David Vandenborn is blogging his progress restoring a vintage Fairlight synthesizer:

Lately I’ve been busy restoring a Series IIx that had sustained serious damage from a leaked battery. Thanks to Peter Wielk at Horizontal Productions I was able to replace the broken cards. And after some extra debugging, the alphanumeric keyboard wasn’t working, I’m able to start learning and using this dream machine.

While I love vintage analog synths, I find it hard to romanticize old digital synths. You could spend a ton of money to keep a Fairlight running, and it’s always going to be kludgy compared to current computers. 

On the other hand, these were used to make a lot of great music, and used to cost an arm and a leg!

Arturia have released version 1.2 of their ARP2600V soft synth, a virtual recreation of the Arp 2600.

What’s new:

• Universal Binary support
• VST 2.4 Cubase 4 ready
• A new installer, regrouping all previous updates

Here’s your chance, synth freaks, to own a small part of synth history – Klaus Schulze’s Korg PS 3300, above.

Here’s the synth in Schulze’s studio, back in the day:

Here’s the eBay info, via 550wooby:

You are looking at one of the rarest synthesizers on the planet. A korg PS 3300 prototype owned by the legendary Klaus Schulze of Tangerine Dream.

But sadly it does not work so I am selling it as a non working unit. This would be the ultimate restoration project for somebody with technical know-how and time. Not only is this synth mega mega rare but it has a historic value as well. If this synth could talk it would have many stories to tell. This synth would have been on many world tours with klaus.

The synth does power up with lights flashing and blinking. The main control boards seem to work. With a service, 2 out of the 3 blocks will be functional. There are 4 voice boards missing but the can be easily copied with all IC’s still available (see photos). As you can see by the photos, It has seen better days.

So you may ask why am I selling such a rare and historic beast? I am getting out of the synth collecting game due to changes in life. I have changed my mind about 3000 times on whether to sell or not. This korg has no serial numbers and even has a spelling mistakes (”modifires”, instead of modifiers) (see photo). All the PS 3300’s made after this one has a darker face with MS 20 knobs. This PS has a light grey face with very early Maxikorg knobs.

Believe me this is a upmost regrettable sale!!! So my loss is definitely your gain.

So how did this synth end up in Australia? Klaus sent this synth along some minimoogs to an artist by the name of Mark Sakautzky in south australia many many years ago when digital came onto the scene. It was then purchased by David James a collector in Sydney about ten years ago. Then I purchased it about 4 years ago when Dave James sold his collection. My intention was restore it.

550wooby’s loss is your gain – as long as you don’t mind spending $7,500 on a non-functioning synth with 4 circuit boards missing.