The Crumar Performer Returns

US Original manufacturer releases physical modeling simulation of their vintage instrument 23/12/20

Crumar has released their first official virtual instrument: Performer. They tell us that Performer is a physical modeling simulation of the original vintage instrument.

Main features:

- Adjustable global and single note tuning.
- Fully polyphonic.
- Realistic control panel with sliders and buttons like the original.
- Accurate simulation of original circuitry.
- Selection for Rev.A and Rev.B filter.
- Selection for the "sustain modification".
- Built-in adjustable reverb and chorus effect.
- Simulation of pedals effect section including Graphic EQ, Phaser, Flanger and Analog Delay.
- On-screen help tips and readout values.
- Very low memory and CPU power needed.
- Easy MIDI-Learn feature.
- MIDI map import and export feature.
- Bank and program import and export feature.
- Compatible with Windows and OSX.

Here's a little bit of history in the company's own words...

It was back in 1979 when the italian company CRUMAR released the Performer. It was a 49 keys compact string machine with a brass section. The idea arrived after the success of the Multiman-S model (Orchestrator in USA). After few years, the company was enough smart to understand that the demand of musicians in 1979 was different and music was evolving differently in those days. Here came the CRUMAR Performer, a compact and more modern keyboard that seems perfect for the music of the upcoming '80a.

Performer uses the famous "TOS" configuration. This was a very common and practical way to achieve polyphony at that time: a high frequency clock drives a "top octave generator chip" which produces all the note frequencies for the top octave as a basic square waves. These square waves can be then be fed to frequency divider to produce a note an octave lower, then to another one to generate an octave below than that, and so on.

Performer used the Mostek MK50240N as a top octave synthesizer and used 12 TDA1008 as dividers to create a logical tonal grid according to which keys are being hit on the brass and 8' and 16' string mixes. From here there's an analog filter/envelope on the brass and EQ and analog delay section based on BBD chips for the string section. Performer had 2 hardware revisions during production years basically with these differences:

Rev.A - First instrument release.

Rev.B - Added an extra transpose switch and boards revision. The brass section was completely redesigned using chips from SSM company (Solid State Micro Technology for Music): one SSM2050 IC as envelope generator and one SSM2040 IC as 4-pole filter. SSM2040 is considered one of the best sounding filters for the way it can add harmonics to the original signal, for its resonance and small amounts of distortion when overdriven.

Brass sound is para-phonic.

After more than 40 years since the release of the CRUMAR Performer keyboard, and after one year of accurate and intensive research on the original instrument, sound, components and schematics and all its variants, we decided to offer the same playing experience with an accurate software, a faithful replica of the original hardware instrument.