A while back I ordered a new tone bender wheel, and as a part of attempting to install the new wheel I adjusted the setting of the pitch pot in the middle of the wheel such that it allowed the bender to only function in one direction. Good to hear that you found the problem, and thanks for followin...

"I Can't Wait"... great choice from the '80s. Two others: Saga, "Time's Up", and The B-52s, "Mesopotamia". I think both of these were done with a Multimoog.

Kawai K5/K5m/K5000 are notorious for the LCD backlights failing. Practically every on you see will have it failed unless someone has fixed it. And the display is pretty hard to read without it -- all those one-pixel modulation indicators. :shock: On most of them (was true on my K5m) both the EL back...

Checking the bend lever is a good thought. I think it can be unplugged internally. The master tune pot itself could be going bad. Looking at a schematic, I see there is a filter cap on the module board tied to the master tune signal. If this cap were leaking, it could throw the tuning off. (I'm not ...

All six voices are off by the same amount? That limits the possibilities. I'll have a look at the schematics tonight.

So it seems even when they were new those early CMOS MUX were considered likely to fail. Back in the early days of CMOS they had a lot of problems with static-induced failures. Static electricity protection in circuit designs (or in handling) wasn't as well understood then. Socketing made it easier...

A lot, maybe most, of the DX7 sales were to players who had no interest in it as a synth -- they just wanted the piano and brass sounds. Many DX7 players seldom changed patches, much less did any programming.

I figured out which cable it was without having to test it. Didn't think using a wrong cable would be too dangerous, but had to check. There's no danger, since DIN sync and MIDI use different pins. The worst thing that will happen is, if the cable doesn't have all five pins wired, it just won't work.

Sweetwater has the M-Audio Keystation 49 on sale for $49 (one dollar per key!). It's probably not a great keyboard, but it will do for starters.

On the FM in particular, I'd start with something that's cheap, to see if that's what you might be interested in. A lot of people find FM difficult and give up on it. I think you can still get a TX81Z on the Bay for about $100; it's 4-op as opposed to the 6-op FM of the DX7, but for a beginner that'...

One of the cooler keyboards I've seen recently was an ondes martenot string attached to a CV keyboard for the Analogue Systems modular that was displayed in a shop. That's an Analogue Systems special-order product -- the French Connection. I'm pretty sure it also has the keyboard that moves left an...

Marc, very interesting writeup... thanks for that. Regarding Moog and Deutsch, my own reading had led me to the conclusion that once they had decided they needed a conventional means of control, the keyboard was simply the most convenient technology available. Given the technology at the time, somet...

Yeah, I have to disagree with the premise of the post. The OP seems to have confused the world of "arrangers" with synth players. It is true that the majority of elecronic instruments sold these days are arranger keyboards whose purpose is to reproduce and imitate accoustic instruments. However, I d...

You do realize that changing the envelope settings on the Minibrute isn't going to have any effect on the Monotribe... having said that, if increasing the attack and release times on the Monotribe aren't getting rid of the clicking, then it sounds like the gate signal from the Minibrute is coupling ...

Good show. I'm thinking we need a sticky, listing for various synths: (1) how to do a factory reset, (2) how to put it in test mode.