This weeks Synth Saturday is a treat for all you K-On fans out there. It is the Korg Triton Extreme. If you watch the anime K-On then you will recognize the Triton Extreme as the synth that Tsumugi plays. Now some people don’t consider instruments like the Triton a synthesizer but call them electronic keyboards, because you can not manipulate, oscillators, filters or envelope generators to create sound, but uses preprogramed samples. But, for me if it doesn’t hit or pluck a string to create sound it’s a synth. The Extreme was released in 2005 and was the top (and last) of the Triton line and is now no longer in production. So if you want to get one you’ll have to hit eBay where they are going for $1000-15000.
Available in a 61, 76, and 88 key models the Extreme is a 120 voice Polyphonic synth, and with 160MB of waveform memory you can almost be the whole orchestra yourself. Other synths in the Triton series has expansion slots for adding more sound samples but the Extreme came pre-installed with almost the entire library. A unique feature of the Extreme was the addition of the 12AU7 “Russian Bullet” vacuum tube which you can see lighting up during the OP of K-On. The tube is not really creating the light as the valve is not being driven that hard, the light comes from a LED place in line with the tube. The tube could be used as either an insert or master effect, or simply by itself to allow for warmer, guitar amp-like sounds and for more extreme analog overdriven/distorted effects. For a full review of the Extreme there is a good write up over at Sound on Sound
.
Now durning the ED of K-On Tsumugi is playing what I would call a keyboad, a white Korg DX-100 Keytar. It was also avaible in black and red. The DX-100 a keyboard because, it can not make sounds on its own, it is just a MIDI device use to control something else like the Triton Extreme. The DX-100 is also no longer in production, I don’t think anybody is making keytars nowadays, and I haven’t see any up on eBay.
