oddball synths

[Joey]

The CS70M reminds me of Yamaha's biggest oddball: the GS1. The classy big brother of the DX7, the first proper FM synthesis-based synth (at least from Yamaha, if not the first period) and looking like some of their home pianos do now, appearance-wise. On the other hand, it subverts the oddball trope in that the synthesis method carried on and became a big hit, but the GS-1 itself is largely ignored in the history books.

The VSE lacks a proper page on the poor GS-1 as well, BTW.

my friend used to have the GS2 that the theme from ghostbusters was written on

[Hossinfeffa]

Hmm.. I'd have to say the Elka Synthex and EHX Mini-Synthesizer were oddballs.

[crystalmsc]

e-mu morpheus when it was released, mainly for the z-plane filter. boss SYB-3 for the features and good sound out of such a small device. Yamaha TG33 with awm, fm and vector, plus the way it looks. Korg Wavestation (wavesequencing, AV and expandable waveform) and Wavedrum for the playability and sound.

[JJQ]

And the Teisco 110f.

A regular monosynth with a fixed filterbank.

[griffin avid]

I'm going to go with the Hartman Neuron.
Odd-ball to me is...
1. Out of nowhere
2. No demand fot it at the time of release
3. No similar product to compete with
4. Not based on previous product line (even if it's a radical departure from the apparent direction of 'adding more')
5. No follow up products (the little controller thingie doesn't count) so it can't be considered a first.
6. Does miserable so it's not copied, cloned or emulated.

So the perfect odd-ball is a wonderful dead-end.

[downgrade]

Buchla Music Easel...... or really anything Buchla for that matter.

[Micke]

Oh yeah, i forgot about the GS-1 and GS-2. One of them was used for the brass on 'Africa' by TOTO but both have been completely forgotten.

In fact, the main part (the brass/pads) in "Africa" was played on a CS-80. The GS-1 does the kalimba part (six tracks of GS-1 playing different rhythms) as well as the high organ sound.

Besides Toto, the GS-1 was also used by Vangelis (eg on "Bladerunner"), Patrick Moraz, Benny Andersson/ABBA, Billy Currie/Ultravox, Jerry Goldsmith (soundtracks), Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Mark Kelly/Marillion and Images In Vogue.

[tim gueguen]

Can't have a thread about oddballs without mentioning the Davolisint. http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/nov06/a ... lisint.htm
They don't get much more primitive than this early Italian jobbie.

[memedesigner]

Oberheim Cyclone. Like, what does it do? It's a mystery. Got one by chance.

Ok, that's not a synth. So how about SCI Prophet VS? 'Well, we've done these analog stuff, but let's now do a digital synth, but with like a 4-way modulatable mixer between the digital waveforms, let's keep the analog filter and then let's release it with presets that emulate DX7 presets as close as possible, howaboutit?'.

That one has required massive brainstorm and leap of faith...

[Soundwave]

FS1R - Complex 8 op formant FM when VA was all the rage.
Fizmo - Still don't know exactly what the h**l it does?
Air FX - ?
Andromeda - Who would have thought that from a big digital synth corp?
Polymorph - Berlin school ethos from a dance/techno manufacturer!
MC-09 - Unusual VA bass synth with sampler combo.

[cornutt]

Several things from EML fall into this category. There was the PolyBox, which was basically a PLL circuit driving a bunch of divide-downs, so that you could feed a mono signal into it and it would spit out chords, sort of. There was the 300 which, to be honest, I still haven't figured out how it worked. And then there was the Synkey, with its peculiar divide-down architecture and those punch cards for patch storage.

[Analog Freak]

I nominate Casio for their CZ series of synthesizers. I really wish Casio would make another synthesizer, they certainly have the know-how and the capital to pull it off. Another screwball to me was the Yamaha TX16W. Weird little sampler, it's amazing how many things they got right, yet they made such glaring mistakes in other areas. They have nice sound quality but lousy filters. They also have a lot of neat features, buried under a kludge of an operating system. It's like they decided to go straight from an engineering study to full production without any oversight. Thank God for Typhoon 2000. It took Yamaha about ten years before they tested the waters with another sampler, and the new versions weren't anything like the old.

[meatballfulton]

I'd put the TB-303 on the top of any list of oddballs.

[Syn303]

I'd put the TB-303 on the top of any list of oddballs.

yh it's an oddball alright, the one machine to emblazon thousands of acid house and techno tracks

[23]

I'm going to go with the Hartman Neuron.
Odd-ball to me is...
1. Out of nowhere
2. No demand fot it at the time of release
3. No similar product to compete with
4. Not based on previous product line (even if it's a radical departure from the apparent direction of 'adding more')
5. No follow up products (the little controller thingie doesn't count) so it can't be considered a first.
6. Does miserable so it's not copied, cloned or emulated.

So the perfect odd-ball is a wonderful dead-end.

good call