Any synths with keys like the yamaha cs-80?

[ppg_wavecomputer]

I was playing a CS-80 an hour ago, and I have to say that poly aftertouch on that machine is the best thing about playing that synth.

I like watching people hauling it around and shifting it upstairs.

Stephen

[Bitexion]

Must have been a harrowing experience to be Vangelis' synth roadie in the early 80s (dual cs-80 setup). I bet they didn't last long.

"Today we're going to play in a club on the third floor of this german club! Haul a*s, guys! Oh..and they don't have elevator"

[mharris80]

don't remember is the ASR-10 also as poly aftertouch.

According to the manual, it should, but mine doesn't seem to be working properly. When MIDI'd to my ESQ-1, I can't get any AT at all when the ASR is set in "poly" mode, but "channel" mode works fine.

[synthparts]

don't remember is the ASR-10 also as poly aftertouch.

According to the manual, it should, but mine doesn't seem to be working properly. When MIDI'd to my ESQ-1, I can't get any AT at all when the ASR is set in "poly" mode, but "channel" mode works fine.

That's because the ESQ-1 only supports channel (mono) aftertouch.

[Bitexion]

The receiving synth has to be able to "read" poly aftertouch as well, or it won't register it. Many VA synths can accept poly AT signals even though its own keyboard doesn't have it. It's just software. But if the synth you control don't know what poly AT Should do, nothing happens.

[musomark]

Yamaha implemented an "Horizon touch" keyboard on their el-900 electone.



Side to side motion of the finger is converted to pitch movement. This can be set to narrow for vibrato effects or up to an octave for full blown pitchbend. It can only be used on Solo (i.e. monophonic) voices, but allows wonerfully expressive performances.

Velocity touch and aftertouch are also available so it takes practise to be able to use this effectively (especially if your left hand is playing chords, your left foot providing the bass line and your right foot controlling volume).

I don't know if yamaha or another manufactuer have implemented this on a stand alone keyboard or synth. I imagine that the custom keybed must very expensive to produce - the EL-90 cost around £13000.

I'd love to have a master keyboard with this facility!

[Bitexion]

Yeah, there are very few poly AT keyboards out there because it is too expensive to make. And most people don't even know or care what it is for anyway. A normal "channel" AT keyboard just needs a strip and a spring that is pushed further down as you push the key into it, and it registers aftertouch on the entire keyboard.

Poly AT needs a separate sensor underneath each key, which is of course alot more expensive. In the 80s there were just a couple of Ensoniq synths that had it, and before that, the Yamaha CS-80.

But most VA synths can be set to "poly AT mode" within the menu and happily receive signal from a poly at keyboard. That's the main reason I bought my Ensoniq SQ-80, because my Alesis Ion can take poly AT. Never really used it though.
It's fun to mess about with holding a brass chord and slowly accenting single notes by pushing one note further down. For a while.

The SQ-80 has a metal strip for the aftertouch, so you get a horrible clacking sound every time a key hits it.

[madmarkmagee]

Finally... they fixed the polyphonic aftertouch in the blofeld 1.15.......and it works awesome... all paramaters are individually modulated by each key now...cool

I asked a question in help the other day about the blofeld kbds' aftertouch and ppl seemed to think it only had Chanel aftertouch...

Very confused /:

[Micke]

Poly AT needs a separate sensor underneath each key, which is of course alot more expensive. In the 80s there were just a couple of Ensoniq synths that had it, and before that, the Yamaha CS-80.

There were other synths in the '80s that had Poly-AT eg the SCI Prophet T8, NED Synclavier (VPK), Yamaha GS-1, DX-1 and Rhodes Chroma (later revisions
apparently had Poly-AT as an option).

[Micke]

deleted

[mharris80]

don't remember is the ASR-10 also as poly aftertouch.

According to the manual, it should, but mine doesn't seem to be working properly. When MIDI'd to my ESQ-1, I can't get any AT at all when the ASR is set in "poly" mode, but "channel" mode works fine.

That's because the ESQ-1 only supports channel (mono) aftertouch.

See, that's the weird thing. According to the ESQ manual, it can do both channel and Poly.

"Press=key-This enables the ESQ-1 to receive another kind of pressure--Key Pressure. Key Pressure (also called Polyphonic Pressure) only modulates the note that is pressed--all others remain unmodulated." Page 22

[Bitexion]

yes, but note that it says "can receive", which means the internal software can interpret poly at and assign it correctly. Not that the keyboard itself can DO poly at. It's what I said earlier. Most VA synths can also receive poly AT from a keyboard that has that feature in the keybed hardware, like the SQ-80. It's only a software routine.

On the CS-80 it was a CMOS chip underneath each key. Was probably so expensive that they didn't bother to include it any of their later synths.

[Broadwave]

I've always wanted a controller with PolyAT - and now that I've got one, I would never go back to ChanelAT. It's very, very expressive.

One synth that doesn't seem to have been mentioned is the GEM S2 or S3 (I've just picked one up for £100). OK, they may not be the classic polysynth that everyone craves for, but they have a great action, release velocity and PolyAT.

Get one while they're still cheap

[Ashe37]

In the states you really don't see the GEMs... but you see Ensoniq VFXes for $150 or so all the time...

[Bitexion]

The only time I've ever seen a GEM synth was when Rick Wakeman had one on a tour in Oslo..might have been in 2001