Back in 1986, this synth stepped up as Akai's bold riposte to the Roland Juno craze, packing genuine analog punch into a 6-voice poly machine that still turns heads for its raw, versatile growl.
At its core, each voice rocks a single VCO spitting out saw, square, triangle, or saw+triangle waves, with pulse-width modulation working across all of them via a dedicated LFO—something pretty rare back then. The filter section shines with a resonant 24dB/octave lowpass (Curtis CEM3394-based) plus a static highpass, keyboard tracking for bright highs, and a wild VCO MOD knob that twists the timbre into screaming, burbling territory like FM on steroids. You've got ADSR envelopes for filter and amp, a versatile LFO (saw, square, triangle, random) with delay for pitch, cutoff, or amplitude, plus hands-on sliders for everything, pitch/mod wheels, a multi-mode arpeggiator, split keyboard for bi-timbral tricks, unison stack for fat leads, noise gen, and that lush built-in BBD chorus using MN3009/MN3101 chips. It's a hefty 61-key beast at 1000x346x110mm and 11kg, with full MIDI in/out/thru, 64-patch memory, and a special connector to slave old Akai samplers like the S612 as extra oscillators.
Players dig its thick, aggressive tones—from warm pads to snarling basses—and how dead-simple slider programming makes it a subtractive synthesis playground, though its rarity means hunting one down takes patience, and age might call for a tune-up. That chorus and unique mod tricks keep it standing tall against Junos even today.
