On Fri, 8 Sep 2000, sikorsky wrote:
> off down to Rak Studios in London on Monday (to collect some
> production equipment) and i only just found out they have one of THOSE
> Yamaha synths:
>
> all i know (from heresay) they were the pinnacle of Yamaha's analogue
> expertiese, an R&D excercise based loosely on the CS80, that there
> were only four ever build - one went to Micky Most (hence it being at
> Rak), one went to Abba, one went to Stevie Wonder - i've seen some
> footage of this, and i suppose the last one is in the Yamaha synth
> bunker
A Yamaha Electone GX1? Various vintage keyboard sites seem to suggest
there were at least 7 of these built. Debuted at 1973 NAMM. It was the
predecessor to the CS80 (the CS80 being a chip version of most of the
GX1's discrete transistor circuits). The GX1 must weigh over 500kg. I'd
love to have one, but then I'd need to buy a crane to move it. Personally,
I'd settle for a CS80, but people irritatingly hold onto those things like
the pieces of gold they are. ;)
I can still hope, though. After all, I never thought I'd find a DX1 and
it happened...
Yamaha still makes the Electone series, but it only gets listed on their
Japan website. One friend living in Saitama has this one:
http://www.yamaha.co.jp/product/el/elseries/el900m.html It look like an organ, but it is a synth. Still has the spring-loaded
knee controller. (The page will probably have a lot of gibberish on it
unless you're running a Japanese character extension or J-Windows,
etc.) The price is 1,280,000 yen (about $11,000).
Crow
/∗∗/