That's a Yamaha PSR-6, the very first synth I ever owned.
It was a birthday gift from my maternal grandmother.
It was such a long time ago sometimes I forget that I even ever had one.
But that was truly the first synth I had where I really started to get into synths. I started using it to overdub using a dual cassette recorder deck that had an auxillary input.
On most forums I told people my first synth was a CZ-5000, but that actually came several years later, and was the first EDITABLE synth I owned and purchased with my own money.
What was your first piece of synth gear? (photos please)
I started with something very similar from Yamaha, it was a fetching shade of dull grey from memory, button layout looks identical to the PSR6 though. My first real synth was a Micro Korg, still have it
kurzweil k2000. It's actually a pretty good sounding synth, but its architecture is weird and not really as great as it's cracked up to be. Great in a layering kind of way, which is not my style. meh.
I later got a korg poly-800. that's a cool synth. limited but very cool sounding.
^Not really in the same league, but I had a E-Mu Proteus (the first version and well after it came out). I was actually surprised how usable the sounds were once you got them sitting right in the mix...and certainly had a a fierce 90's rompler vibe going on...but I dug it. A pain to use compared to modern offerings.
If I hadn't found some sucker to take it off my hands for double what I paid for it, it'd still be in my rack getting some occasional love.
Some old Casio thing. Phase modulation synth, couldn't get my head around and it was actually kinda shit in hind sight. Next was a Roland xp50 and that thing was great! Wish I still had it. Although I might not have the room for it anymore and sound editing was a bit of a pain. But I had it fully loaded with extra sound cards all techno oriented and it had tons of useable stuff on board and was cool to learn to play keys with, the key bed was good and it was fun to come up with ideas on.
Some old Casio thing. Phase modulation synth, couldn't get my head around and it was actually kinda shit in hind sight. Next was a Roland xp50 and that thing was great! Wish I still had it. Although I might not have the room for it anymore and sound editing was a bit of a pain. But I had it fully loaded with extra sound cards all techno oriented and it had tons of useable stuff on board and was cool to learn to play keys with, the key bed was good and it was fun to come up with ideas on.
Was it a Casio CZ? I've heard a lot of wicked stuff come out of those synths on youtube.
Still have it but the disks are so old, a little afraid to fire it up.
There a now some floppy diskette adapter/emulators that are actually flash drives. You could copy the OS disks into that and use the SCSI as normal. I forget what it's called, but I remember reading about it about 8 years ago.
I used to have some friends that had an ASR-10. Wow, what a wonderful piece of gear. It spoiled me and taught me a lot! So many good memories.
There a now some floppy diskette adapter/emulators that are actually flash drives. You could copy the OS disks into that and use the SCSI as normal. I forget what it's called, but I remember reading about it about 8 years ago.
I had looked around a few years ago to see about finding a way to update the drives, the floppies were slow even back then - but yes, thanks - looked again and found what you are talking about.
I may have to give that a shot. Would love to hear it again.
The first synth I ever touched was a Moog they sold in Radio Shack with the Realistic badge on it, I think. It might have been a rebranded Rogue, although I'm sure someone knows what that thing really was. My first synth was the Yamaha DX-100. As far as I know, Buckwheat Zydeco is the only musician that actually used one of the stock patch sounds on it. It was on the song "Space Zydeco" and that sound is as bad as you are thinking. Ha ha ha.
Rompler, sort of workstation-y but lacked a sequencer, i used cakewalk home studio to sequence it. It accepted 16 channels of midi and had inbuilt drum kits so i was squared away. 2 realtime control sliders that i usually had set up to cutoff and resonance.
Some variation of this piece of shit. Bought it at Mars Music I think some time around 1998 for $699. I actually sort of still have it but it's at my mother in law's garage where it doesn't get in the way. I wrote some of the Colonizer stuff on it. It's just too damn big. Shit 90's sounds, not even the cool retro 80s stuff. we're talking shit you'd hear on a Saturday morning toy commercial in 1993. I tried to sell it in 2003 and a guy offered to pay me 25 bucks for it, then. So probably junk garbage at this point, but maybe in ten years it'll be worth 300 if these current trends are anything.
First one I bought second hand was a TB-303 for $30 in the USA. I had no idea what it was, but my mate told me to look for them when I visited the states. When I brought it back, he sh*t his pants. WHA?? You found one? When he showed me what it could do, I was hooked. Everyone wanted to buy it for me for serious money, but I soon discovered that I could simply bring it over to project studios and lend it to them while they made tracks. Basically, this turned into University for me. Learned more about making House than any real school could have taught me. Still have it to this day...
What Was Your First Hardware Synth?
ASR-10 in modern times
