Trend price : 6000€
Impressive analog poly synthesizer designed by Italian organ societies Elka & Orla.
Overview
(weight: 30 Kg) 61 keys. The main panel features 36 knobs, 84 buttons, 6 levers and a joystick for pitch bending and modulation.
Back panel terminal connectors:
- tape interface
- sequencer sync input
- stereo out
- expression pedal input control for filter cutoff
- 4 footswitch inputs
Sound
System generates 8 voices polyphony. A voice is composed by 2 DCO oscillators + 1 white-pink noise generator.
DCO1: saw / pulse / square / triangle
DCO2: saw / pulse / square / triangle
- second DCO can be hard-synched to first one
- digital ringmodulator with fixed value
Performance
-
double mode: is a layer of 2 sound patches
- split: assign 2 pacthes on a different keyboard zones
- polyphonic portamento with glide option and variable speed rate
Envelope
- EG1 VCF: 4 segments ASSR
- EG2 AMP: 4 segments ADSR
Filter
- lowpass at -24 dB slope
- bandpass at -12 or 6 dB slope
- highpass at -12 dB slope
LFO
LFO1:triangle /saw/ ramp / square
LFO2:triangle
Main destinations: pitch / width / amplitude / filter
Effects
based on TDA1022 is a 3-modes analog chorus fixed rate and depth values.
Midi
second and third Synthex versions implement a basic Midi interface that manage only basic note ON-OFF data.
Sequencer
a 4 tracks recorder with real-time or step entry notes. Each track transmits Midi signals, then whole sequence can be shifted in real-time for performance.
Memory
-
40 ROM presets
-
40 RAM user slots
- 128 events per track (512 total)
Reissue
In 2015 General Music that actually owns Elka brand, announced that some famous synthesizers COULD have a reissue! maybe the italian beast could revive like the Korg Mini-Ms20 ?. The brand is owned by a Finnish company that should rebuild the machine in Salo, CEO Jukka Kulmala want to use a mix of modern and traditional vintage analog technologies (including NOS CEM) but apparentely the original engineer Mario Maggi is not involved in this operation. Actually this "reissue" is not really well defined, n fact there is a crowd-funding campaign (first deposit is 3181$) called "bringelkaback" but NO PROTOTYPES are ready. There is actually no elka synthex reissue since reverse engineering is stil underway: the crowd funding will be the key and the faith of this reissue. There are a LOT of hoax around this, but I am personally skeptical about this operation.
Audio demo:
Video Clip:
Review
OK: massive sound / rare / sequencer /memories
NOT : midi / technical care / price
"The Elka Synthex is one of few analog polyphonic-structured synthesizer that boasts deep bass, rich strings and complex magical electronic sound. A true sonic cult."
