My motley keyboard history comprises:
a
WEM Teischord C portable organ when I was about 9, and then a horrible
Hammond VS-150 spinet organ which was utterly crap... so I sawed the top off it and built the WEM into the top as a third keyboard... which was fun!
The Hammond was then replaced with a
Bird (valve) Church organ (model unknown) which sounded much nicer, and the WEM was reinstated as a portable which I took to university along with my first synth, a
Roland SH-09. I then sold the WEM and replaced it with a
Casiotone 202 keyboard.
After uni, with money coming in from my first job, I bought a
Yamaha CS80 (yes, really) second hand from a studio in Taunton. That was the most fantastic synth and I loved it to bits, but I had to sell it because I didn't have enough space when I found and bought the keyboard of my dreams, a
Hammond A100 tonewheel console organ (and Leslie 122RV). Much as I still love my A100, I should have never sold that CS80!
Rookie error!
As the years went by I bought, and quickly sold again a
Hammond T500 tonewheel organ, an
Elka X605 portable organ, and an
Ace Tone GT7 portable organ.
I also had a
Solina String machine which I picked up with the GT7, and I was offered a surprising amount for it so sold it on! Later I inherited my father's
Hammond L100 spinet tonewheel organ which I subsequently sold to a certain section-editor at SOS (with whom it exploded!).
As the kids started music at school I bought a
Roland HP-03 electronic piano for practice, and a kit
Moog Theramin to make weird noises with, then came another dream polysynth, a
Roland Jupiter 8... but it wasn't a patch on the CS-80 and I sold it after a year. Most of my poly-synth stuff these days comes from Arturia virtual instrument plugins, although the Nord Stage has its moments.
More recently, to improve my classical organ chops, I bought an old
Eminent DSC300 church organ, originally with the idea of gutting it and using it as the basis for a Hauptwerk system... but after getting it revoiced it's surprisingly good, so I'll leave it as it is until it dies.
My current keys (in addition to the A100 and DCS300) comprise a
Nord Stage88 (Classic revC), a
Korg MS-20 monosynth (full-size reissue kit), and a
Hammond XK-1c (portable organ). The Nord and Hammond form the basis of my live performance rig. Most of my synth stuff these days comes from Arturia virtual instrument plugins.
...but lately I've been toying with the idea of acquiring a
Moog Subsequent 37, as I've never owned a Moog before and I like what they've done with that. (Maybe I can negotiate a deal at Synthfest!) I suspect it will also be more immediate to play around with than the MS20 (which isn't really a turn-on-and-go kind of synth, clever and intriguing though it is). I want something that harks back to the SH-09 which was a lovely playable mono-synth (albeit with a limited tonal range).
Edited to add: I did buy the Subsequent 37, and I'm about to replace the XK-1C with an SKX.
H
