My Keys And Me Are Vintage

I am also of the group that drooled over the glossy magazine ads for new gear in the 80’s. Way, way out of my price range back then. But i enjoy the hell out of finding well-used neglected old synths cheap now and bringing them back to life. But as we age out, the interest in the old gear will age out, too. Sitting behind the wheel of a 1973 Mercury Cougar convertible will always be a sweet joy, but not so much when sitting in a 1953 convertible; I have no emotional attachment to things before my generation. My son has no interest in knowing that this synth over here had the first sequencer built in, or the res knob on this synth could do crazy sounds, or this is the synth sound used on Ronnie James Dio albums. All he knows is it’s a bunch of dusty old stuff his father spends too much time fixing and cleaning. I still have hope for a nephew or grandchild to show interest! But how to compare to a computer VST? There is a smell to an old synth, a feel, a scratch on the display from that crazy drunk chick falling on my stuff. Will the kids in twenty years have sentimental feelings over software they used in 2024? Time will tell. But these old synths will not last forever and those that remain will stay desirable and valuable to those of us who remember their glory days!

If you have the cash for it, grab it! You’ll get to try it for yourself, be able to compare it to other models, and after evaluating it you can re-sell it fairly easily. Would not be a hard choice for me, but it really depends on HOW cheap and how much room I have left to set it up. But nothing wrong with having a spare to jam on in the garage or the deck when the weather gets nicer!

As KuruPrionz said, Jon Lord from Deep Purple was always the pinnacle in my eyes (ears?) for hard raw keyboards. Decades (!) ago, a simple Korg Poly 800 in mono, run thru a string of effects, could sound gargantic and as heavy as you could want. It might not cut it for shiny frilly sounds, but we are talking metal here, so who needs that? You are not limited in your choices at all, but you will need to try things out before you know what you need and don't need. Strong and solid enclosure should be near the top of the list. Don't limit yourself to any one brand or think you need to spend much $$, assuming you already have good pedals!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY (All CAPS cause you probably have some amplifier-induced hearing loss by now!)

I have never seen such key damage but ReezeKeys' explanation has convinced me of it being nails. I am also now ashamed that I have not played hard or long enough to cause similar pits on any of my old keyboards!

Good to be cautious; Facebook marketplace burned me once for an Oculus. I let my guard down because I was in a rush and ignored the usual warnings. D'Oh! The red flag to me is not posting an asking price and her considering the lowball offer so easily. However, she does not push you to have it shipped which would require a payment first. So could be real. I've seen lowball offers get accepted before. I would ask if she could send a picture of the original receipt. If she does, it should be legit. Maybe say that you will bring along a friend who knows more about these than you do to see if that worries her. Good Luck. Could be a great find.

Music stores were magical places to me in the 80s and early 90s. New electronic gear, new capabilities month after month. Paralleled what was happening with computers in general. Exciting times. Now, all but one of the local shops are gone and the chains rarely have a good demo setup. Not expecting to see that change back anytime. I was at a tourist beach in Massachusetts last summer and they had an arcade game room to die for. Huge place, two floors, all the classics, many still working, plus the best pinballs. My heart was racing like it did in those music shops back in the day. Maybe I'll stumble on a hands-on synth museum someday and get that feeling. Although, I suspect many on these forums have their own collections that could give a similar thrill!

Justin - I loved my Yamaha CP300, my main keyboard until I finally upgraded to the Numa X GT recently. Like going from a nice solid Ford to a Tesla. I did not find a local one to demo first, so I took a chance and found a used one online. This time, the reviews of the keybed were spot-on. I love it. Paired with an iPad, it really amazes me. I went back out to the stores again after playing the Numa for a couple of months and the best I could find that is close was the Yamaha YC88, which I really like too. Pretty good choices to demo in my area, but finding certain keyboards in stock to demo is hit or miss. Nobody had Studiologic keys in any form. I was not thrilled to buy something without even trying one first, but this time it paid off for me. Saved a lot of money and knew I could resell easily if it didn’t work for me. I know that is something not many people are comfortable doing!

User authentication trade-offs are as old as computing! Never quite get to what we want, but today there are many better solutions. The problem is there are too many solutions and too little consensus. But yeah, this is a topic that can get very deep and wide. As a long-time IT tech and security pro, the complaints and frustrations have been just as loud and common as long as I have been in IT. It is interesting to have seen the players (the tech, the software, the silicon) change but it still never satisfies us. Nor is it designed to do so. “90% good enough and out the door to get the revenue flow started. We’ll patch it later…maybe.” Didn’t we bitch a lot about dropped connections on those 2400 baud modems or trying to restore patches from a reused cassette? But we felt it was still worth it, better than the alternatives. I hated having to drive to a bank, cashing a check, run around to different places to pay bills, or mailing and postage stamps. My patience gets tested with all the different methods in use today, but I won’t let it master me yet!

CyberGene! Thank-you! That is all it was, that Common Channel setting was on Channel 1. I turned it off and now all is well. That little setting cost me a couple hours of frustration, but lesson learned. Still getting accustomed to this keyboard's way of doing things. A slight learning curve, but the controls are well laid out. I haven't spent time using the Numa with a DAW yet, mostly Pianoteq app or direct to hardware synths. (I am currently obsessed with Pianoteq's Classical Guitar). Hopefully, a new firmware update will fix the bug you reported before I get around to seeing it!

Depending on how handy you are and how attached you are to that keyboard, the best solution is to open her up and take the slider out, disassemble, clean, lube, and reinstall. If that gives you chills, I think most people just use a product like Deoxit FaderLube, spraying it lightly in the slider and working the slider up and down a bunch of times until it sounds free of static. Make sure there is some lube in the cleaner, or the feel of that slider will be horrible when done. Worth a shot before committing to opening it up. Or, be brave - open her up and give her the love. Clean out the dog hair and guitar picks while in there, too!

Numa X GT at version 2.3.1 Very nice keyboard, loving it but having a little problem with external devices getting MIDI data when not wanted. 1) Anyone else have a problem with not being able to stop transmitting all MIDI data? Always for me now, MIDI data goes out even when ZONEs are disabled. With MIDI Port set to MIDI USB and no enabled zones, the USB port outputs MIDI note and CC data and the MIDI DIN outputs CC data anytime a key or controller is touched. Similarly, if the MIDI port is set to MIDI DIN, the USB port still sends note and CC data and the MIDI DIN port always sends CC data, but not note data, even when no zones are enabled. I read the thread from March 2023 when CyberGene brought this up. I did not know, but understand now, that MIDI CC events will still go out when a ZONE is disabled, by design, but should it be sending notes too? Makes sense that CC data may still be useful even when the notes are disabled. But I have an issue now where MIDI notes and CC data go out the USB port and MIDI CC data goes out the MIDI DIN port, even when the zones are not enabled for MIDI. Maybe I need a full reset, but i thought I’d ask here first to see if others see the same thing. 2) I also notice the sustain pedal puts out its “sample” sound when depressed even when no zones are enabled. It seems it should only come on when a matching piano program is enabled. I notice it when pedal 1 is set to Damper and no zones are enabled. 3) Really a wishlist item to me, but let me set the max and min pitch bend values. 4) Wishlist (if I get two!) let me save the Velocity Curve setting with the programs. I like the way some pianos respond to different curve settings but the global setting always overrides.

TonyD520 - the QCard contains samples and programs using those samples. I don’t think you can copy the program bank off the card to the User bank. But since the QCard must be inserted to access the QCard samples, do you need a copy of those programs separate from the Qcard? You cannot use those programs once the QCard is removed since the programs can’t find the samples. So just access the programs right from the QCard. I think what the QS is expecting is an SRAM card in the slot, where you can store many, many program banks. Those SRAM banks can be pushed back and forth from the SRAM card to the QS User bank. What can be done is to put the QCard extra banks on an SRAM card (sysex files that were bundled with QCards) and then you have more programs to play with using the QCard (which has to be in the other QS slot, of course).

Oh man, so much time to get that stuff straight. I did the SoundBridge option "Send Image file to Synthesizer", over a DB9 serial cable to the Alesis. I found an old XP laptop on eBAY with a DB9 serial port (and a PCMCIA card slot), to run the old software. Put an 8MB Pretec AMD C/D Flash card in Slot A of the QS and it takes about 20 min. It can be done over MIDI via USB adapter to the laptop, but it will take twice as long. Since the Pretec cards are so $$ and not for sale every often, I needed a faster way to try out the different QCard images on the one card I had. So I worked on the PCMCIA slot of the laptop. I used old software that is now public domain, Memory Card Explorer by Elan Digital Systems (now out of business), to make Qcards. MCE v3-21 Jan 2005, Full Version. Takes about two minutes to drop an image on the card directly. Then insert it into a QS slot. I would be surprised if even 10% of QS owners ever heard the sounds on any of the QCards. Even fewer have loaded the extra banks bundled with the Qcards, which contain more good stuff.

It was a blast for me to re-discover my QS8 this past year and all the things it could do I never attempted years ago. Back then (1996-ish) we all wanted that realistic piano sound all the vendors were trying to cram into 256KBs. Alesis did good, and the keyboard rocked. Didn’t appreciate the aftertouch back then either. Only played the non-piano sounds occasionally for a quick break from the piano sounds, or when the kids wanted to make cool sounds. I had no concept of what I was missing. Those QCards had me obsessed the past year. First to find all of the original card image files, then to find suitable PCMCIA cards for those images. And the search + trial and error to get a Windows laptop that supported the cards with PCMCIA slots and Win98 apps. The cloned vintage synth card finally in hand, I spent weeks playing around with it. Timeless, really. Great pro-quality samples in those cards. Got a QSR and S4+ Plus rack to test with, too. I just picked up a Studiologic Numa X GT, loving that keyboard and its MIDI controller features a lot. Now I want a Nanosynth to keep tucked behind the keyboard so I can access all those great QS sounds still.