Vintage Synth Explorer

Akai • AX-60

The AX-60 is among some of the last true analog polysynths of the mid-eighties. It was Akai's answer to the hugely successful Roland Juno series and Yamaha's new digital DX-series. The AX-60 is a programmable six-voice synth with a nice LFO, lowpass VCF filter, envelope sections, and more. An eight-voice version, the AX-80, was already available.

Programming this synth is easy using dedicated sliders, knobs and/or buttons for its parameters. It also has a useful noise generator and some other cool functions that include auto-tuning, chorus, a multi-mode arpeggiator and a keyboard that can be split into two key-zones, making it somewhat bi-timbral. All six voices can be stacked in unison mode for a powerful and thick lead sound. Its features and sound make the AX-60 a worthy alternative to Roland's Juno 106. The AX-60 may have been used by Bjork.

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Posting Rules: Please keep your comments relevant! Do not post requests for help, do not use for sales, do not post unless you have something interesting to say about this instrument, or we may delete your post.

 

MikeD

Posted 7 days ago

in 1985 ..i bought one of these because i could not afford the esq 1 which both had just come out from Easy Music in Honolulu Hi...and i never knew that there was another model..i loved that board

Daniel A. McCullough

Posted 64 days ago

There were two different models with slightly different layouts. I have one that does not look like the one pictured above. I believe that the US model was different. The one above is the Japan model, which is extremely rare!

32598735

Posted 87 days ago

I HAVE SEEN THE AKAI AX60 WITH 2 VERY DIFFERENT LAYOUTS WITH VARYING AMOUNT OF SLIDERS AND BUTTONS? i.e. LOOK AT THE IMAGE ABOVE AND LOOK AT THIS IMAGE FROM AN OLD AD (http://www.sonicamigos.com/etejkowski/i mages/midres-ax60.jpg) AND YOU WILL SEE THEY HAVE 2 DIFFERENT LAYOUTS, WILL SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN THIS?

test

Posted 95 days ago

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A. Hubert

Posted 109 days ago

This synth uses the same Curtis CEM3394 (synth-on-a-chip) as the Sequential Circuit SixTrak and Max synths. There are 6 of them for 6 voices polyphony. This is the very last VCO chip created by Curtis. The next chip was the CEM3396 which introduced DCO concept, (still an analog oscillator, but digitally controlled so drifting was eliminated).

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