Vintage Synth Explorer

Sequential Circuits • Six-Trak

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The Six-Trak is Sequential's beginner synth. It has typical Sequential sounds in an analog six oscillator, six voice synth. It is not fun to program, there is only one knob and you need to assign the parameter you wish to adjust to this knob. The assignment settings for the various parameters are listed in the center of the front panel. It does however feature MIDI with controllers for its parameters to make editing easier using a computer program such as Unisyn or other external MIDI controller.

The Six-Trak features two operational modes: Polyphonic Mode and Unison Mode. In Unison mode, with all six oscillators, this baby gets fat, rich, creamy and wild making it an excellent stand-in for Moog-like sounds. Also, the Six-Trak is capable of interesting and complex sound effects, mostly thanks to useful cross modulation and the six oscillators. It also includes a simple 6-channel on-board sequencer (of little usefulness these days). Its biggest limitations were: shortest attack too slow for really percussive sounds, smallest vco frequency adjustment too big for Zawinul-style subtle frequency envelopes & LFO, and the lack of built-in chorus, which would have helped to thicken the rather thin sounds in Polyphonic mode. The SixTrak can be fun and cool but is overshadowed by its cousin - the Multi-Trak. It is used by Überzone and Cirrus.

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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.

 

emory

Posted 22 days ago

This keyboard is awesome, and I am trying to implement the midi for each of the parameters to make it even better. I have programmed on my own and is quite tedious, but the sounds are amazing. The sequencer is awesome as well, as you can pretty much write songs with different patches! Only downfall is the sequencer is not very well timed, you can't really sync things like live drums to it. wondering if the multi-trak fixed that?

Note: I bought, and am now selling the Evolution UC33e which was suggested by another user. As far as I can tell this WILL NOT work (doesn't support sysex except volume & pitch bend). Behringer BCR2000 hopefully will work from what i hear on the forums...

Chris

Posted 43 days ago

I like my SixTrak. I upgraded it to the newest ROM from www.winecountrysequential.com. With a Doepfer "Drehbank" (64 assignable Pots for Midi-CC-Controller) it really rocks. You can even twiddle two parameters at the same time. This way all parameters are at my fingertips. Some time ago I started to enhance it with 6 Audio-Ins and 6 Audio-Outs. But I never finished the mod, altought is wouldn't be too complex to do (with Op-Amps).

fernfahrermusic

Posted 47 days ago

alec empire's "les etoiles des filles mortes" album equipment (atari falcon, six track synthesizer+soundlab dsm 25 mixer)

Martin

Posted 49 days ago

Jonas Jonasson from bob hund, Bergman Rock and Sci-Fi Skane use the SixTrak when playing live with bob hund.

Colin

Posted 97 days ago

This was my first keyboard and I owned it for around 10 years until it died. It had some cool sounds, it works best for bass sounds, but nothing special really. Editing the sound you need is quite logical compared to most analogs, but it is slow and awkward because there is only one knob which you have to assign each parameter to every time you want to tweak something. So twiddling knobs and dials while playing is not easy, that aspect is pretty poor. Compared to most pro analog keyboards of that era it was pretty basic.

3/10 Sorry!

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