Remember the odd Hohner Bass 3 with Digi Bass control section posted here? Well, Kenny Balys of beatkamp won the auction for £279 or roughly $403. He still does not know the specific history of the synth, so if you know feel free to leave a comment below. He did, however, discover the following:
"The advert said:'It is fully working with a nice and unique sound.'
This was far from an exageration.
I have a few answers now as to what is going on with this thing....First off, in playing it the sound is exactly in line with 80s industrial type synth pop; that was a surprise.
The controls feature multiple patches that a "proper" Hohner Bass 3 do not have. (see Ebay photos)
So the answer to the question of what is up this thing is this:
- it is a custom 1 off
- the patch select board is very professionally done
- all the original Hohner 3 sound guts are gone
- there is now another board in there based on the Yamaha YM2203 FM chip!!! Its now an FM bass
Whoever did this made incredible patches, it sounds amazing. I will make plenty of use of this crazy synth.
I cannot tell if its an official Hohner prototype or the product of a Juergen Haible type of persona but it is very well done.
Will post back links later tonight on where you can grab photos (and they will be public domain.
This Bass 3 is no longer an analogue synth but as a "former analogue" I hope that its not too OT here on AH.
Should I be upset that I paid good money for a gutted out Bass 3? Probably but I am really quite pleased with this instrument as it sounds how I want with this amazing Hohner key response."
For posterity, I include the following AH quote from Florian Anwander regarding this instrument:
ReplyDelete> Thanks for the pics. This looks professionally made. I assume this is a
> Hohner prototype. Hohner and Dynacord gave a lot of prototypes to active
> musicians before they released the real series (I once owned such a
> prototype of the Percuter) - so it may have survived all the years
> outside of the production halls. I think this is one of these.
>
> Florian
How exciting! It is possible that this could be a prototype "Hohner Bass 4" that never went to market.
There still are deals to be had on eBay after all this time. Beautiful synth!
I own bass 3 bought new about
ReplyDelete1976. Only trouble I've had are
The key contacts have to clean them if
Sets spell. One in Pic looks just like
Internals on mine.
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