Re: Re: the smallest portable hardware keyboard synth

[Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com>]

You know, Luis,  I had a one rack module called
the Alesis QS-R that had a lot of vintage keys in it
along with an assortment of synthesizer sounds
that I found very, very useful.

I even discovered that if I put even a prosaic sounding
distortion box after it, that I could come up with some very
hip, modern industrial sounds out of fairly normal patches.

Also EMU had a series called the Proteus.   Their flagship was the
Proteus 2000 and there are a lot of the for sale on e-bay for around
$250 USD........they just had a zillion useful sounds in them.

for a multi-instrumental live looping artist who wants to augment
his loops on a main instrument they are perfect, really.

A lot of keyboard people would be snobby about them because they didn't 
have the kind of control that a lot of fancy analogue synths had, but 
that wasn't what
they were designed for.   EMU, by the way, had really amazing filters in 
them...............some of the best out there and, if I"m not mistaken 
the later
Proteus's had them onboard.

They also made a series of specialty Proteus.  I contributed heavily to 
the sample library of the Proteus World Music encarnation as well as the 
'Carnival' which specialized in Latin sounds.    I also helped pick some 
sounds for their
"Mo Phat" module which gathered a lot of sounds of hip hop and funk 
(which had some good key sounds in it.

They also had a Vintage Keys module.

The architecture of these units was all the same and was the major bread 
and butter product for years when their pricier samplers weren't selling.

Additionally, both Yamaha, Korg and Roland all put out multi-purpose one 
rack
synth/keyboard all purpose modules which can generally be had for a song 
these days.

this might be a great inexpensive solution for you combined with 
something like
an M-Audio or Alesis small controller.   I have an Oxygen which is very 
compact
and is really easy to use.

rick walker