Siel DK600 tech talk; a tough nut to crack

Published on Apr 24, 2014 sounddoctorin·188 videos

"Bob Weigel of http://www.sounddoctorin.com gives a tech overview of The Siel DK600 aka Opera 6 aka Kiwi. This synth has some fantastic attributes if you can get one working reliably. I've found some problems besides the common battery spill which just requires a lot of socket/chip changing, trace repair and cleanup usually. The voltage on 5V supply can drift too low and particularly hitting notes hard the s+h cells for key voltage will bleed back onto the power supply through the analog switch 4051's. This creates a phantom lfo strangeness when you hit keys hard. Anyway you may find yourself in a labor of love on these and hopefully this video helps some people. Always check the website for more tech tips, parts etc.

The architecture is somewhat similar to the polymoog except with only 6 voices instead of fully polyphonic in that it uses analog VCO's driving a divide down network. In the Polymoog the frequencies are hard wired of course like an organ but in the siel they are assigned to synth channels by the computer like any polysynth. Watch the demo video showing more of the sounds layered with the Expander module! (A Dk600 with only volume and tune knobs that are analog controls for the vco's)"