I’ve picked up quite a few nice keyboards (and other electronic sound-making tools) from car boot sales recently – here’s the companion piece to the original Keyboard Warriors post!

Casio DM-100

This is a dual-keyboard monstrosity, with a SK-1 style sampler on the upper keyboard and a typically cheesy Casiotone soundbank on the bottom. It basically has no reason to exist whatsoever, but Casio made it anyway, and that is a GOOD thing!

Yamaha Portasound PSS-480

Editable sounds, portamento and a whole bunch of settings that make this almost a proper synth! This has taken over from a PSS-280 as main keyboard for my new band and it sounds fantastic through a delay pedal.

Yamaha DX21

This IS a proper synth, FM-style, and can produce some nice sounds. It’s like a smaller (but not necessarily less powerful) version of the DX7. This was used for the last few Lardpony gigs after Mandy’s Juno-D broke, and it did a great job. Bloody heavy though.

Casio DG-10

As used by Flight of the Conchords! I had one of these before but it broke, this one is in much better condition. It came packed with about a thousand batteries, every time I pick it up more seem to fall out. Obviously it makes more sense used with an AC adaptor… It sounds pretty amazing but I haven’t managed to cram it into a song just yet.

And finally…

Speak & Spell

This appears to be one of the earliest models, because it has actual plastic buttons rather than the unsatisfying raised bump things that I’m struggling to describe. Some of the words that it says sound like no language on Earth. It is beautiful and ridiculous, and it cost me 20p. Amazing.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 7th, 2009 at 6:13 pm and is filed under photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.