool links Robbie!

Thanx for your answers everyone!

bm

Please work.

I saw one of those autochord/zither things cheap too: it's (probably) a Suzuki Omnichord. I was tempted but decided it didn't actually sound very useful, which of course meant that a fortnight later I heard an awesome track by Pram featuring much Omnichord action. But I think I'm glad I didn't get it, it's not very versatile, and anyway there were two issues where the second issue (IIRC) had midi and looked vaguely professional and had loads of new features, and this was the first issue, which basically screamed My First Naff Eighties Bleepy Toy. But the strum bar was cool. I like the concept of strumming a synth.

Plus now I have so many softsynths I hardly use real gear any more anyway, hence my Juno-6 is mainly gathering dust. I have a late 80s Casio home keyboard, which doesn't really count, but I'd like to use it as a midi controller, except I can't persuade it to talk midi to anything I own and I don't know if it's the keyboard's fault or my soundcard or the cable or just that I don't know what I'm doing (which I don't, and I have no manual for the keyboard, but I figured out how to switch between midi channels and turn local on and off, so I spent ages trying all the different combinations, and still nothing).

I am dead impressed by the concept of having a Fairlight in your own home. It must take up an entire room. I'd like to play around with a Motorola Scalatron; I don't know why, since I don't understand microtonic music and have never made any except some rather dodgy pitch-bend drone experiments years ago, but I like the name and I feel it might be an instant route to avant-garde credibility, or something.

Sigh. I've had to recently compromise, and not buy anymore synths, no matter how tempting. I find myself getting tired of a particular synth sound once I play it with for an extended period of time, and it just doesn't justify the space that it takes up in my life as it stands now. Although computer emulations are always inferior, I have to stick with that route for now, unless I soon cohabitate with a vintage synth freak.

Hi Robbie and Rebecca! Stereolab listers take over!

further to the EMS vcs3/synthi discussion that took place on some completely unrelated thread, australian friend has just sent me a copy of What The Future Sounded Like which is a 30 minute australian(?) documentary about EMS. first couple of minutes looks great.

trailer and dodgy old ems adverts here:
http://www.myspace.com/whatthefuturesoundedlike
www.whatthefuturesoundedlike.com

warning: contains a vcs3 made of cake!

Pash, I saw your Chroma demo on Matrixsynth recently. Sounds nice!

I have a Roland String Machine, a Farfisa mini compact, and an Oberheim 4vs that is being resurrected after being shot and left in an alley (!!!).

aw, nice that this thread gives props to the cz101

i really want to find old carlo robelli synths (sam ash house brand) from the 80s if anyone knows anything...

my favorite old synths are my omnichord, and various concertmate and yamaha ps series

Also, this would probably be a good thread to give huge endorsement to one of the coolest guys I know, Scott, who does a DIY uber obscure hand-built module business here: http://www.bridechamber.com/. Super awesome, super geeky, also the poor soul that is helping me ressurrect the aforementioned Oberheim.

Hopefully Pash will read this (well duh, of course he will) because I promised to send him a link to this page a few months ago and promptly forgot.

80s analogue

Shot-up Oberheim? Good times. I used to have a Farfisa Compact I bought off of this guy in Denver for $25 back in 1994. It was great until all the C keys died.

At this point, the only old keyboards I own are a Korg MS-20 and an ARP Axe with broken envelopes (but the filter works fine).

I've got a KORG Mono/Poly and a Yamaha SY1.
http://www.synrise.de/images/yamaha-sy1.jpg
Love this guy!

Mono/Poly is my dream synth. Right now I've got a Juno-106, Akai AX-80, bunch of grooveboxes, drum machines, and old toy Casios (SK-1, SK-5, PT-10, and RapMan). Used to have a CZ-3000 and was just getting to know the ins and outs of it before it died (kept powering off intermittently and didn't know how/have the money to fix). CZs are great and would love to get another.

BTW, does anyone know if the MS-2000 can do the Mono/Poly trick of setting the arpeggiator to cycle through each oscillator?

I love my Mono/Poly. What I really want now is an old Oberheim synth.

whoa, this thread is teh weesome

im still partial to the jx-3p meself

plus: its fun reading momus's posts while listening to his momus voice in my head

Capitaine, get one Matrix 1000 and an editor. Not super old but still a classic oberheim sound and you can pick those up for 150$ or less. I've been meaning to get one.

Thanks Dan. I shall look into this...