Music Technology

My obsession with synthesizers began the day I heard and saw Tubeway Army perform Are 'Friends' Electric on TOTP back in 1979.. I got my first one around 1981, a Korg M500SP, inspired by its use by OMD. It was crap and luckily soon superseded by a Yamaha CS-5, a proper synthesizer.

Over the years I have acquired many and sold many, some I wish I hadn't (Yamaha CS-15, Moog Prodigy and a Roland TB-303). These pages are dedicated to that obsession.

Here are a few of my early forays into synthesizers that I do not own anymore.

Korg M500-SP

This was the instrument that started my obsession. Purchased partly as it was (almost) affordable on an apprentices salary and also because I had seen OMD use it quite extensively.

Unfortunately it is a terrible instrument, very limited but my knowledge of synthesizers was not very extensive in those days

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Yamaha CS-5

My second purchase, while not exactly the peak of technology, it was at least a proper synthesizer.

This was the machine on which I finally learnt the basics of synthesis although it's life was relatively short as I not long after managed to obtain a CS-15 which virtually made this redundant.

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Yamaha CS-15

Not that long after getting the Yamaha CS-5 I was offered a second-hand CS-15, far too good an opportunity to miss as it was a 2 oscillator synth. It's architecture also allowed routing to one or two separate filters, a feature I probably never really appreciated at the time. Getting this pretty much made the CS-5 redundant.
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Moog Prodigy

To date this is the only Moog I have ever owned. A fairly simple but good sounding mono. I remember the sliders had a tendency to pop off. At some point in the past mine had been modified as there was a hole for an extra port at the back, whatever had been added had been removed by the time I bought it. As with the CS-15 I exchanged this for the Korg DW-8000




Roland SH-101

Loved the look of the SH-101 when I got one but at the time was never impressed by the sound. It was something that grew on me and I eventually replaced it with the Roland Boutique SH-01A. The original either went to fund a Commodore Amiga or the Sansui WS-X1.




Siel Expander 80

I remember I picked this up from a second hand shop when I lived in Fratton. It was quite cheap and a fairly bland sounding synth, very much based on the Korg Poly-800. Cannot remember what happened to it.