Siel DK 600- Owned from October 2001 (I think)-present, bought for $150 with Expander

It seems to me that the Siel DK 600 is one of the best deals in the synth world where most analogs are unreasonably expensive- 6 voices of polysynth with SSM chips for filters, envelopes, and VCAs. It has a nice voice architecture with 2 oscillators per voice, one ADSR envelope, 3 LFOs, and velocity sensitivity (velocity can be routed to envelope amount or attack time). There are even a few more unexpected extras, like the ability to use both oscillator waveforms at once. The problem is the poor build quality and unreliability. It looks great, nice gray casing with blue silk-screening on it, but everything is cheaply built and prone to breaking.

As far as I can tell the entire signal path is analog- the oscillators are digitally clocked but the waveform generators, etc. and even LFOs and envelopes all appear to be analog. The filters are SSM 2044s which sound great.

But what's gotten this synth (and all Siels) a bad reputation is its reliability record. The power supplies often die. On mine the pitch wheel potentiometer was shorted out so that it instantly blew the fuse when turned on. After that happened it was stored by the previous owner for about 7 years. And during that time the NiCd battery on the CPU board leaked its electrolyte, Polysix style, and corroded the button-scanning circuits. So mine sort of works now. It turns on and makes sound but none of the buttons work, which limits the sound creating capabilities considerably. If you have a DK 600 or other Siel with a NiCd battery, replace it before it does too much damage.

(Also one interesting thing to note is that the manual is just a stack of form-fed paper from a dot matrix printer, with the feed strips still attatched. Very professional!)

pictures: I just have one of the circuit board corrosion.


sounds:
DK600- Just a short demo to prove that it works- Until I get fix it oscillator 2 is muted and oscillator 1 is stuck with a sawtooth wave, but the filter still sounds nice.

links:
Sander Meyer has made a nice page with information on various Siel models here: Siel Synthesizers Website

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