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.

Nigel Lloyd

January 13, 2013 @ 3:54 am

Does anyone know how to restore the factory settings, I have read the manual and cannot see it.

Robbie Nuke

November 16, 2012 @ 9:24 pm

My display is starting to show two *SYSTEM ERROR* codes;

1. f@F feLA236_
2. feL pc=A23E

Any advice? Is there a battery inside that may need replacing?

Watoo Watoo

September 30, 2012 @ 8:45 am

Also used by French pop genius Bertrand Burgalat:
http://www.brain-magazine.com/article/interviews/9348-Bertrand-Burgalat ---C_%C3%A9tait-Mieux-Apr%C3%A8s

johndifo

June 4, 2012 @ 6:38 pm

I got the 8mb (Plus) version for sale johndifo at g mail com

Blob

May 18, 2012 @ 8:01 pm

Just got a Vintage Keys off ebay and it only has 383 memory slots that show (not 511), and all the user presets have been deleted. So I basically have 2 banks of ROM and they're both the same (0-126 & 255-383) weird. Someone posted earlier here that this thing has 8mb ROM but the sidebar specs say 4. No info available on Emu website anymore, including downloads. Hmm where to get a midi file of the factory presets to restore the user banks????

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