Comments on: Obscure Synths+Keys of the early 80s, part XIV https://www.preservationsound.com/obscure-synthskeys-of-the-early-80s-part-xiv/ information and ideas about audio history Fri, 24 Jan 2014 06:29:06 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: Joey D'Kaye https://www.preservationsound.com/obscure-synthskeys-of-the-early-80s-part-xiv/#comment-239660 Fri, 24 Jan 2014 06:29:06 +0000 http://www.preservationsound.com/?p=7652#comment-239660 I owned an Akai AX-80! I might have been one of the first people in the Bay Area to have one, since my shop was the area Akai dealer and I got mine from the first shipment. Quite a nice synth, very bright and thick sounding. Sounded a lot like an Oberhiem or an ARP, comparing favorably to the Rhodes Chroma (yes I actually heard and played a Chroma, an early unit that actually said “ARP” on it, before they sold the design to Fender.) This isn’t surprising, as it was built on Curtis VCF and VCA chipsets, as ARP was. The oscillators were an interesting digital/analog hybrid. It didn’t have the weighted keyboard like the Chroma, but it was nice. Very solidly built. I even created a 3rd party sound set stored on data cassette (which I offered to customers who bought the keyboard), which I sadly don’t have anymore.

Sound Doctorin’ has some tech descriptions and service tips.

http://sounddoctorin.com/synthtec/akai/ax80.htm#akaiprodesc

This is a great synth you can pick up for a decent price used, since it doesn’t have the cache’ and street cred of a Juno or Prophet.

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