Super Rare SIEL DK-700

A super rare DK-700, the Siel flagship synthesizer released in 1986. The machine has been recently serviced by a professional technician and actually looks and sounds great. Fast shipping and professional packaging guaranteed.

The DK-700

Released in 1986, the DK-700 is the best and last synthesizer produced by the Italian SIEL right before the joint-venture with Roland Corporation and its subsequent turning into Roland Europe. The DK-700 has been on the market for less than one year so only few hundreds units were sold and this inspiring synthesizer never received the love it actually deserved.

The SIEL's flagship synthesizer is characterized by a big front panel plenty of parameters info and stripped of everything but a handful of buttons and knobs. This design philosophy, also implemented in Crumar Bit synthesizers, had both marketing and functional reasons. The lack of knobs gave it a then-modern (digital) look while allowed to easily make all the synth parameters accessible and controllable via MIDI SysEx.

But its minimalistic design hid an unusually powerful synthesis engine. Totally based on SSM analog integrated circuits, the DK-700 is a six voice polyphonic synthesizer where each voice features 2 digitally controlled oscillators with analog waveforms, a 4-pole resonant analog filter, an analog envelope generator assignable to VCA and/or VCF and 4 modulators (3 LFO + 1 S&H) providing parallel modulations of pitches, pulse widths and filters.

The magic of this marvelous machine actually lies in its unusual modulation capabilities. Instead of the classic attack/intro time, the 3 parallel LFOs of the DK-700 implement an initial level and a fully dedicated ADSR envelope. This unique feature, together with the special pseudo-chorus effect obtained by modulating the PW, allows to create spectacular pad sounds that put many better-known instruments to shame. And these features, in addition to the advanced Master Keyboard mode, make the DK-700 a completely different beast compared to its predecessors Opera 6/DK-600.

The DK-700 is a very inspiring machine with a massive, bold sound. It can generate a wide variety of sounds ranging from huge resonant sweeps to incredibly thick brasses, classic analog basses, stabs and organs but it does its best when pushed in the pad arena where it can easily produce dark deep drones, ethereal pads and complex space sounds.

Specifications

• 6 voices polyphony
• Velocity sensitive keyboard
• 73 User Patches
• Master Keyboard Mode with advanced MIDI features
• Oscillators : 2 DCOs per voice with analog waveforms
• Oscillators : 3 Waveforms (Saw - Pulse - Saw+Pulse)
• Oscillators : Octave - PW - Tuning - Volume
• VCF : one 4-pole resonant analog filter per voice
• VCF : Cutoff - Resonance - Keyboard Tracking - EG Level
• ADSR : one Envelope Generator per voice
• ADSR : ADSR to VCF / VCA / VCF+VCA
• ADSR : Velocity to ADSR / Attack / Attack+ADSR
• 4 Modulators : 3 LFO + 1 S&H
• LFO 1/2 : Freq - Final Level - Initial Level - ADSR
• LFO 1/2 : LFO to DCO A / DCO B / DCO A+B
• LFO 3 : Freq - Final Level - Initial Level - ADSR
• LFO 3 : LFO to VCF / PW DCO A / PW DCO B / PW DCO A+B
• LFO 3 : Waveform Saw - Pulse - Saw+Pulse
• S&H : Freq - Depth - S&H to VCF / DCO B / VCF+DCO B