Siel Midi Expander- Owned from October 2001 (I think)-present, came with DK 600.

This ugly thing is just a slightly modified DK 600 voice board and CPU board in a case that's too big for rack-mounting (because of the size of the boards). It's not programmable except from a DK 600.

It has the same battery leak problem as the DK 600 but fortunately it still works. I played around with it for a while and the sounds are very nice- warm, lush, and full. But now I've disconnected the CPU board to clean it up. I was going to put a new battery in but I haven't gotten around to it. If you have a Midi Expander or other Siel synth with a NiCd battery, replace it before it leaks and corrodes the CPU board!

(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: Yes, it was mailed to me in a funky green suitcase.


sounds: Before I pulled the battery out I recorded short demos of a few of the patches.
expander-1- nice warm bass tone
expander-2- nice self-oscillating filter sound

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

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