Farfisa Soundmaker

This 1979 to 1981 built bulky keyboard got three main sound units inside:

• Monophonic Synth
  with presets and controlls to edit the sound or to make new ones from scratch. Available preset sounds are:
  • Tuba
  • Trombone
  • Trumpet
  • Sax
  • Clarinet
  • Oboe
  • Flute
  • Picolo
  • Violin
  • Accordion
  • El Bass
  • El Guitar
  • Free (sets the controlls for the heart of the sound design)
  The sound are typical for preset synth then. But better or worse then Roland's, Yamaha's or a Moog Satellite.
  The Tuba is beefy sounding. And the "free" mode with the available parameters let you use the main character of the selectedt preset wave shape and work with the nice filter, the one ADSR for the filter and/or the VCA, the LFO (here named "Osc"!) with envelope depending amount set via a mode rotary switch.
• Polyphonic Preset Synth
  • Volume
  • Brightness
  Available preset sounds are:
  • Piano
  • Electric Piano
  • Honkey Tonk
  • Brass
  One may activate a preset Brass vibrato here too.
• String Section
  • 8" footage
  • 4" footage
  • Volume
  • Brightness
  • Sustain (actually release)
  • Attack (with a not well chosen parameter scalling. 10% is way to long.
    And 100% is even longer as needed in all music styles
    (except ambience tracks)
  Sounding like so many others of that time.
  But not as classic as an Solina

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:

• Mono Synth brilliance
• Mono Synth OSC (vibrato)
• Mono Synth Glide (actually it is aftertouch pitchbend upwards)
• Brass Brilliance

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").