Akai S612 Sampler with Front Panel Animator (MIDI) Mod with MD280

S612
Incredible vintage 2U rack sampler. think this was the first widely commercial available sampler? Incredible 12-bit, 4-32Khz sound (discrete 8-voice polyphonic, each with their own variable sample rate DAC(!)). Hands on control with sample start and end sliders. Paraphonic analog filter.

recently overhauled: full inspection by tech, all controls cleaned, power supply transistors replaced (apparently notorious for blowing and breaking the whole unit), chassis cleaned. in great condition

installed. I'll quote the creator on this:
Quote: The venerable S612 sampler was designed by David Cockerell in the early 1980s as one of the first "affordable" studio samplers on the market. Completely crushed in terms of specification by today's standards with its 1 second sample memory in max sample rate and ultra basic MIDI implementation the 612 still has a following. This is in part because it is remarkably simply to use and has a peculiar manual splicing control permitting the start and end points to be moved and even reversed in real time.

This feature is very cool but what it has always cried out for is some means of animating the controls in real time. The FPA board allows just this - under the control of 5 MIDI CC channels its able to control the Sample Start, End, Filter Cutoff and Vibrato Controls from a sequencer all in warm scratchy 12-bit audio with surprisingly fast MIDI response.

This opens a whole new creative path on this old beast resulting in weird glitchy loops, reversed effects and general chaos..

MD280
The disk drive add-on for the s612. Save and load your 2-second samples onto each side of a venerable Mitsumi quick-disk (the betamax of floppy disks).

Condition: tested and functioning well. cosmetically a few scuffs to paintwork. spring has gone in disk drive - if you close it without a disk in, you have to press eject and lift (it should spring open). Strangely enough, it will still spring open if you have a disk in. The disks themselves are in variable condition (some perfect, some corrupted with demonic sounding digital grime).