Korg DSS1

[Steve Nathan]

Quick post here. I"m at an old friends who has this board laying around & in her way. I will look it up when I have more time, but figure someone here can tell me if it"s worth the trouble of selling it, vs. giving it away to a neighbor who has a 16 year old who ' wants to play'.

[ABECK]

I had one in the 80s/90s.

Sampling was fun, but not a simple process to map and create usable programs across the keyboard (especially with a small LCD.) The drive was slow as molasses to load, but I assume that is typical of any sampler of that time.

The synth engine was pretty good (probably very similar to the DW8000) and the onboard delays were good too. It was good for big analog type brass sounds. I had a lot of fun with it. I would think he could get something for it on the used market for sure.

[aellison62]

I had one in the 90s. It has a floppy disk drive to load different banks of samples. (there were dozens of available disks, each one had 4 banks IIRC) I distinctly remember having my band wait to start a song while I loaded the needed sound from a disk !! It was very annoying. It was rather big and heavy.

 

Personally, I don't think today's keyboardist would spend money on it, especially because it takes so long to load samples. It's technology is ancient. But a 16 yr. old might get alot of enjoyment out of it just messing around with it.

[Stephen Fortner]

The DSS-1 has a bit of a cult following. Not an instrument you'd take to a gig these days. But I remember the filter sounding really good. I see a huge price span on Reverb â $275 up to $800-ish.

[ABECK]

Lol - we used to create set lists based on my discs, to minimize the amount of disk loading.

 

The used market is out of control for anything "vintage". I'f it's not worth much now, it will be eventually.

[Dr Mike Metlay]

Analog sound engine with sample playback oscillators. It was huge, heavy, well built, and played very well. I had one with the massive RAM upgrade (8 whole MEGABYTES bitchez!!) and the SCSI port; it was great fun and I got a fair bit done with it, but it was so heavy and unwieldy that it didn't make the cut for my move to Colorado. I occasionally think of mine, but have nowhere to put it even if that was a more than momentary yearning, which it ain't. I think a modern 16 year old will be way more frustrated with loading sounds from floppy than charmed by its 12-bit romance....

 

[AnotherScott]

Great feeling action (with aftertouch), great sound character, cool sound manipulation that is hard/impossible to find today (waveform drawing, processing 12-bit samples through analog synth engine). So I think it deserves its cult following. Floppy drives tended to fail, and replacements may be hard to come by these days. Unwieldy size and weight plus slow sound loading from floppy make it an unlikely gigging board, and the size/weight may also make it hard to sell because of the cost of shipping. But good sound is always desirable.

[The Real MC]

Best DSS-1 upgrade on the market is the Straylight Engineering Upgrade. It expands the sample memory, replaces the archaic Floppy drive with USB, and adds new features like unison mode.

 

The DSS-1 was not a "sampler". Most samplers playback a sample with its integral envelope, you couldn't manipulate its timbre. Basically a digital recorder with a keyboard for PLAY buttons. The DSS-1 has an analog synthesis engine with oscillators that can be hand drawn waveforms or actual samples, complete with a great sounding VCF, VCA, EGs, and stereo digital delay. Not a bad machine.

[AnotherScott]

I'd like to see a Korg bring a DSS-1 emulation to the Kronos, with all 31(?) disks worth of glorious 12-bit samples and a friendlier interface, even though the true analog parts of the processing would have to be VA.

[lightbg]

Loved mine. Must have wasted 40 gallons of water before I recorded the perfect toilet flush.

 

Jake

 

[ABECK]

Unwieldy size and weight plus slow sound loading from floppy make it an unlikely gigging board, and the size/weight may also make it hard to sell because of the cost of shipping. But good sound is always desirable.

 

Funny, In the early 90s, this was my 'Light" board and never considered it unwieldy at the time. In fact, I never had a case, just stacked it naked in the back of my ford Escort with the rest of my rig. My Rhodes...that was unwieldy. But anyone with CP80, or B3 gigging under their belt would have laughed at the notion. Times have changed!!

 

[AnotherScott]

Yeah, I should have qualified, "Unwieldy size and weight plus slow sound loading from floppy make it an unlikely gigging board today." ;-) It was portable for its time, and back when "multi-board, multiple rack module" rigs were necessarily more common, one could more easily be playing some other sound source during those times you needed to load up a new floppy. Or you might just use the DSS1 for one-disk's worth of sounds for a given gig or set, since again, it was likely one of multiple sound sources anyway, and you could still get a good variety of sounds from one disk, even though your selection of available samples was limited.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Synthoid]

The DSS-1 has a bit of a cult following. Not an instrument you'd take to a gig these days. But I remember the filter sounding really good. I see a huge price span on Reverb â $275 up to $800-ish.

 

$800?

 

 

 

[Devnor]

The DSS-1 has a bit of a cult following. Not an instrument you'd take to a gig these days. But I remember the filter sounding really good. I see a huge price span on Reverb â $275 up to $800-ish.

 

Haha I wish. I'm about to sell my 3 DSM-1 samplers.

 

[Dave Bryce]

I had one as well for a while when they first came out. Loved it...I was a big fan of the DW8000 engine, and the ability to mix that with samples was an awful lot of fun back then.

 

dB

[AnotherScott]

Haha I wish. I'm about to sell my 3 DSM-1 samplers.

The DSM-1 had some nice features of its own, but unfortunately, wasn't fully the rack version of the DSS-1 that it appeared to be, which apparently has made it less desirable. From a post on gearslutz:

 

It actually came later than the DSS-1 so it's upgraded in some ways (4x the sample memory, higher capacity floppy drive, 16 individual outputs, etc), but...no resonance control, no noise generator, no OSC sync, no drawing of waveforms, no delay FX).

The DSS-1 also had an especially nice keyboard on it.

 

 

 

[Devnor]

From a post on gearslutz:

 

It actually came later than the DSS-1 so it's upgraded in some ways (4x the sample memory, higher capacity floppy drive, 16 individual outputs, etc), but...no resonance control, no noise generator, no OSC sync, no drawing of waveforms, no delay FX).

The DSS-1 also had an especially nice keyboard on it.

 

 

Have you heard those "desirable" features on the DSS1? Ugh. DSM had a combination mode 4 parts. I bought all 3 DSM used from an artist. He had a guy program choirs and strings with specific key ranges, mapped across the 4 parts and the trio of samplers. The idea was to reduce voice stealing when triggered from a midi acoustic piano. I used them for years as crunchy drum samplers trigger by a Atari computer. My hope all this time was Kanye would be photographed using one and they'd be worth a fortune. That didn't quite work out as planned.

 

[AnotherScott]

I meant less desirable on the resale market, it was not a judgment on which is more desirable musically.

[synthizen2]

I had one for about 10 years (2003-2013) before selling it.

 

But during that time I really liked this synth so much, that I created tons of new samples and patches for it, and did all kinds of cool MIDI manipulation for it (including mapping all of the MIDI Sysex commands to slider control-boxes like the Kenton Control Freak).

 

I had so much new stuff for it that I created a DSS-1 Resource Web Site back in 2006 for this synth, and it's still online.

 

Yes, the synth was huge and heavy... and very knobless... Looks kind of like a mini Aircraft Carrier.

[ABECK]

I vividly remembered a Keith Emerson article in Keyboard magazine where he indicated he used a pipe organ sample from the DSS1 at the end of the song "Chains" on the "3" album. As a DSS1 owner at the time, i was just tickled pink to hear that!

 

[video:youtube]

[Steve Nathan]

I"m still trying to find her System disks! It powers but that"s all I can check so far.

She"s also got a bunch of other nearly useless stuff. TX81Z, mixers, effects boxes etc. I"ll post some pics later, but her Keyboard mags have over 170 pages each!

[AnotherScott]

I"m still trying to find her System disks! It powers but that"s all I can check so far.

You can download disk images from http://www.glenstegner.com/dss1/disk.htm

 

You'll still need to jump through some hoops to create those floppy disks using a modern computer. Including, of course, needing to have a floppy disk drive!

 

[Steve Nathan]

The internal drive may be NG. I tried formatting a new disk. Manual says 2.5 minutes

6 minutes later display says ' unformatted'

[Steve Nathan]

I"m thinking her Yamaha KM802 mixers, her Yamaha REX50 effects,

& maybe the TX81Z might as well hit the trash. The Wavestation AD might be worth the trouble to eBay for her.

Boxes of old 1/4 inch cables & midi cables are going in the trash for sure.

A DSS-1 with a bad drive can"t be worth the trouble either.

She needs the room more than the few bucks it might generate.

[ABECK]

Dang....If I was remotely close, I'd grab it as a rehab project.

[Steve Nathan]

Dang....If I was remotely close, I'd grab it as a rehab project.

For yourself or to sell??

[synthizen2]

I"m still trying to find her System disks! It powers but that"s all I can check so far.

 

Unlike the Ensoniq Mirage, the Korg DSS-1 does not require a System Disk. The OS is hardwired in the DSS-1, so it should boot up without a disk, but it will have no sounds. The disks are only to store samples and their associated patches (programs).

 

[ABECK]

Dang....If I was remotely close, I'd grab it as a rehab project.

For yourself or to sell??

nah - just for me. nostalgia

[Reezekeys]

A DSS-1 with a bad drive can"t be worth the trouble either.

I agree, although replacement floppy drive mechanisms are $10 - $15 on Ebay if you or anyone else is really motivated to get this beast going. They're probably generic PC mechanisms but might need jumpers connected a certain way. Teac & Sony made them, I believe. But why fix the drive if there aren't any disks with sounds on them to load? And even if there are, who's to say the data is still good?

 

And, as with many things from this era, I suspect those of us remembering "good sound" might be listening through "rose colored" ears.

[Mighty Motif Max]

I"m thinking her Yamaha KM802 mixers, her Yamaha REX50 effects,

& maybe the TX81Z might as well hit the trash. The Wavestation AD might be worth the trouble to eBay for her.

Boxes of old 1/4 inch cables & midi cables are going in the trash for sure.

A DSS-1 with a bad drive can"t be worth the trouble either.

She needs the room more than the few bucks it might generate.

 

Gee, I'd take the whole lot there (minus the cables I think); but then I like '80s effects and "outdated" gear. I'm in northern Minnesota however.