This was my first synthesizer. My wife and I were working as a duo and I was getting tired of having only the acoustic guitar for accompaniment. At the time this was one of the few boards out there with a sampled piano sound and it did the job for us. I wrote many sequences on this board. I later augmented the setup with an Alesis HR-16 drum machine. We did tons of gigs with this board. I still have it in my attic.
Just got mine as a gift from a friend today. The synth belonged to my friend's dad who were the first guy to start a guitar workshop in South Africa and was great friends of Paul Reed Smith. Although he was a guitar guy, he loved this synth.
My first synth. Hated selling it. What's more...it was the best Midi controller I ever had; simply used an 8 channel patch bay on Midi Out and I could select all my rack synths from one menu screen on the SQ80. Had great keybed, too.
Great demo. I bought one of these for $50 from my high school in the late 90s & I'm still kicking myself for trading it for a cheap Pyle (of trash) microphone & crappy practice amplifier. Ugh. I was a stupid kid.
I'm afraid we've all made mistakes like that. I got a Juno 106 real cheap from the guitar player in my band and later sold it for I don't even remember how much (how little) and have regretted it ever since. But--having a TS-12 makes it hurt a little less! ;-)
I had a esq-1 and sq-80 even though the sq-80 was a step up from the esq-1 the sequencer was still very small and had to be careful with how many notes you laid down, the sequence of memory would disappear very quick and you wouldn't get much recording time but overall the sq80 was very easy to use and had some very unique sounds.. .
Probably the best graphics of any Ensoniq. Love the gray (instead of just black which is so common) and the red stripe against the gray. And the certain buttons having their own color. Just looks great and so classy, too. Should have stayed with this look. Beautiful wood side panels would have been even better--but you can always add those, I guess, haha...
It is also available now as a VST from Arturia. Great sounding, with the inclussion of effects. I know it does not smell the same as a real one. But comes close,
I had one. One of My best machines I made a mistake to sell it😢 Wrong decision Now btw the machines £ have 2 SD1 32notes expanded Cz1 tx802 s760 waldorf microwave proteus 2000 spd8 roland phantom expander digitech dsp 128 alesis sr 16 and midiverb iii Etc.......❤
SQ 80 is like a "next generation" of the ESQ-1. It might have been more logical if they had called it the ESQ-2, but Ensoniq was never very consistent or logical with their product naming.
4:30 Wow it has PolyAT as well? And such wonderful sounds. I previously knew very little about this machine... how much did it cost when it was released?
@@marklewis4024 I bought one like 2 days ago it's my first synthesizer how do I connect it. it's gonna take me years to learn this synth to it's full capabilities. Also this synth is kinda rare and underrated
@@chinossynthesizer705 you can use headphones, the line outs need to be connected to a mixer or amplifier. It’s actually a very straightforward synth, I can try to help you. It can play up to 8-9 multiple sounds simultaneously amongst the 8 dynamically assigned voices. So you could use the internal sequencer or use it as a MIDI sound module.
