Ensoniq came up with patented technology to build poly AT into non- weighted keyboards at apparently very little extra cost so most of their unweighted keyboards starting with the EPS family had it (EPS, VFX, ASR, SQ, TS series as far as I know). They made some weighted keyboards and none I know had it. Fatar built all of them for Ensoniq, but since it was Ensoniq's patent, business ethics or contract probably kept Fatar from developing rival technology to do it cheaply another way. In other words poly AT was not under patent but the only low cost way to do it was. Fatar BTW built the bulk of keyboards for everyone in the 80s and 90s (other than Roland, Yamaha and some non-synth manufacturers) and only built it for Ensoniq. So I would guess when the Chinese got into synth keyboard manufacture big time this decade it was a feature than no one had used in a while and wasn't on the list of specs they needed to offer. Roland had their weighted 88 key A-80 in the late 80s as well as one of the few unweighted non-ensoniq keys, the 76 key A-50. Their replacement master keyboard model was the A-90 with the simulated poly AT that was mentioned on the list. I've not used it but no one says it's as good as the real thing and Roland didn't offer it again afaik
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Re: Poly-aftertouch question + idea
2009-10-24 by nicholas kent
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