“THIS IS IT!
Roland (solely a Japanese company at this time) came up with this VERY nice basic analog synth in 1973. This was THE sound that made the Steve Miller Band “Fly Like An Eagle” album an immortal classic. I can remember being completely astonished the thing got the sounds it could in a completely easily-portable package- you could (still can) play this comfortably on your lap. It couldn’t do all that a mini-Moog could (signal routing is essentially fixed), but it had other features like NOTHING else that small and lightweight at the time.
Everything I can think of (as an experienced keyboard guy), I checked.
All the keys work.
The oscillators all work.
All VCF functions work.
Portamento and noise generators all work fine.
The VCF stage has some internal noise, much more than new, obviously, so it functions as a feedback oscillator when the Q is set high- this, to me, isn’t a bug, it’s a feature, and a fun one.
One of the “tablet” style switches was broken off, but still perfectly usable, I kludged up an extension to make it easier to actuate- there are a bunch of old home organ models that use the same type of tablet (not Yamahas, though, which is what’s sitting here at the shop and easy to get to)
Serial #255385, I haven’t been able to pin down DOM from that yet.”
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