Shortly after buying the Kawai K1 Mk II - see previous post - I went a bit mad. I'd heard some samples from the Gem S2R, and missed one on eBay which went quite high - but then I saw a Gem S2 Turbo keyboard on eBay. It was listed once without any bids, listed again without any bids, so I made an offer and got it for £100, delivery included.
Good points; it sounds like a Korg M1, a Roland D50 and a Kawai K1 all layered together - every patch on it is like a huge swooshy Klaus Schulze pad. It even has Elka Synthex samples as waveforms. It can import Akai samples and use them as waveforms, it has a built-in sequencer, it has a great keyboard with polyphonic aftertouch, and it's built like a tank.
Bad points - it's filthy, scratched, has one silent key and a crackly output, and it's built like a tank. Also the Turbo upgrade doesn't have the optional RAM chips, so it won't retain uploaded samples, but that's probably easy enough to fix. Once I've tidied it up, I'll have to figure out whether to use it as my master keyboard - polyphonic aftertouch is ideal for controlling the Arturia CS80V software. Of course I'd still rather have had the S2RTurbo module, but those seem to be incredibly rare. Now I must stop buying keyboards...
Friday, 9 October 2009
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