FS: Korg Z1

[Magpel]

For sale, Korg Z1 physical modeling synth, 12-voice version. Comes with The Z1 Collection expansion card which features several professional banks of sounds as well as banks for saving user programs--very useful because inspired accidents are par for the course with this thing.

 

Local pickup/meetup only, but I am willing to drive within reason for exchange. I live 90 miles north of New York City. Try me!

 

If you are interested you probably already know what the Z1 is, but here is the description I wrote for my various posts:

 

This is a highly unusual synth. The simplest way to explain it is that it is an early virtual analog augmented (and made special) by the inclusion of several advanced physically modeled "oscillators"--brass, reed, plucked string, organ. The results to be achieved with these models range from the comic to the dead serious, and often in surprising ways--make reed organs out of the reed model, thick and rubbery Clavinets out of the plucked string model.

 

It is a profoundly programmable synth--with a variety of unusual parameters associated with the physical models (like air pressure, reed thickness, lol) that are fully integrated into is deep architecture and its distributed modulation matrix.

 

Even though it is an older generation, I find that it it does a decent job with classic VA sounds, but that is not what makes the Z1 stand out. It is a synth unlike any other your arsenal, and you will know when it is the right call--like one time a radio theater application dictated that I program a huge wheezing reed instrument made from a cow that is so difficult to play that almost kills the person trying to get a sound out of it. The Z1 came up aces on that one.

 

Two other exceptional things about the Z1: it is an absolutely fabulous controller, with an X-Y pad, separate knob banks for each of the two filters and amps, five freely assignable performances knobs. I have loved it for years as front end for softsynths. This was a flagship synth in its days, so the keyboard quality is great--firm semi-weighted, nothing squishy about it.

 

Also: its MAD polyphonic arpeggiator was was ahead of its time. You'll need to study the manual, but once you unlock it, it is great.

 

I am selling this along with two analog synths to raise money toward my dream polysynth, which will be a DSI Prophet or maybe a Korg Prologue, pending some time with one...