Is MPE the future? Or is it the Quadrophonic Sound of our era?

Yes, Midi Mode 4… I remember it well. In the late 80’s I configured a SynthAxe sending six separate channels to a Casio VZ10m to ‘bend’ strings by reading the pressure from the key trigger assembly (not the 2 x sets of strings) and to raise the selected ‘string’ up a programmed semitone or a tone. It was the very first instrument I ever found to allow realistic pedal steel-type bends within a chord.

Do you still have that SynthAxe?

I know they were madly expensive at the time I wonder what they would be worth now?

Unfortunately no … I stupidly sold it to buy a Yamaha AE1200 jazz geetar and a second-hand car. I do have five Ztars though :slight_smile: which kind of makes up for it and much more. I had the full system with floor controller and the desktop controller. (£16K ) I got the system from Mike Dixon, one of the designers, in stages, and started with the controller, and then added the floorboard and then the desktop and cabling when he sourced them and I could afford them.
It was a great instrument, but vastly over-engineered.
The key triggers should have been made like Hammond keys, and effortless to play. Instead, you had to smash your fingers down onto them, and vamping soon left you with a severely aching wrist. But the keytriggers and the diagonally split frets were great, and should have made it to other geetar synths.
But a huge disadvantage was that an instrument with 12 x ‘10’ guage strings on doesn’t work for me or really feel like a guitar at all…

The Ztar does have keytrigs on some models, but they are rubber bars, and not at all like piano or Hammond keys… Right hand strings were also very difficult to play and shredded your fingers if playing without a pick. Apart from the keytriggers, it did nothing really that Jam Origin and a decent guitar can’t do now (admittedly 30 years later). The original prototype was made from a Yamaha CS80 which fell down a liftshaft.!

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