Navigation ☰

Farfisa Soundmaker this is ex-gear / sold

Farfisa Soundmaker overview

This 1979 to 1981 built bulky keyboard got three main sound units inside: The buttons on the preset and mode section just above the keys are electronic touch buttons with LEDs.
The Keyboard may be split at a fixed point at the middle F. The Strings and the poli synth then play at the lower end, the mono synth at the upper half of the keys.
The String and poli synth section may be switched to monophonic at the same time.
The keyboard got a monophonic aftertouch that can be routed to all possible combinations of these destinations: The max amount of the aftertouch modulation is fixed. And it is a bit much to my taste. The aftertouch is working nice. But there is a little lag processor in the circuit. So releasing the aftertouch will not stop the sound's modulation right then, but fade it out within half a sec or so.

One can tune the poli synth's pitch and the mono synth's pitch seperatly to the fixed string's pitch.

Inside there is a top oscillator (SN 74221 Texas Instruments) with a top octave divider chip AY-1-0212 by G.I.E.
Another SN 74221 supplies a M110 mono synth oscillator chip by S.G.S to do the mono synth oscillator. And also taking care of assigning the highest pressed key to the mono synth. And it is able to give a portamento, generating the trigger for the mono synth envelope. Its output is a pulse wave at 4 selectable (done in the presets!) footages. This pulse is then shapped to sawtooth on the Tuba (16") Trombone (8") and Trumpet (4").