Akai AX60 "Synth With A Split Personality" introductory ad, Keyboard 1986

Akai AX60 "Synth With A Split Personality" two-page introductory colour advertisement from page 14 and 15 in the January 1986 issue of  Keyboard Magazine.

Akai ads are just getting bigger and better, and this two-page full colour advertisement for the AX60 just knocks my socks off. It had a rather good ad-run too, appearing for a number of months between January and April, and then making a brief appearance again in September 1986.

But, be warned. My objectivity may have taken a vacation today. So, full disclosure - I own an AX60 and I **LOVE** it. Yes, four **asterix** worth of **LOVE**.

It was one of the first synthesizers I bought off the Internet - from a cool dude in the Analog Heaven email list. I can recall the excitement of the transaction, the anxiety of waiting for it to arrive, wrestling with shipping box when it finally did arrive, and sliding it out of the box to reveal this gorgeous beast for the first time.

Yum.

The best thing about this ad is the fact that the front panel of the synth takes up the whole bottom half of the two pages. You can clearly read every control. It's magnificent and gives readers a good indication of EXACTLY what they are purchasing.

A close second best thing about this ad is the inclusion of the $795.00 price tag.

And a close third best thing is its association with the S612 sampler. Up until now, the poor S612 has spent most of its time in half-page ads, usually in the back-half of Keyboard.  But now at least it was getting a bit more air-time with its younger brother. These two peas in a pod even share similar markings, grays with a dash of pastel reds and blues. 

One thing I hardly noticed in this ad at first was what I thought was a lightning bolt down the center of the two pages. But then I realized its the "split" in the "split personality" aspect of the ad. Ha!

There are many reasons to like this advertisement, but there are just as many reasons to love the synthesizer itself. All the controls are located on the front panel, it has an arpeggiator, you can split the keyboard to create two different sounds, I could go on and on...

But for me, the coolest feature of this synthesizer is the VCO MOD control in the VCF section. It makes this synth scream and burble and gargle and gack. The AX60 manual has this to say about it:

"This unique feature produces musically useful timbre shifts when moved; the action is similar to tone control, but more sophisticated."

Yes, yes it truly does.

If you have not heard this sound, I've uploaded a simple arpeggiated saw wave demo to SoundCloud. Its a little distorted (caused by SoundCloud, not the VCO MOD function) so I've enabled the wave download button so you can download the original wave file (11 MB I think) if the audio gets to be too annoying.



Listening to the demo, you can really hear the harmonics/distortion added to the sound with this one simple slider interacting with the cut-off and resonance, and you can see why I used the VCO MOD *a lot* in angry songs I was created in the mid-late 90s. I would ride the slider up and down throughout some songs.  :D

Like the ad, the manual also spends a a fair bit of time talking up the AX60's connection to the S-612 sampler. Six of the 43 pages to be exact, running through the basics of set up, editing sampled sounds, stereo effects, and using the AX60's keyboard split function with the sampler.

But it is the final section - 11F: A Word to Creative Musicians... - that seals the deal for me, and makes me reach for the eBay app on my new NEXUS 7 Google tablet to buy one (nope, didn't get paid by eBay or Google to say that, just wanted to brag):

"The AX60/S612 combination is a powerful one. It will take you some time to master using the two devices together, but practice makes perfect. After you become familiar with the system (maybe even before!), you will be able to produce some absolutely marvelous sounds."

All this writing about the AX60 has me truly excited about this machine again. Now I gotta go play on it some more.

There goes the rest of my lovely afternoon.

Gah!

Akai S-612 "Finally Sampling Made Simple!" ad, Keyboard 1985

Akai S-612 sampler "Finally Sampling Made Simple!" 1/2-page colour advertisement from page 58 in the December 1985 issue of Keyboard Magazine.

After a five or six month run of their rather humorous 1/2-page black and white advertisement, Akai and/or distributor IMC decided to up their game a little bit.

For one, they decided to pay the big bucks and go CMYK on our @ss. Although, I think at the expense of a bit of readability. Actually, looking at this ad again right now, it kinda reminds me of an early 1990's rave pamphlet. It's like Akai already knew that sampling would play such a large role in electronic dance music of the future. Creepy good fun.

But, that rack sampler really does look purrrrdy in colour with its blue and red twiddlies and bitz. 

They also changed their primary message used in that earlier ad from one of cost ("less than a $1000!") to one based on ease of use. A message, I'm sure, that is a direct shot at the Ensoniq Mirage's rather more difficult sampling procedures:

"No longer do you need to be a computer whiz kid to unleash your sampling creativity. Now in just 8 seconds you can sample anything from a Model T to a Boeing 747..."

But it's this next part of the ad-copy that is really wonderful:

"...or permanently store your favorite sounds... from a C.D. to a $25,000 synthesizer!!"

Just to be clear, I'm pretty sure Loop Masters and Time+Space weren't around yet. :) Is Akai suggestingI use there S-612 to SAMPLE music CDs? Like, other people's music? Awesome.

But, like I said - colour at the expense of readability. It took me a while to find that low price of $995.00. And for some reason the designer put a really bright star right behind the price, making it even harder to see. Even if it isn't the main message, its still one of best features of this sampler.

After the introductory black and white advertisement ran from July to November 1985, this colour ad started running in December 1985, and actually continued to run pretty regularly through out the first half of 1986. But still, at a 1/2-page size, I think it continued to have trouble getting noticed over main competitor Ensoniq's full page colour ads for the Mirage. Complicated sampling and all.

But, the S-612 did a get a boost  in November 1985 just before this colour ad started to run in the form of a coveted Keyboard Review by Jim Aikin. After a brief introduction about the pros and cons of sampling in general, he zeros in on two of the S612's cost-cutting measures - no keyboard (played through MIDI), and the fact that you can only hold one sample in memory at a time.

Soon after (and much like this ad's message) Jim points out the obvious - this thing is easy to sample with. In his words:

"The S612 is simplicity itself to use".

After reading this, Akai should have immediately dropped all future marketing plans for the S612 and just put well-respected Aikin's quote above a photo of the S612.

Clap hands. Job done. :D

The review also points out one other feature of the S612 that isn't really mentioned elsewhere - storing sounds with the S612 on its own takes around EIGHT MINUTES BY CASSETTE. Do you know how long eight minutes is? Um... a long time.

But that's why Akai came out with the "optional" MD280 mini-disk drive module.  I put that "optional" in quotes, because it's really not all that optional. This module reduces the time it takes to store a sample from eight minutes down to eight seconds. Aaaaah. Much better.

Jim also rightly makes note of the suannoying 2.8" quick-disk format micro-floppies the unit used. Smaller than Mac's 3.5 inch disks. I hated them on my Roland S10 sampler too. But according to Jim, Akai's reason for choosing the format was because they could "hold exactly 64kb per side, which is what was needed to store one sampled sound and associated voicing information.  64kb? That seems low, no?

Jim also reviews other aspects of the machine, including factory sounds, voice parameters, truncating and looping functions and MIDI implementation (something of great importance in a rack sampler that relies on MIDI to be played).

In his conclusion, Jim once again points out the issue of saving to cassette, calling it "an exercise in frustration". He also brings back the awful memory of how expensive floppies were back in the day and comments "don't forget to budget a couple of hundred dollars for disks". LOL!

Before signing off, he makes one final observation about the future market for samplers:

"At the rate technology is advancing, we can expect to see more units like this one hitting the marketing in the near future, packed with bells and whistles to make them seem superior. But it's hard to see how the basic package found in the Akai could be improved upon."

It's hard to think of Akai as the underdog of sampling. But the company is catching up. Fast.

Akai S-612 "Would you like a sampler for less than $1000.00?" introductory ad, Keyboard 1985 - first ad

Akai S-612 sampler "Would you like a sampler for less than $1000.00?" 1/2-page black and white introductory advertisement from page 87 in the May 1985 issue of Keyboard Magazine.

Work is about to take over my life for the next two or three weeks, so I've decided to enjoy this gorgeous weekend as  much as possible and spend only a minimal amount of time indoors - cleaning, blogging, music, etc. And, in retrospect, it looks like Akai took the same minimal approach both in the design of its S-612 sampler as well as its introductory advertisement.

Right or wrong, much of the early life of the S-612 was probably spent being compared to another relatively new and cheap-ass sampler, and it's main competition - the Ensoniq Mirage. So, of course, I did the same when looking at when exactly each of these samplers started showing up in Keyboard magazine.

The S-612 Spec Sheet appearance looks to be the first sign of life for Akai's sampler in the May 1985 issue of Keyboard. For comparison, the Ensoniq Mirage sampling keyboard had already been showing off its chops for a good five or six months in the form of a full colour two-page introductory advertisement that began running during the December 1984 Xmas season. I would have hoped for a bit more meat in the Spec Sheet from a company trying to play catch-up to the competition:

"Akai's 6-voice polyphonic 612 Sampler is a 19" rack-mount device designed to operate with any MIDI-equipped keyboard. It features 12-bit resolution and can digitally sample up to eight seconds of any sound. Front panel controls enable the user to set a looping point for the sampled sound, set MIDI mode and channel, and externally trigger the device. An LFO and filter are built-in. Price is $999.00. Akai, dist. by IMC, Box 2344, Fort Worth, TX 76113."

Yeah, not a lot of info in that spec sheet... but then again, the Akai S-612 was a simple machine. There wasn't much more to it. Just your basic entry level sampling machine.  And what was probably a really bad case of "coin-ki-dink" (ah... coincidence), competitor Ensoniq managed to slide in a FULL PAGE COLOUR advertisement directly opposite Akai's Spec Sheet promo. And not the Mirage introductory ad - that one had already run for a while and was replace in this May issue of Keyboard with Ensoniq's second advertisement for the machine!

In the words of Martin Q. Blank from the movie Grosse Point Blank: "Dumb fucking luck".

So, I'm thinking. Okay, a slow start. But maybe there is earlier mention of Akai's sampler in Keyboard's semi-annual NAMM tradeshow round-up article. That February 1985 Winter NAMM show article turned out to be easy to find. It was in the same issue as Akai's Spec Sheet - May 1985. 

From the article:

"One of the games that was being played at this NAMM convention was spot the digital sampler, also known as how many sampling machines can you fit inside of one convention center. Kurzweil, Ensoniq, E-mu and Fairlight were all on hand to show off their instruments... ...And everyone was curious about the Ensoniq Mirage (which we'll be reviewing next month in Keyboard Report), the sampling keyboard with a list price under $2,000."

Ensoniq's timing was perfect. A Xmas launch, hitting NAMM at just the right time with a great price-point, and free earned media in this NAMM article with a mention and a photo!

And yet, no mention of Akai. Gah!

So, from a casual reader's perspective, Ensoniq's Mirage had already been on the market for quite a while, resulting in five or six month's exposure in advertisements and articles before Akai even gets their first break with their Spec Sheet promo. Until this advertisement came along, some readers may have thought that the only thing the Akai S-612 rack sampler had going for it was its under $1000 price tag compared to the Mirage's $1700 list price.

You'll probably agree that the S-612 needed to come out swinging with it's first advertisement to get in front of Ensoniq. But Akai or distributor IMC (or whoooooomever) looks like they made the unfortunate decision to make the S-612's introductory advertisement a 1/2-page black and white ad. ON PAGE 87!!!

Not really that confident, were we, Akai?

Or just playing it safe?

It's not all bad. For a half-pager, it is a nicely designed ad. Good layout with a large title, good photo and a very readable large-ish ad-copy font.

Akai knows they have the cheapest sampler on the planet - and use that fact to their advantage in the ad-title:

"Would you like a sampler(TM) for less than $1,000.00."

That "TM" symbol beside the word "sampler" makes me a little uneasy. Did Akai really trademark the term "sampler"? They give the word the "TM" treatment through the ad-copy. I did a quick search and I wasn't the only that noticed this. The Microscopics blog made note of this back in 2009. Interesting.

Also, I just gotta point out the crazy sense of humor in the ad-copy . Underneath the ad-title about wanting a sampler for less than a grand is:

"So would 348,000 other synthesizer players". 

Huh? What? Where does that number come from? Did they just pull that number out of their ass? Or am I missing some in-joke?

Again - we get a little chuckle in the first sentence:

"Now the S-612 sampler(TM) by Akai enables thousands of synthesizer owners the freedom of sampling technology without mortgaging their wife and kids!"

Giggle.

Okay, between the time I started writing this post and the time I finished it, I've done a complete 180 degrees on my thoughts on Akai's first S612 advertisement, and their move into the professional instrument market.

I think Akai has a really shot at this "sampler (TM)" thing.   :D

Akai AX80 "Simply... Awesome!" ad #2, Keyboard 1985

Akai AX80 "Simply... Awesome!" advertisement #2 from page 7 in the May 1985 issue of Keyboard Magazine.

Yup. Not a screw-up. This is a TOTALLY different advertisement than the AX80 "Simply...Awesome!" ad I posted last Monday.  I prefer to call this one "Simply... Awesomer!"

Let me remind you of that earlier ad.

So, I can hear your thoughts. Doesn't look too different from that first AX80 ad, does it?  Well, the difference is significant enough that it may have been the reason the ad was moved all the way up to page 7 in that issue of Keyboard. I'll let you take a bit of a closer look and ponder the significance of the difference between the two ads while reading the rest of the blog post.

And speaking of "significances", back in the 80s, it didn't take long for Keyboard Magazine to realize the significance of Akai breaking on to the synth scene, and Jim Aikin was selected (or volunteered... how would I know?!?!) to write the review of the AX80 in the January 1985 issue.

Side note: I'm not sure why, and please don't find this creepy Mr. Aikin, but for some reason your writer's photo that Keyboard Magazine used for your articles during this time period has never left my memory. When many of the other writers' faces were all looking right at the camera and smiling, you were kickin' the new wave "glow", looking cool as Kraftwerk. Seriously and sincerely. I dig that photo.

Jim starts the review with a sentence or two on the state of the polyphonic synth market - and reading it now gives one a good idea of the confusion keyboard players must have been facing when choosing a polysynth:

"Competition in the polyphonic synthesizer area seems to get tougher every month, with new, affordable, touch-sensitive instruments crawling out of the woodwork at an alarming rate. This is good news for keyboard players because it means prices are coming down, but it does make it tougher to evaluate all the reshuffled combinations of familiar features and figure out which instrument is right for you."

And, without knowing it at the time, Jim really does a kick-ass job at predicting the AX80's future in terms of pricing (that was a hint to the difference between the two ads - more on that later).

As usual Jim gives 100 per cent in detailing the keyboard, controllers, voice architecture, and programming and operations. An enjoyable read - or re-read in my case. And one that delayed me a little in finishing this post :).

In the end, Jim concludes that although he wasn't impressed with the preset patches, he notes the synth does have a "warm, full sound, and can deliver a full palette of musically useful tone colors".  He also predicts the future quite accurately again with his last statement.

"The AX80 is an excellent first entry into the keyboard market by a company that we're sure to be seeing more from."

Okay, before I end this post, I've just gotta say I've left the best for last (well, in my mind anyways   :)

You see, the advertisement actual ran for quite some time between the end of 1984 and well into 1985. So, whenever ads run for that long, I usually go to one of the later ad-runs and do a small comparison check, just to see if, on the off-chance, the company has made little tweaks along the way.

Well, in the case of this Akai AX80 ad, I was NOT disappointed. In fact, in my mind, I hit the jackpot! It seems that the ad change very subtly two times during its year long ride in Keyboard Magazine - and both times it is in reference to PRICE DROPS!

In May 1985, it looks like Akai added text to the ad to let readers know that they dropped the price of the AX80 down three hundred dollars - from $1,695 down to $1,395. That's a pretty sweet price drop - one that I think should have resulted in a bit more attention and promotion in the ad change. Not the small little text addition that they decided on.

Then in September 1985, the ad changed again to show that the price dropped a further FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS - down to $995. WTF? But readers flipping casually through the magazine may not have even noticed. Again, just a small change.

If you haven't found it yet (and I don't blame you), the extra text appeared below the "Simply... Awesome!" promo ad-copy in small black letters. It's like they were trying to hide it or something.

May 1985 - price drop to $1395

September 1985 - price drop to $995

My jaw dropped when I first noticed this. Really? A company drops the price of their synth $700 dollars and then doesn't really give it much attention?!?!?

I'd say that's pretty significant. Heck - it's simply awesome!

Psst - was that ending too predictable?    :)

Akai AX80 "Simply... Awesome!" ad, Keyboard 1984

Akai AX80 "Simply... Awesome!" full page colour advertisement from page 44 in the November 1984 issue of Keyboard Magazine.

It's always a crap shoot when a company tries to break into a new market. It usually takes a lot of money and a lot of balls. I think its fair to say Akai had both in 1984 when they decided to start up their new electronic instruments division known fondly by many as Akai Professional.

Gordon Reid probably said it best in the introductory paragraph of his 1996 AX80 retrospective:

"When Akai turned up at the 1984 Frankfurt Music Fair, they had many people wondering what a hi-fi manufacturer was doing at a show aimed squarely at performing and recording musicians. A new range of speakers perhaps? Maybe an amplifier or two? What the world wasn't expecting was the 'Akai Music Studio System' - an early attempt at a complete MIDI studio that comprised a fully fledged polysynth, the AX80, the MG1212 combined 12-track mixer/recorder, the MR16 drum machine, and the MS08 sequencer. Of the four, it was the synth that garnered the most interest. It was sleek, black, beautifully designed, beautifully finished and, if looks could kill, was set to become The Terminator of its generation."

F*ck yeah! Excuse my language, but that's how you start a retrospective! Man, if I had written that paragraph, I would have just clapped my hands, ended the blog post right there and walked away from my computer. I love the look of the AX80 almost as much as Gordon Reid - even without any knobs.

But, I didn't write it, and now you have to read the rest of this meandering post. :D

Readers of Keyboard were first introduced to the AX80 through the magazine's Spec Sheet section in the September 1984 issue of Keyboard - a month or two before the ad started to appear. The promo provided readers a good little "tease" that included the basics of the machine. It actually shared promo space with the MG1212, basically an analog ADAT, so I've left that part out:

"Akai Synthesizer. The AX80 synthesizer features a 5-octave keyboard, pitch-bend and modulation wheels, and 8-voice polyphony. Each voice has two oscillators a VCF, an envelope generator, and a VCA. The instrument also has 32 preset sounds along with 64 user-programmable memory positions. MIDI in, out and thru connectors are provided. Panel functions are displayed on five fluorescent bar graphs. The rear panel is angled to make connecting cables easier. Distributed by IMC, Box 2344, Fort Worth, TX 76113."

I'm always a little disappointed when the Spec Sheet promo doesn't provide price information. Makes me pout a little bit actually.   But luckily we have the InterWebz today, and according to Wikipedia's incredibly well-written AX80 page, this synthesizer jumped onto the scene with a retail price of $1,695 US.

According to the page, the AX80 was Akai Professional "first venture", and part of what Gordon Reid described above as the "Akai Music Studio System" that included a sampler, drum machine, sequencer and even a multitrack tape recorder. The page provides a lot of great detail about the voice architecture and sound programming, and the knowledgable author(s) actually compare it roughly to Roland's JX3P. Interesting.

I am glad that the Spec Sheet did reference the fluorecent bar graphs. To me, that's the best thing about this beast.  MATRIXSYNTH has a good little photo of OSC 1's graph from a 2007 auction post. The AX80 must look gorgeous in the dark.

Tech writer David Hughes included his thoughts on the fluorescent graphs in a June 2002 Sound on Sound AX80  retrospective titled "The Return of the Axman":

"Akai's innovative solution to the nightmare of digital parameter access was a huge array of fluorescent bar graphs that run along the entire width of the instrument, and almost every available parameter is visible simultaneously. You really have to see an AX80 in the flesh to appreciate just how truly astonishing this looks, and these machines could easily be used to decorate Oxford Street at Christmas!"

Purrrrrdy.

There are a number of other good references on the Web that point out all that is good and bad about the AX80. Vintage Synth Explorer has a good little write up and compares its sound to the Chroma Polaris or Juno 106.

That Sound on Sound magazine I mentioned above also compared the AX80's sound to a number of other synths.

"It can sound like any number of synths of that era: the richness of the Prophet series, the depth and punch reminiscent of the Minimoog, the sterility of Roland's Juno series, and the digital 'wanginess' of the PPG family."

Poor thing - getting compared to all it's cousins. You think it would have developed some kind of psychological complex after all this time.  :D