Despite sporting Yamaha's famous, analogue 'CS' series prefix, it would evolve into the biggest and best DX of them all. It featured nine programming sliders and an intriguing flip‑up panel to the right of its enormous control surface but, in all other respects, this huge, six–octave keyboard looked identical to the instrument it would eventually become. In the International Musician & Recording World Electronic Musical Instrument Guide 1983/4, there's a picture of an otherwise unknown synth. I know of only one mention of it to appear in print. Appearing a year before the launch of the first DX7 (covered last month), the prototype I mention was nonetheless a true 'DX', with all the functions and attributes we now associate with this famous family of synthesizers. ![]() ![]() In the first part of this history of FM synthesis, last issue, I mentioned that 1982 saw Yamaha demonstrating a prototype keyboard with "six‑operator equation generators" that you could edit. In the second instalment of this two‑part retro, Gordon Reid recalls FM's finest hour, and describes the heyday of what was perhaps the most successful family of synthesizers ever developed.
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