Korg Trinity

Mmmm lovely 10 out of 10 for styling!

One of nice features of this machine is the 'ribbon controller' seen on the left of the keyboard in addition to the more usual controllers. The Trinity has digital inputs and outputs and features a massive touch screen too. Touch screen! Cool!

The trinity can be expanded to with the Moss engine to give it Z1 synthesis.

Novation Supernova

The Supernova is a rackmount synth using digital, analogue and ASM subtractive synthesis which looks really nice!. It has 32 note polyphony and is 8 parts multitimberal.

There's something about this synth and I don't quite know what. Maybe it's because I have the bass station and this unit looks nothing like it and yet I feel it should. Nevertheless I found myself strangely attracted to it and despite my intended path across the shop floor toward the rack of new dance modules, samplers and drum machines I found myself mysteriously pulled into the lonely corner the Supernova was sitting in.

Slipping on the well used pair of Sennheister's I routed the mother keyboard through and fixed my eyes on the strangely glowing blue display on the front of the unit. "That's it!", I thought. Novation have somehow managed to polarise the light emitted by the display to attract people. Once they arrive they probably think "why am I here? Oh never mind - what does this button do?". Just like I did - spooky!

Once my eyes had come to terms with the immense beauty of that display (am I going too far now??), a few moments fiddling later revealed some lovely sounds, all of which instantly tweakable using the array of knobs on the front panel. Drums sounds are good too. The unit has 8 outs for flexible sound routing.

Synclavier Nord Lead

The Nord lead is a cool red colour

Except for on this site.

Every parameter is tweakable using the dedicated knobs on the front, so there are no menus to go through first. This is the original modeling synth offering morphing where a control can take one sound through to another by changing all the relevant parameters in real time. Rather like picture morphing. It sounds wonderful.

Roland Jupiter 8

It was in a flat in a housing block in Lee, South East London, where it happened - I first got my hands on a Jupiter8. In fact this was my first experience with a proper analogue synth.

The whole experience was, well, spaced. I was not quite sure why I was there (I think it had something to do with a mate called Tom) and I was not quite sure if I wanted to be there either!

The Roland Jupiter 8

I just remember being infront of this synth looking out of the window with a great view of South east London just as it was getting dark playing these long slow to resolve chords on a marvellous patch which used the filter resonance to pick out harmonics from the sound.

I decided I did want to be there after all and when it was time to leave, they had to prise my hands from the keys!

Roland Juno 106

Years later and the Jupiter 8s are rare as hens teeth to get hold of (and very pricy).

Oh well, I have finally decided to get a Juno 106 instead. I'm well pleased with that! :) What a lovely sounds, very distinctive as an 80s machine but so much inspiration at the turn of a knob. Takes me up to date as well. Some serious basses, already hurt my speakers / neighbour. And lovely for pads where the filter can be modulated in real time. Filter sounds nice.

Oh and the MIDI spec is AWESOME. This is considering it was born at a time MIDI was quite new. All controls are outputted as syex. I'd like to see controllers as that would be less bandwidth, but hey, we can't all be that picky, I'm playing with an almost completely analogue machine without a CV convertor in sight :P

Now there is a dedicated 106 page here. I have know the battery needs replacing and there are some other minor issues which I have looked at....

The batteries on these are soldered to the motherboard and are now very rare (out of production). I have ordered a couple of replacements with alternative spec (very close). More here...

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