Akai VX600

A six-voice analog matrix synthesizer built around a wind controller, with a battery that will eventually fail.

Overview

The VX600 makes sense once you know who Akai expected to buy it. It is a programmable matrix synthesizer with six voices, 2VCO per voice, so twelve oscillators in total. The 37-key C-to-C keyboard has both key velocity and aftertouch. What sets it apart from the other mid-1980s polysynths is the back panel: dedicated control terminals for Akai's own Electric Wind Instrument (EWI1000) and Electric Valve Instrument (EVI1000), plus two external input lines. Akai's own documentation describes the VX600 as "a multifunction synthesizer which has special controller terminals" for those instruments. That tells you where the design priority sat. It was built to be the brain and sound source for Akai's breath-controller line, and a capable standalone instrument in the bargain.

The synthesis engine is a classic subtractive signal path. Two VCO groups plus a noise source feed VCF, VCA, and AMP stages, modulated by a pair of LFOs and three envelope generators per voice. That's a serious modulation complement for the era, and it rewards programming more than preset-surfing. The manual's calibration routine walks the user through a built-in automatic calibration of VCO tune, pulse width, VCF cutoff frequency, and VCF resonance. This is real analog circuitry, and it drifts and needs periodic attention. Akai advises letting the unit warm up before calibration and says to recalibrate as necessary.

The interface is what stands out in daily use. Akai fitted a 40-character by 8-line liquid crystal graphic display and a row of soft keys, which was an ambitious choice for a synth of this type. The display handles tone names, library organization, and parameter editing, and the soft keys change function depending on the mode. A single CONTROL knob handles value entry, menu scrolling, and character input for naming tones, libraries, and packets. It's menu-driven rather than knob-per-function, so how much you like it depends on how you feel about programming through a small screen. The payoff is storage: a library of 50 tones, program memory holding 40 selected tones with note ranges and voice assignment, and ten "packets" that each hold 20 programs in sequence. There's also room for up to 20 polyphony chord patterns - unison, harmony, octave, dissonant - each assignable to an arbitrary key.

The wind-controller integration goes past a bullet point. A VIBRATE knob adjusts vibrato and tremolo when using the EWI/EVI, and a BEND ADJUST/WIDTH section has separate knobs for bend controller sensitivity and bend width. The two EXT IN terminals let an external source, a digital sampler for instance, run through the VX600 so its tone and volume can be processed by the synth's filters and amplifiers. Akai's literature says the VX600 can serve as a specialized source for the EWI1000 and EVI1000, and also as an external source for MIDI keyboard samplers, synthesizers, master keyboards, and digital sequencers. MIDI in and out are both present, and the unit supports up to six simultaneous multi-timbral sounds.

Data storage runs through Akai's BR-16 memory card, and it isn't optional in any practical sense. The manual is blunt: only the separately sold BR-16 can be used, and the unit will not operate properly with any other card due to potential connector mismatches. Buyers chasing one on the used market need to know that. More urgent after thirty-odd years, the VX600 relies on a built-in lithium battery to back up programming data. Akai rated that battery for approximately three years of service. When it dies, the memory contents are erased, and the manual tells owners to save anything valuable to a memory card before having a dealer or Akai service station replace the battery. On a machine this old, that battery is almost certainly dead or dying. A VX600 with no BR-16 card and a flat battery forgets everything the moment you switch it off.

The VX600 shows up in period coverage mostly in passing, not in dedicated reviews. A live-performance equipment listing in EQ Magazine (June 1993, p.86) names an "Akai VX600 analog" among the keyboards used by the duo Rhythm Method, alongside a Kawai K-1 rack, a pair of Yamaha TX81Zs, a pair of Roland D110s, a Juno 106, and a Casio. That's a working techno/progressive dance rig where the VX600 was pulling analog duty in a mostly digital setup. It confirms the VX600 was still in live rigs well into the 1990s. Beyond that, the period press seems to have treated it as a niche instrument tied to Akai's wind synth line rather than a headline polysynth.

Akai's service documentation opens with a caution: before servicing, save all program data to an IC memory card to protect the customer's programs. The VX600 was designed to accumulate user-created sound data, and the service procedure treats that data as worth preserving. The same caution applies to a modern buyer before plugging the thing in. If there's a BR-16 card with the unit, it's the most valuable part of the package.

The VX600 is a programmer's instrument with a small screen, a deep modulation section, a proprietary storage format, and a battery that needs replacing before you trust it with anything. In return it offers breath controller integration, external audio processing, and six-voice multitimbral analog, which few contemporaries matched. Anyone expecting a knob-per-function panel, or a machine that works out of the box after three decades in storage, is going to have a project on their hands.