MATRIXSYNTH: seiko ds-250 additive synthesizer


Tuesday, January 05, 2010

seiko ds-250 additive synthesizer


YouTube via spunkytoofers
"pardon my lack of keyboard skills to demonstrate, this is just a short one for matrix since there wasn't much in the way of the seiko keyboards.

this was a craigslist find, hoping to resell but i might want to hold onto it for a little while. it does retro pads nicely. it reminds me of old organs i've used like the conn electric band sans spring reverb or the moog organ sans filter except the seiko is bi-timbral. it has some basic preset sounds selectable for each timbre which define timbre and attack while there are simple controls on each voice for volume, decay, modulation slider with a on/off switch for a delay into the lfo cycle. you can detune the voices up to 14 percent and you can assign each note of polyphony a few selectable intervals. a chorus reminescent of the old junos except this one is on a continous slider from 1-2 chorus in stereo. single voice mode, bitimbral mode or split point voices. key transposable, volume controls, pitch wheel, on/off buttons and a nice layout with simple but nice led displays.

no memory but it's simple to setup. midi in/out. midi seems primitive as i could really only get note on/off to respond although there is a way to recieve each voice over midi by a 16 way rotary switch by each voice 1/ voice 2 output on 1/4" also on the side panel is alternate summed mono output, headphone jack, pitch fine tune, stereo rca outputs. input to footswitch sustain (although mine wasn't working on a regular 1/4" footswitch) input for trs expresion pedal for volume. looks like there is room for modular expansion but i don't have any of the modular components to this keyboard. i could see how easy it would be to approach additive like this with really simple controls and some of the expanders but as you might imagine controls are limitied.makes for a nice retro pad machine. even though it's simple i like it because it's not trying to be anything else but itself."

5 comments:

  1. Have a copy of the midi data sheet that someone at Seiko dug up for me a few months ago. I will try to post it online somewhere soon and a link to it here.

    There are a few CC's that it recognizes, the most musically useful one is probably the Detune parameter, I think it is #80 (decimal or hex, I don't recall).

    The DS-250 is a whole lot of fun even without the Additive Synth module, with 256 possible combinations of presets (in layer mode), two chorus settings, detune, vibrato amount/delay, decay and volume control for each voice, plus it is 2 channel multitimbral.

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  2. thanks zara, i'd love to see the midi data for the device. any type of midi control besides note would be great to have.

    i agree. alot of fun and just has a nice sound that makes me want to keep it for awhile to record a bit. alot of instant gratification with some simple tweaks. at first look i was thinking i might be underwhelmed and ready to ship it off somewhere.

    i found a few mp3's by someone named oliver koch that give you a good overview of some sounds:
    http://www.jarrography.free.fr/details_equipement_audio.php?id_equip=53

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  3. I recently acquired one of these, sadly, it is with out the elusive power supply. I have it a the wonderful Switched On shop right now, with hopes to have them build a power supply, do either spunky or Zara have any information on the power supply? I know a schematic is allot to hope for, but made the power supply itself might have something on which pins are which?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey Ben, did the shop get it to work? I just picked up one of these w/o the power supply also, seems very elusive like you said. If you find anything out I would appreciate it if you let me know. I was thinking of soldering another adaptor plug...

    ReplyDelete
  5. crap ive just got one without power supply aswell is it simply a matter of soldering the right plug onto it ? in the manual it says its 13.8 v but i dont know the polarity anybody found out anything?

    ReplyDelete

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