"Time Synthis" a tour inside the Ensoniq SQ-80 Hidden Waves

Published on Oct 5, 2012 by Jack Girouard

"An electronic piece called 'Time Synthis' explores some of the hidden waves of the SQ-80 "Cross Wave Synthesizer". Photo slide show of pictures I took showing the steps of the upgrade as well as other shots inside and outside. This is a very special synthesizer, super clean inside too! (its not for sale).

I bought this synth from an ebay member: thomasb93. I don't want to give a source away, but he does a great job refurbing synths! I found this one, and was well worth it!
Here is a description of what he did with this SQ-80: "All buttons, wheels, faders, keys and disk drive work as they should. It has a new 3V lithium installed. The power supply passes the correct voltage at all test points and the CEM 3360 analog filter sounds great. This synth also features polyphonic aftertouch. The insides of the synth look new and the key contacts, foam pads and keyboard pcb look new as well." I feel proud to own this well cared for instrument! Thanks Tom!

This is an improvisation done on two tracks, all SQ-80 with a Lexicon MX-300 doing some effect processing. Note: these are patches I've created, the upgrade to 1.8HW doesn't give you a new set of patches, it just gives you 52 more wave types that can be used for the three oscillators. They simply add to the list of waveforms simply as numbers 75-127. The patches used in this video used hidden waveforms 78, 79, 80, 82, ."