The Vintage Keys is a digital rackmount synthesizer that emulates the sounds of classic vintage synths. For an early 1990’s ROMpler, this sound module was compact and actually sounded really good, loaded with good samples of vintage synth sounds. Just like the classics it has Portamento, a VCF (filter) and a Chorus effect. It has a lot of modulation capabilities which are all real-time and MIDI controllable. It does, however, have the typical brittle digital sound quality usually associated with digital sound modules, but it still makes nice pads, punchy bass and cool filter swept leads and works great for background synth sounds.

The Vintage Keys Plus was released in 1994. This model doubled the internal ROM size to 16 MB of sampled sounds. Memory patches were also increased to 512 slots. Original Vintage Keys models could be upgraded to match the Plus version using E-mu’s 8 MB Expander Kit.

It is used by Hardfloor, The Prodigy, Fatboy Slim, Meat Beat Manifesto, Goldie, Olive, Faithless, LTJ Bukem, Roni Size, Future Sound of London, Depeche Mode, Laurent Garnier, Yesterdays and The Shamen.

Richard

March 9, 2012 @ 4:38 am

This is useful for one thing: the quirky and gloriously flawed Mellotron samples, which somehow seem to work, even though spe [beep] t VST instruments are available cheaper to provide a much broader, more accomplished and more useful Mellotron soundset. The Mellotron choirs and Mellotron flute are the reason I'm still hanging on to it. Other sounds: Hammond, EP's, strings and all and sundry analog presets sound aweful to me. Prices are seemingly going up, which to me seems like the worst kind of wishful thinking. If you crave 'vintage' sound, I doubt this is will satisfy you in any way.

Bob

February 21, 2012 @ 7:02 am

It's not bad, the latest update made the presets better but you need to edit to get the best out of it. Emu did a clever thing (at least for us that own one) by including the word vintage on it. This means that you'll always be able to sell it, albeit to someone who has never heard one.
Buy but be sensible and pay a sensible amount of money, I shouldn't say this as I own one!

mike

July 20, 2011 @ 9:36 pm

beatlefan I'm interested in purchasing this. How much?

BeatleFan

June 25, 2011 @ 9:57 pm

This is a cool little synth....I've got one for sale if anybody wants it.

Shrunken Head

January 10, 2011 @ 4:59 pm

Mister Littlejeans,
I just reset the factory presets this evening. Follow the steps below. From http://www.emulatorarchive.com/ModuleOverview/ModVintageKeys/modvintagekeys.html

To enter diagnostics mode, power on with both cursor keys held down. There are 13 modes, which test out all the various components inside the module.

To re-initialize your module, if it locks up, scroll down until you get to the "initialize" option. Hit enter and you will wipe out your user-definable patches and reset the module back to its factory state. Beware! Save your patches first!

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