Did I mention I'm a synth nerd yet today?
I just picked up a neat little "effect" - a Korg X-911 guitar synth.
These were only built for a short time (~1981), probably didn't sell too well, are pretty scarce as a result, and this one had seen better days!
This isn't like most of the stomp-box synths (Electro Harmonix Micro, Boss SYB-5, etc..) that are basically octave/fuzz boxes with filters. This one is actually a real analog synthesizer, based on some of the same circuitry used in Korg's venerable
MS models. It is designed to track the pitch of an input signal (guitar, bass, mic, another synth, etc...), trigger its internal sounds, and match the pitch of the notes you are playing. It has built in distortion as well, and many of the "synth" functions you would expect - envelope generators (for shaping tone over time), portamento (glide between notes), adjustable touch sensitive dynamics, a resonant low-pass filter (for tonal sweeps and "wahhhhs"), and a couple of oscillators (the sound generators).
That's a lot of "stuff" stuffed into a small package!
This one came to me (relatively) cheap, as it was busted. One of the pots was broken and seized up, it wouldn't trigger properly (due to a bad IC), and an LED was shattered/burned out. I found a schematic online, sorted everything out, and now it works like a champ! I still need to tweak its "intonation" a bit. There are a number of trimpots inside that have influence over this. Adjusting them to track pitch properly seems like more of an art than a science (that's what I was working on in that pic above).
That said, I'm *really* blown away by it's tracking ability! I have a late model Roland guitar synth setup too, and being that this old Korg doesn't even have a dedicated/specialized pickup or anything, it does a *very* respectable job tracking notes.
Even with bass!! (althogh you'll want to stay up kinda high on the 'board for the best results)
I was jamming with it a bit last weekend, and ending up recording a little improv song to demonstrate some of the sounds it can make. All the synth parts in this song were made by the Korg, and "played" using the Alembic Distillate (and SG special on a couple very minor parts). There's some normal bass in the middle, which is also the Distillate. I used a compressor to smash the input signal a bit, to help even out the dynamics so the Korg could do its best job possible with tracking pitch. I ran the Korg into the Space Echo, and then thru the Alembic F2-B preamp. Here are some shots of the setup:
Oh yeah- and the song:
