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.

Colin

December 8, 2009 @ 3:20 pm

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!

anim8tor

August 1, 2009 @ 3:06 pm

I LOVE this synth! They mention Unisyn can be used to program the six-trak, which would be great because the buttons on mine are a little screwy. I didn't see it in the list of profiles on the MOTU site, so I want to verify if anyone out there is using Unisyn successfully with the six-trak, let me know

Geir Helgi Birgisson / hageir

July 9, 2009 @ 6:10 pm

"The Six-Trak is Sequential's beginner synth."

Oh man, oh man!
This is not true!
This synth is so awesome and underrated (sush!) that it's almost funny..

I just got mine a couple of days ago and I'm in love, crazy love (yeah, like that song),
it's got a very, very nice sound (kind of 70's) and it's so small and cute :)

For bass it needs a little help from an EQ (wait, wait, that is if you want earth-shaking bass or something crazy)

The sequencer is awesome as well, to "slap" down some ideas and stuff!

I love it.

sandman

March 20, 2009 @ 10:13 pm

I still have my original that I bought in 1984. This is a highly underrated keyboard. The stacks are massively fat, and when combined with a midi controller like the Evolution UC-33e, this thing becomes an analog monster. I still use it on tracks regularly. It's rock solid and with a little effort on the user's part it far exceeds it's modest price tag. It's the cheapest possible way to get an authentic Sequential sound.

Moe

December 12, 2008 @ 5:08 pm

There some PC editors out there too, to get a visual on all the parameters. Such as
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/2163/sixpat.html

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