Yamaha CS80

--- In yamahacs80@yahoogroups.com, "Mert Topel" <mert@...> wrote:
>
> Have you got any idea why the great CS60 was not popular ever?

It seems to me that the CS-50, 60, and 80 all suffered from somewhat
being the last of their kind. They all fell in that timeframe of
post-minimoog, relatively non-programmable, cheaper analog synths and
right on the cusp of polyphonic, digital, programmable, networkable
sampler/synths (both cheap and expensive).

I think the Moogs & ARPs of the world were failing, the Rolands and
Korgs and Sequential Circuits were rising (with MIDI), Synclaviers and
Fairlights were blowing everyone's minds. Yamaha was too outside to
compete in that marketplace. 

I never even saw a CS-series synth until 1983, a CS-80 in a famous
disco producer's studio in NYC. They weren't in the music stores I
visited in the mid-late-'70s. So maybe bad distribution too.

My CS-50 was a music store demo that was never sold, taken by the
music store owner's daughter from Colorado to Kansas City, stored and
eventually bought by a local collector for the price of a gas bill,
stored, and bought by me when he needed some cash. It looked like it
had just come out of the music store.

It blows my mind that this beautiful and beautiful sounding synth had
to travel that path into my hands, but I question why someone else had
not valued it's sound and appeal up until I got it?

Would I have preferred the CS-50 to my Juno-6 back in '82? Doubt it.
Would I trade the CS-50 before trading my Juno-6 today? No way. It's
priceless and so individual and so special.

I just recorded a piece that used a CS-80 patch on a Roland JD-800 and
I overlayed a comparible CS-50 patch on top of it. The CS has a growl
and edge to the sound whereas the JD patch was smooth and compressed.
The CS just wants to dominate the soundspace. Who needs chords when a
couple of notes on a CS fills things up?

-Jim
www.touchxtone.com
www.myspace.com/jimcombs