Cubist
Posts: 559 Joined: Oct. 2007
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My instruments!
This one is Yamaha's SHS-10. Classic keytar, introduced to the market in 1987; I picked this one up on eBay a few months back. The ones that showed up in the US were red; Yamaha also made them in grey (like this one) and black models, the color of the case being the only difference between them all. DEVO may have been the most prominent SHS-10 users.
It's got 25 built-in voices, plus 25 built-in automatic percussion/accompaniment styles. No provision for modifying the voices. No MIDI in, but does have MIDI out on channels 1 thru 16. Built-in speaker so's you can play the thing without an external amp. Can run on six AA-cell batteries; with an external AC adapter, can run on house current.
This beast is another keytar, specifically Roland's Lucina AX-09. 150 built-in voices. Some minor voice-mod capabilities, but the user interface for said functions is (as you might surmise from the photo) highly awkward and inconvenient, so I haven't bothered with customizing any of the sounds. Fortunately, all the built-in voices are pretty damn good (albeit some are special-purpose sounds with a rather limited range of utility), so customizing said voices is more of a gee-it'd-be-nice thing than a practical necessity. Alas, the Lucina has no on-board speakers; one must plug into an external amplifier if one wishes to hear the thing.
On-board memory lets you store 12 voices, any of which you can recall with a two-button command; it also has a USB port, which lets you make a USB connection to a computer (control a software synth with the AX-09's keyboard, record/play music from a software sequencer), or plug in a USB thumb drive to make a backup copy of everything. Runs on eight AA-cell batteries (the manual specifies that they gotta be rechargeable NiMH batteries), or on house current via AC adapter. Mucho MIDI features, both -in and -out.
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