This is one of my all time favorites. The modular concept is extremely pedagogic, you simply can’t avoid learning how synthesis works while you patch, or even while you study what others have patched. The user community makes sure that you really don’t have to make your own patches if you really don’t want to (you do want to, […]
I eventually sold this one, but I remember it had a few very nice sounds, and I particularly liked the reverb, which sounded very warm and “distantly present”. My main problem with this was simply that it was a pain to program, due to the 2-line display and what felt like a deep menu hierarchy, […]
This was the first machine that really felt like a synth, with LFO’s, filters and the works. A very straightforward machine and very easy to use, but it didn’ t sound quite as warm as the Emax, but that didn’t really bother me. The Akai got me into actual sound programming, and having used this […]
My first sampler. A definite nostalgia factor associated with this one, as Depeche Mode toured with Emaxes for several tours. So I just had to have one. The moment I got it, I realized that its 2 MB memory simply wasn’t enough, so the same week I bought an Akai S2000. I never really used […]
Eventually I moved to a bigger apartment. With one additional room at my disposal, I thought I could invest in a modular system. Or maybe a sound module? I don’t think I could tell the difference in those days. That little barely visible Roland SC-88 in the right-hand side lower corner, next to the JX-1, is […]
For the JX-1 I a friend built me a MIDI interface from scratch. Piece of cake, he said. I thought that was pretty hardcore. This was my first commercial MIDI interface. Plugged into the ISA slot of the PC. Plenty of MIDI channels for my current setup! For the rest of my life? Nahh…but still […]
Me and a bunch of guys I was working with all got one of these, because they were so cool. Having removable cartridges with insane amounts of rewritable storage capacity was so much better than burning CD’s. I used mine to hold samples for both the Emax II and the Akai. My first external SCSI-device […]
A 32-part multitimbral General MIDI rompler. Editable resonance and filter cutoff + ADSR envelope. Chorus, reverb and a delay I never managed to get to another tempo than 90 bpm. Nothing spectacular, but does what it’s supposed to do. This was my main sound source between 1995 and 1997, (sadly) my most productive period, if […]