Relics from a forgotten era.

In an age where electronic equipment has all the user interface one would ever require, there was a time when painting the Sistine Chapel through a letterbox slot was all we had in order to express our creative and technical prowess on musical gear. The Yamaha TX-802 is a classic example of this.

I purchased this gem from a New York studio many years back, because it was needed to fill a gap in my sonic arsenal ; that being 6 OP FM. This thing was going for a song, and I snapped it up because I’d heard that it was pretty much the rack-mount equivalent of a DX7-II, (minus effects, keyboard, and PLUS being 8 part Multi-timbral). Being completely editable from the front panel, with crude but useful graphics, it was a very far cry from the TX-816 that came out a few years earlier.

I was instantly aware that it brought back a lot of sonic memories from my Technics SX-K700 keyboard I purchased brand new in 1988. I then did a deep-dive to discover that the Technics used a (quite revolutionary for it’s time) PCM chip loaded with FM-style waveforms, and I was honestly blown away thinking that I had a preset FM synth all along ! The Technics has some very rudimentary but highly effective sound editing parameters, and I still really appreciate what the Technics offers right up to this day.