The VX600 is a unique and compact analog synthesizer produced by the sampler-meisters at Akai. It's a six-voice synth with two analog VCOs per voice. This will give you some pretty thick and rich analog bass, pads, strings and so on. A very flexible Modulation Matrix allows you to route waveforms from each of the VCOs through the various edit functions. There is a lowpass resonant filter, a highpass filter, two LFOs, three envelope generators, two external sound inputs and more.

The VX600's patch memory stores over 100 patches, each of which can contain key group splits, MIDI info and voice allocation. Add classic analog performance modes such as unison, stacked mono and a new six-part multitimbral mode and you've got yourself some thick and full analog sounds! Its MIDI implementation allows for seamless integration into any MIDI studio. Additionally, a dedicated connector jack allows direct connection to the EVI1000 and EWI1000 wind synthesizers and a 13-pin DIN connector gives six individual voice outputs. Quite a powerful little beast!

Matt

December 28, 2011 @ 12:14 am

I wish the links to those mods still worked! Please re-host them!!! Also, I'd like to find some more info on the modification for separate output jacks mounted to the back of the case, or at least finding out which type of plug the Atari monitor is so that it can be sourced straight up from mouser or digikey. Can anyone shed some light on these things for the few owners of this fantastic synthesizer?

Tudy

April 11, 2011 @ 4:32 pm

Hi,
here are pictures of my non-invasive mod for using two knobs (from EWI section) as modulation sources:

http://pc204c.fzu.cz:8080/~ezone/Tudy/VX600/VX600_Tudy'sPotMod_1.jp g
http://pc204c.fzu.cz:8080/~ezone/Tudy/VX600/VX600_Tudy'sPotMod_2.jpg
http:/ /pc204c.fzu.cz:8080/~ezone/Tudy/VX600/VX600_Tudy'sPotMod_3.jpg

You can use center of knobs Glide and Bend as realtime control (and a ring of bend knob as offset for center knob)

Enkidada

November 23, 2010 @ 10:34 pm

Did a live show with this monster at a rave party early 90s. The bass coming out of this machine knocked the DJ from his platform and sent the crowd into a frenzy. Not kidding you. Recording was also a feast. Didn't need any or very little fx to find a sweet spot in the mix, be it bass, pad, synth or sci-fi fx. Moving to the other side of the world forced me to sell it. Hopefully the new owner had some use for it. To close off: yes it drifted so much that it seemed to have life of it's own, which to me dispite having to tune it to the changing temperature, only added to it's charm and made it sound much like the out of tune sequences by the Aphex Twin or Boards of Canada.

resequencer

February 23, 2010 @ 7:47 pm

my vx-600 is a prototype, as I found out. it never remembered patches that I had created, so a tech looking inside told me the battery back-up was not connected to the memory :)
I use a Roland M-256 memory card before i switch off

daszd

April 8, 2009 @ 5:10 pm

very good and rquite rare synth, but not as knob exploit commented,
it does sound different from Xpander and matrix 12, very good modulations capabilities yes but not as complex as the matrix and Xpander..let me remind you also that the Xpander has 15 different filter modes..but anyway this Vx600 is certainly a very good synth.
didn't knew about the atari monitor cable trick..lucky i haven't drilled mine yet ! :)

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