Crumar Stratus Polyphonic Analogue Vintage Synthesizer

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"The Stratus is a 6-note polyphonic analog that uses the highly popular CEM chips that have also been used in other popular synths o fthe time including Jupiters, OB-X synths, Prophets—even modern Dave Smith Instruments. The Stratus has a total of two oscillators(DCOs), and they’re fed through divide-down ICs, just like an organ orstring machine. The oscillators offer saw and square waveforms, or a mix of the two, and a mono/unison mode. The two oscillators can be tuned separately and synced. A unique option is the "Alternate Saw/Sq" mode which alternates the voices between square and sawtoothwaveforms—play a chord and some voices will be square, others willbe saw, or bang out a solo and each note will be a different wave form.

What is special about the Stratus is that it has six VCFs and sixVCAs—one per voice. The filter has a nice warm sound and offers a good amount of flexibility. It has cutoff, resonance, envelope amount controls and and an external pedal control option. The LFO can do FM,wah (when assigned to the VCF) or tremolo (when assigned to the VCA).The LFO section also has adjustable slope and delay controls, an uncommon but useful feature. Another uncommon but interesting feature isthe Octave Modulation mode, in which the LFO will apply square wavepitch modulation over an entire octave, resulting in some pretty wildsounds. The Oscillator Glide is a portamento effect with some extrafeatures besides the usual Amount and Speed controls. It can be set to Mono or Multi trigger and has four direction modes. Finally, there is a typical ADSR envelope generator section.

The keyboard is a standard 49-note affair with no velocity oraftertouch. A joystick controller left of the keyboard can be used as apitch bender that can also modulate the VCF and VCA sections. There areindependent outputs for the Organ and Synthesizer sections, pedalcontrol inputs for the filter, sustain pedal, and LFO sync. There is also a TM Interface for use with the Steiner Master's Touch—a wind controller that can be used to create pitch bends and vibratos using your breath. However,there are no CV/Gate options.

The Stratus does not have any sort of user patch memory. But it did originally ship with preset template overlays. These were paper overlays that you lay on to the face-plate (with cutouts for all the knobs) that had markings to indicate where to set each knob in order to re-create acertain preset or sound
I am including a power cord and a long lead and a copy of the instruction manual. It appears to be working perfectly (though when adjusting the keyboard volume, there is a temporary static noise.) Twiddling the knobs to check it out today, I came up with some very wild sounds I haven't really used it since late 90s, as always, everything sounds better with a delay pedal or echo effect. I'd recommend to anyone interested that before they contact me they google this great synth to learn a bit more about it, I'm far from a tech head, but I know when having a jam in the mid to late 90s. this keyboard was magic! The more I used it, well it never failed to suprise me, that might be cos i'm a novice, but being a lover of all things synth I was quite impressed. I just don't really know what i'm doing, but know enough to get by. The only draw back is.... it's 17kg!!! A solid monster!!"