1) Roland JX-3P - This was my very first musical purchase as an adult. I had played acoustic pianos, B3 organs and Rhodes electric pianos but this was the first musical gear that I personally owned. The JX-3P was Roland's very first synth with midi (simple notes on and off but still . . . ), backed up to a cassette tape and had six voice polyphony. I used this keyboard for four years until it, along with my PA System, Ross 4-Track Recorder, and more was stolen by the manager of our band. A story for another time.
2) Kurzweil K250 - great piano and string sounds. (A favorite of Stevie Wonder) This didn't have the analog pads and gritty sounds that the JX-3P possessed but it was still a great synth.
3) Roland JV-80 - This quickly become my favorite synth. Great sounds, tons of polyphony (for the time), and the key action was awesome! This synth was also easy to program and worked out well to be a controller of other rack mount synths. This keyboard could sound like a guitar, electric guitar, piano, strings and analog pads. 61 key wonder!
4) Yamaha TG-33 - This unique synth had a joystick, mixture of FM and Rom sounds, and was a great way to manipulate sounds on the fly. Think Prophet / Juno sounds with the ability to manipulate with a joystick in real time.
5) Roland S-220 Sampler - This was a just a little ahead of its time. By the time you had loaded a sound using your external Glyph drive, mapped it to its preset, and was ready-to-access you could have ordered a pizza. I remember the entire system was over $4,000.00 and it could all be replicated by an iPad today in seconds. Crazy.
Side Note: I remember my most embarrassing moment using the Roland S-220 occurred during a church drama that was using the illustration of the birth process. I was supposed to trigger a heart beat / wind sound but in the dark I had loaded the wrong sample. The sample that I triggered instead was of a steam locomotive - took me about 20 seconds to kill the sound. It goes without saying that that drama did not hit its mark . . .
6) E-mu Proteus / 3 World Instrument - Don't remember a lot about this rack-mount synth except that it had great brass sounds. And a great oboe sound.
7) Kawai K3 - This was a great little synth that I picked up in Atlanta after less than 10 minutes of listening to the sounds in the music shop. Hard to believe that bothAlesis and Kawai created some of the most unique synths of their times.
8) Korg Wavestation SR - Ground breaking in the use of its sampled sounds along with the wave rhythm that you could assign to all of the single performance sounds. Never failed to generate new musical ideas each time I plugged it in. Analog pad sounds that would go on forever . . .
9) Oberheim Matrix 1000 - Rack mount version of the awesome Oberheim synth. I recall that my primary motivation to buy this synth was for the Van Halen "Jump" sound.
10) Roland FP-8 Piano - Awesome piano in a beautiful white paint job. Great key action, piano sound was the best I had ever heard, and the polyphony was enough to handle multiple chords. One of my favorite keyboards - even though it weighed about 1,000 lbs. Ha!
11) Roland JV-880 - Rack mount version of the JV-80 synth.
12) Roland JV-1080 - Rack mount version of the JV-80 with double polyphony, partnered with multiple expansion slots for adding hundreds of sounds.
13) Korg M1- Known for its analog / trance / percussion sounds. Not all that usable with most of the music that I was making at the time but it was cool for dance type instruments.
14) Roland RD-600 Piano - Similar to the FP8 but added the ability to control rack mount synths as well.
15) Kurzweil K2500 - After Kurzweil released the KDFX update this was the synth for the 90's.
16) Yamaha Motif ES - Unbelievable keyboard / workstation / sampler. Great piano, organ sounds, and electric guitar sounds, along with pads, strings and orchestra sounds.
In between there were multiple used keyboards, Casio models, several rack mount units that I can't recall at the moment but looking over this list here are my Top 3 Keyboards / Synths:
Number 1: Roland JV-80 Keyboard - I played more gigs with this keyboard than any other on this list. It could replicate almost any sound, responsive key action, worked in all kinds of weather, and it never let me down.
Number 2: Roland FP-8 - After I had lugged this monster to the stage life was golden. But the journey to get to the gig was rough! The piano sound was the best I had ever heard and any musician will tell you that if you think you sound good that's 90 % of the battle.
Number 3: Korg Wavestation SR - This synth is so cool that I've bought it twice during my musical life and it is the only one that I currently own. Never fails to excite my imagination.
Hope you've enjoyed this journey through my musical instruments! See you next week!
