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The last time I saw one of these was when I was meant to perform on it in the school band in about 1994 (It belonged to the school music teacher). In the end I played the Yamaha SY55 - also the school's - which I always used (I think it became an extension of my own body back then!), but I did get to have a quick go on this enormous and very impressive synthesizer.
This is the reason why in the end I got a DX7. I was really trying to find a DX5 but they are really rare now and the next closest thing was the orignal Mark One DX7. I've seen that the DX5 is like having two DX7 synths in a single cabinet so this one surely diserves 10 out of 5 because the DX7 scores 5 for also being a truly fantastic machine!
I was surprised, however, that the synth on it's own was fairly light for its very large size (I ended up with the job of carrying it off stage at the end of the performance!) It was a great synthesizer built the old fashioned way that I have always thought looked cool. I think the end panels were dark brown painted chipboard and then whole panel was a huge sheet of painted brown steel like the DX7. The one I saw had some nasty chunks taken out of the end panels - would definitely benefit from replacement panels made of hardwood.
In comparison with the DX7, However, the'5 has a larger LCD display and there are more controls on it, which are actual buttons rather than the '7's flat flush membrane controls. The DX5 also sports four slider controls rather than the DX7's two, but I am not sure what these extra ones are for. Some would argue that this is much better but I think that both systems are equally as good. (If the membrane switches were bad they wouldn't have lasted this long).
The sound that happened to be active at the time was some sort of synth brass sound. Although I never got to actually play the synth, I was standing directly next to the person who did play it, and therefore I could tell the sound. It was huge! I really loved it. I would never have known at the time though that it was 12 operators of FM synthesis!! The DX5 sounded bigger than the DX7 because it made use of two sounds at once, and could also load two sounds at once because it had two ROM slots. This thing must have cost a bomb!
What a great synth - shame they don't make them like this any more. I envy anyone who still has one of these. I found some good photos of it on the web and felt really rather jealous of the owner!
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