Gakken SX-150 MARK II Analog Synthesizer

This little blighter is so much fun, its biggest drawback is how hard it is to stop playing with it, There are so many variations of sounds you can create from the unit itself, and you can also plug a guitar into it (with the correct jack adaptors) and go to town, creating new sonic experiences. I brought this for one specific project, and it has become a mainstay. The only drawback is that it is very light and plasticy and I feel that it could be easily broken.

A couple of negative points to start off. Yes, the knobs will fall off easily and you need the accuracy of a neuro surgeon to play anything resembling a tune on the stylus / ribbon control. Sometimes there's also some intermittent contact with the stylus even though I have carefully cleaned the track. I noticed someone on Youtube had wired a pencil up - when I tried this it was definitely smoother and improved conductivity.Build quality of the casing is decent with a very snug 4 X AA battery compartment. I did not expect much from the tiny speaker so I was not disappointed. There seemed to be some hiss also (some settings reduced this slightly). Not much variation in the actual tone produced but the tone is a good basis for filter and LFO tweaks. The range of notes produced goes from way low down to (at times) almost out of my hearing range. Plug in to a pre-amp or FX unit and the sound is very powerful - low end is amazingly strong for such a simple device.Add a little overdrive and echo/reverb and it's a little monster ! Only thing is that hiss is there again, so I roll off all the top end and most of the mid. You'd think that the result would be muddy, but no - it just has this fat tone bursting out. If you carefully jam the LFO waveform selector switch halfway you get a different pitch and different response. It is quite unpredictable at times but it's a real analogue synth after all.The stylus control is tricky - you start to develop this theremin style of playing where you wobble the pitch because you know you will rarely be in tune on a static note. Consequently, you start to sound like a drunk female Japanese Opera singer, Jimmy Somerville or a yodeling Slim Whitman... Those darn Martians just wouldn't stand a chance if the army were issued with this ! This will put a smile on your face if you actually have any sense of humour at all.For the £17.99 I paid it has to be 5 stars.

I bought this as a gift for my brother, but ultimately it seems a bit limited and I think it only really worked as a Christmas Day novelty and then served no further useful purpose. Build quality is medium.Maybe in combination with other items this might be more versatile.

For under £20 its a no brainer.This is not going to be a replacement for a full sized synthesizer, but its the most sonic fun in you fist that you are going to get for under £20.Don't expect to be able to reproduce any sound that you can think of, that's not what it is about, but it doesn't take long fiddling with the knobs to get something usable, and then another one, and another.The keyboard is more fiddly that a stylophone oe even a Korg Monotron, but the little performance buttons on the left hand side make it extremely playable, especially the "Modulation" button which is touch sensitive and allows you to smoothly introduce vibrato on demand.The VCO Controls have a good range and my only quibble is that it is limited to 4 octaves and you cant switch it down a few which would make a killer bass synth.Envelope generator is just fine, although the attack/decay controls only work in single shot mode, which can annoying but not a show stopper.The filter has a good range too, but for me this is the weak spot, winding the resonance makes is scream and howl but to me its a bit harsh and distorted so use it sparingly.As a hand held device the speaker is more that adequate, but put it through an external amplifier and it sounds as good as something five times the price. Put it through a valve guitar amp and you have some seriously powerful sounds at your disposable.I use mine through a Zoom MultiFX pedal unit to add a bit of "European Valve" distortion, spring reverb and tape echo which take me straight int into Hawkwind territory. I reckon I could do 80% of the "Audio Generator" sounds from their earlier albums with one of these, no problem. And I do :-) Dik Mik would have got through dozens of these.One final word of caution, the original Mk1 was designed to be modified, so various connection points were clearly labelled on the PCB so the schematics were made freely available along with dozens of web sites showing various hacks. Unfortunately although the PCB is marked with as before the schematic was not released so hacking is a bit more of a jump int the unknown.Do I like it? Yes I have three, along with a modest collection of full sized synthesizers. This wont replace them, but then you can't easily play a Juno-106 sitting on the toilet. :-)

very basic but get some low end noise out of it get what u pay for

Pleased with this.

I bought one of these and was so impressed I bought another!Terrific analogue synthesizer, totally usable in a very creative way,runs forever on batteries with loads of sound variations ranging fromsoft sweet delicate stuff to crazy spacey sounds. The longer you playwith these the more sounds you discover. Feed it direct into yourmixing desk,or plug it into an amp and people won't believe whatinstrument you used-Absolutely recommended!!!

Horrible noise, hard to get anything useful out of it and badly documented (unless you read Japanese of course ;-)