The Yamaha AN1x Synthesizer mailing list

Had one. Had the best Pulse Width Modulation, the synth sounded warm 
and lush and never ever ran right for more than fifteen minutes. 
Massive crashes constantly and then alas one day she crashed and never 
recovered.

Jimmy

spaceanimals a \ufffdcrit :

>Had one. Had the best Pulse Width Modulation, the synth sounded warm 
>and lush and never ever ran right for more than fifteen minutes. 
>Massive crashes constantly and then alas one day she crashed and never 
>recovered.
>
>Jimmy
>  
>
Hello Jimmy !
I've heard things like that... a very interesting instrument but not 
very reliable. As a lot of these old days synths...
As far as i know some worked perfectly, others were always in the repair 
shop. The manufacturing quality was surely worst than the design itself.
On my opinion yours was affected by power supply failures caused by an 
excess of heat (too small heatsinks or excessive current) leading to 
some regulator IC emergency shutdown, and the \ufffdP crash. Let it cool 
down: you can restart until the next crash and so on, until you turn it 
off definitely. The last and final stop was probably the death of some 
inexpensive supply part. Nothing really serious, but boring....
With these old machines it was better (if not imperative) to have some 
basic-or more- electronics knowledge, unless you wanted to spend a lot 
of money in maintenance and upgrades. It's always obviously true for 
vintage gear collectors.OK, you want only to store the collection in 
some show room and never play a note? If not, buy quickly a DMM, an 
oscilloscope, a good soldering iron and learn how, where and when to use 
this equipment!
That's one reason (the other being the price) of the overwhelming 
success of the 80s digital japanese synths: more voices, cheaper, and 
far more reliable than the analog "dinosaurs".
Cheers
J.F.

Hi,

 

Well until the dreaded battery leak problem hit, my DK600 had been totally
reliable - never needed repairs.  I gigged it extensively too, so it had to
put up with all sorts of dodgy power points in local venues.  It always spot
on.

 

And IMO all the comments about quality of sound are correct- it really
is/was one of the best sounding of its era, particularly for any sounds
using its pulse width modulation features.  And what many people don't
realise, and I think contributed a lot to make that sound just a little
better, was that it had 3 LFOs per voice instead of 2 like most synths
have/had.  LFO's 1 and 2 were each assigned to one of the oscillators, and
you could get interesting effects by the fact that each oscillator had its
own LFO.  You could choose only to have LFO 1 active or LFO 2, or both.
These LFOs were used to affect the oscillator pitch, so you could easily get
nice thick sounds by have LFO operated detuning of only one of the 2
oscillators, much better than a fixed detuning of 1 oscillator against
another.  

 

LFO 3 was used to affect filter cutoff, or pulse width modulation amount,
and with the latter, you had the flexibility to affect only one or both
oscillators, again giving a better sense of movement within the overall
sound.

 

I'm still hoping to get it going again!

 

Nigel

 

 

 

 



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hello !
have you tried sucessfully to download the repair manual of the DK 600?
This been said i completely agree with you. But some were totally 
unreliable...IMO due to random manufacturing problems, and a "light" 
quality control, not because of a poor design...
The battery leaks were common on Korg Poly 6 too, most of those that you 
can find now have been repaired, or will die from this disease sooner or 
later. Put this f.. battery anywhere in the case, but not on a PCB ! 
We've had the same issues at work with backup batteries for CMOS static 
RAMs.
Cheers
J.F.

NovemberPapa a \ufffdcrit :

>Hi,
>
> 
>
>Well until the dreaded battery leak problem hit, my DK600 had been totally
>reliable - never needed repairs.  I gigged it extensively too, so it had to
>put up with all sorts of dodgy power points in local venues.  It always spot
>on.
>
> 
>
>And IMO all the comments about quality of sound are correct- it really
>is/was one of the best sounding of its era, particularly for any sounds
>using its pulse width modulation features.  And what many people don't
>realise, and I think contributed a lot to make that sound just a little
>better, was that it had 3 LFOs per voice instead of 2 like most synths
>have/had.  LFO's 1 and 2 were each assigned to one of the oscillators, and
>you could get interesting effects by the fact that each oscillator had its
>own LFO.  You could choose only to have LFO 1 active or LFO 2, or both.
>These LFOs were used to affect the oscillator pitch, so you could easily get
>nice thick sounds by have LFO operated detuning of only one of the 2
>oscillators, much better than a fixed detuning of 1 oscillator against
>another.  
>
> 
>
>LFO 3 was used to affect filter cutoff, or pulse width modulation amount,
>and with the latter, you had the flexibility to affect only one or both
>oscillators, again giving a better sense of movement within the overall
>sound.
>
> 
>
>I'm still hoping to get it going again!
>
> 
>
>Nigel
>
> 
>
> 
>
> 
>
> 
>
>
>
>[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>  
>