A few years my Yamaha DX7 keyboard broke down and has been gathering dust. This was a shame because it's my favourite MIDI controller, as I'm a rather ham-fisted keyboardist and the semi-weighted keys give a reassuring, deliberate clunk. Whilst it's pretty easy to get a convincing DX sound from a computer (pretty much any soft synth that claims to recreate "analog" will do) , I like a "real man" master keyboard that's built like a tank.
As a master keyboard at the moment I'm using a Yamaha SY85 sample-player, which feels like a DX7 to play. Unfortunately, the middle Eb is fuct, and attempts to fix it lost the internal memory. Apparently it lacks ROM patches, so you have to load presets back from a disk drive, which I have no disks for, and I think the drive is bust too :( It's not a hard machine to program, but I can't be assed.
I actually use Native Instrument's excellent FM8 plugin for DX7 sounds- no lo-fi DACs , nice arp and multitimbral.
Back to the DX7. Twiggy, BTW, hates the bloody thing and the last time I was in a live band with him demanded I hook it up to a midi module. I liked it, because it sounded almost classically crap. He , to be honest , rightly associates it with many a great popular musical crime.
Today I plucked up the courage to open it up with a view to repair. After the nightmare of getting inside the SY85, this was just five screws , and the top opens like a laptop screen, neatly revealing most of the circuitry.
The mains lead had come away from the terminal, making it pretty obvious why it wouldn't power up. Then realised I had no soldering iron, so am ringing around mates at the moment trying to borrow one.
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