From bruce@ashbysolutions.com Wed Jun 15 14:36:31 2011
Subject:Re: Roland AX-09 and or AX-Synth

Hi Erik,

Wow, a blast from the past!

As something of a 'keytar pioneer' -- I slung a MiniKorg over my
shoulder for solos back in '76 or '77, after seeing Edgar Winter run
around with his Univox piano and ARP2500 controller keyboard -- I can
tell you that one of the nice things about the '80s-style keytar was
that it had only one cable, with power coming up from the floor through
the MIDI cable.

To me, the appeal of a keytar was to be able to "get out there like the
guitarists do." Well, today, most pro guitarists -- and many weekend
warriors like myself -- run wireless to cut down on the clutter.
Instead, an AX-Synth player has at least two cables to trip over, and
one of them is a comparatively fragile power connection from the AC
adapter. Yeah, I know it can run on batteries, but at 320mA current
draw I think you'd be hard pressed to get 7-8 hours from a set of
batteries (I get 10-12 out of a set of Sanyo Eneloops -- the only kind
I'll use in wireless gear, because they don't self-discharge in a week
or two on the shelf.)

As to your real question: Those patch names sound like the ones I used
to have in my now-sold Phantom XR, so they are probably not tweakable,
drawbar-wise. It might be possible to disable the rotary effect, but
I'm not sure: I can't even find the term 'rotary' anywhere in the
manual but in the patch names. And there's no MIDI CC# listed for
rotary control in the MIDI implementation. I think it's meant more as a
'synth in a keytar' than an 'organ in a keytar.'

Regards,

-BW

Bruce Wahler
Ashby Solutions.com^(TM)
bruce@ashbysolutions.com
http://music.ashbysolutions.com
877.55.ASHBY (877.552.7429)

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