The AX60 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 AX60 is a programmable six-voice synth with a nice LFO, lowpass (VCF) filter, envelope sections, and more. An eight-voice version, the AX80, 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 AX60 a worthy alternative to Roland's Juno 106. The AX60 may have been used by Bjork.

Jerry

September 13, 2012 @ 4:09 pm

My go to noise and havoc machine. Simplistic yet quite deep.

Izera

May 16, 2012 @ 8:04 pm

Very fun and imediate
The sounds range from soft-ish through to brutal and harsh.
The res filter is not like anything Ive ever heard before.
25% on the AX-60 res filter is like 100% on anything else and gets really aggressive after that but not in the normal res filter way, becomes more like a distortion effect.
Great cliche 80's sounds can effortlesly be had but it will easily go outside the realms of normal.
And yes its true, you can make the "Jetson's" car sound on one of these :)
For someone wanting a ballsy and in your face synth for new wave and/or industrial you cant go wrong.

finn

April 2, 2012 @ 2:56 pm

I read the following....but dont know how to do it...can anyone help?

The pitch-bend wheel can be set to affect VCF Cutoff frequency rather than pitch, and in this way the VCF frequency can also be automated.

thanks for your help!

mike

February 14, 2012 @ 1:08 pm

yeah mutant, please share thes mods...got a link?

Aesis

January 20, 2012 @ 12:32 pm

mutant1 - Having been a Juno-106 fanatic for a while I decided to pick up one of these and I'm very interested in how you designed and performed these mods.. send me a pm at aesisxp [at] gmail.com if you have the time, I'm about to drill into one of these

http://soundcloud.com/aesis

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