E-mu Vintage Keys

Price Paid: US $395.00

Ease of Use: 9
Presets groupings are logically laid out. Some sounds are pretty good, some not so good. I find that editing presets is the key here as is other E-MU products. That is easy to do, as E-MU has a simple and intuitive edit menu, the easiest I have experienced.

Features: 7
I should clarify that this unit is the Vintage Keys Pro =keyboard= that I am rating. Some here seem to be rating the module. The keyboard version has 64 voices, while the new module has 128 voices. Built in effects are good enough for me in live situations. It can be expanded with sound cards that add just about any sound from any keyboard you would want. Keyboard is of good quality and velocity/pressure sensitive.

Expressiveness/Sounds: 5
Here is where I was disappointed and sold my unit. As a former mellotron owner, I wanted to have "that sound" again. I was using an E-MU Classic Keys module from the nineties and found the mellotron wonderfully reproduced in the =Classic Keys= module. I excitedly bought this new keyboard unit, thinking that it would sound even better, plus it was fully self-contained and easily set up. While the 'tron choir and flutes were very good, the violins came up short. It sounds like a synth =trying= to sound like a mellotron. It works okay for the Genesis "foxtrot" sound, but sounds too "clean". It also sounded too "phase-shifted". Thankfully, my friend who bought my Classic Keys module sold it back to me and I sold the Vintage keys keyboard. If you want mellotron, get the older "Classic Keys" module. Nothing else, short of a high-end sampler and "Mike Pinder Presents Mellotron" sample CD, measures up.

It does have a nice distorted tone-wheel organ as well as some nice Rhodes/Whurlitzers. Clavs are good too. My other disappointment is that too many of the samples are minor variations of each other. This is particularly true of the organs. I suppose this was done so one would feel compelled to buy the "Definitive B3" plug-in wave card. The older "Classic Keys" module has much better B3 samples. It does have a good selection of vintage synth sounds.

Reliability: 10
It seems well made. I would not feel a need for a backup.

Customer Support: N/A
Don't know about support. Only kept it for a few months.

Overall Rating: 5
I would not buy it again as the main reason I got it (mellotron strings) did not measure up to the real thing. I have to wonder about the glowing reviews here about the mellotron samples and if any of these folks got to play the real thing? If your a Moody Blues "Pinderhead" like me, it doesn't even come close. The older "Classic Keys" 'tron is right on.
Much better organs as well.

Submitted by Garry Byrne at 03/28/2005 11:39

Price Paid: US $250 used

Ease of Use: 8
Newer software with Pro-Patch disc. Don't know about the editing. I'm using all the pre-programmed patches that the previous owner set up.

Features: 8
32-note polyphony, lots of built-in effects. Mine has been expanded to include some of the Vintage Keys Pro patches. My controller is ancient and does nothing really but hold down a note.

Expressiveness/Sounds: 8
As others have said, some of the sounds are good and some not so good. I'm really really really impressed with the Mellotron and Chamberlain samples (the main reason I bought this box.) The synth tones are believable, though I'm no expert. I couldn't tell you if the MemoryMoog actually SOUNDS like a realy MemoryMoog. The organ tones aren't bad, especially the Vox tones. I could do without the guitar and bass guitar samples. The piano and Wurlitzer tones aren't bad, just not for me. And the Fender Rhodes samples are laughable.

Onboard effects are nice, at least what little bit I've used. Mainly delay and reverb.

Reliability: 7
I'm not really a keyboard player, I'm a drummer. The band I'm in right now has started to dabble in keyboards, and the keyboard parts are minimal. That said, using this box in the studio I've noticed the usual MIDI glitches popping up from time to time. But I'd say it's fairly reliable.

Customer Support: N/A

Overall Rating: 9
I've been very impressed with this box. Has all the classic sounds I want, decent patches and I'm so completely in love with the Mellotron samples. I'd buy it again all over for the Mellotron samples.

Submitted by Kelly Minnis at 04/19/2004 20:17

Price Paid: N/A

Ease of Use: 10
Easy to scroll with da big knob.

Features: 9
Features are OK, although the default patch volumes vary from setting to setting (but thats why there are user programable volume settings). It would have been nice not to READJUST most of them to be consistent with other patch volumes. But ... I bought it for the sounds, not the (correctable) volume differences between each patch.

Expressiveness/Sounds: 10
CP-70 pianos are not bad (for those who really know what a CP-70 sounds/sounded like - it brings back memories). Acoustic piano patches are a little on the thin side (unless layered with strings or something readily available within the same module). I'm not complaining. I give it a "10" since I don't believe anyone bought this module for the acoustic piano sounds. Remember, it's not called "Vintage Piano" now ... is it? I like how the Rhodes is purposely tinny in the mid frequencies. You also get a decent Wurli & chorused Wurli sounds. Nice string Pads, soundtrack pads, portamento pads, and the killer Mellotron sound(s). The gamut of other vintage sounds will round out most requirements that a cover-playing keyboardist might need.

The B3 sounds are why I bought (and still keep) this module. The modulation/vibrato variations really give you a plethera of colours that other module modulation parameters really can't.

Two JUSTIFACATIONS FOR BUYING ONE:
1.) when I first bought the VKeys, I was in a hard rock (bar) band in the early 90's, and when it came time for that last (prolinged) note of the typical song, I noticed that the drummer would wait until my sustained-note B3 modulation would go from fast to a slow-grind ... before he ended the song. IF A "SEASONED AND PRO" DRUMMER LIKES TO WAIT FOR THE LONG SLOW B3 GRIND TO CYCLE A COUPLE OF TIMES & COMPLETE (and "grind") BEFORE "HE" ENDS THE TUNE ... well, the drummer must like the B3 modulation too. How many drummers do YOU know that follow the keyboards? And he wasn't the only drumer I caught doing this. Buy a Vintage Keys & find out! DON'T FORGET TO RUN IT IN STEREO to find out what kind of presence it gives you. Even some of the B3 modulation/grind settings pan/image in various "leslie" traditional sound configurations.

2.) Not only does the rock B3 sounds "cut" though in a live mix ... but this is the only keyboard module (that I know of) THAT BLENDS PERFECTLY WITH A LIVE DISTORTED GUITAR on stage. Blend & never clashes no matter how hard the envelope is pushed. The B3 & guitar really compliment each other in a live venue! Think niteo & glycerine. Gotten a lot of compliments from B3 players (sober and otherwise) that like the way it cuts though the mix. The VKeyz big bad-ass rock B3 sounds will still get an audience goin' ... and bring back some Progressive-rock B3 flashbacks for the others. If I had a choice to impless a "chick" with either driving a Corvette to the gig or crankin the B3 patches on the VKeys in a rock band - the VKeys will win out every time (that is IF you also got the talent & confidence to use your keybaord "chops"). and it's earier to insure ...

Reliability: 10
Never had any trouble ...

Customer Support: N/A

Overall Rating: 10

Submitted by keyz88 at 12/30/2003 20:07

Price Paid: N/A

Ease of Use: 10
Could not be any easier from one rack space and limited knobs (to keep costs down!) Midi,as with all EMU products, is as straight forward as it gets. A basic understanding of vintage style VCAs, VCFs, and ASDR is all that is needed to program or edit existing sounds.

Features: 8
As the others have stated, this unit is a raw box full of vintage samples. And again, built in effects would sure have been nice.
On the other hand, it is as quite a unit that has ever been on the market regarding an analog output.

Expressiveness/Sounds: 8
The pianos have poor response to velocity. However, velocity is not an issue with a mellotron or OBX. This unit should not be bought for pianos, but rather all the old analog synth waveforms. However, the rotor control via aftertouch on the Hammond/Leslie samples are very nice. IN addition, it is VERY easy to assign midi controller functions to the filters, release, etc.

Reliability: 10
So far, so good!

Customer Support: N/A

Overall Rating: 9
Would replace immediately if it was lost, damaged or stolen. It is a foundational component in my rack. IN fact, the combination of my Yamaha SY85 and Vintage Keys create the majority of my tone.

Submitted by David Edwards at 12/05/2002 17:27

Price Paid: N/A

Ease of Use: 10
I bought my module 10 years ago, it still has some indispensable sounds. In terms of integration with other midi gear, its a snap to use, would have been nice to have some programmable fx onboard, but the MIDI routing in/out and 3 sets of stereo outs pretty well work the way you would expect. Nothing fancy, but simple to use.

Features: N/A
Responds to midi controllers well, nothing unexpected there. Would be nice to be able to load your own samples, you're stuck with the ROM samples.

Expressiveness/Sounds: 9
I think the mellotron sounds, string, voice, and flute, are the absolute best i have used - it captures an element of 'the real thing' - nasal, whiny, and somewhat spooky. The Hammond organ patches are ok - very good representation of a particular style of hammond settings, and work very well live, but get the B4 (virtual synth) if you want a real sophisticated hammond sound. The moog, arp, and m12 samples are very nice as well, the fender rhodes is pretty good too (again, get the virtual synth equivalents for a better and more versatile sound). Since you're stuck with a limited amount of ROM, not every shade of every instrument is available - but a very good selection of samples nonetheless, and importantly, they cut through a mix very nicely and are more suitable for live performance - at one point i had a Morpheus module, also by EMU, and found that it would get buried in the mix if i used it onstage. I was a bit disappointed by the relatively wimpy wurlitzer and yamaha cp sounds. The drum samples are hardly usable. The clav sounds and horns arent all that great. The filters work great, have a very fat sound for being digital and all - the interface window is a bit clunky to get around but thats the early 90s for you. Would be nice to get a proper computer editing program for this module. There seems to be some tuning problems with the mellotron patches - different patch zones arent perfectly in tune with others. Nothing that cant be corrected with computer recording - and sometimes it makes it sound more authentic.

Reliability: 10
Never had a problem with mine, as reliable as anything i've ever used. For live playing this is important - the patches are also geared towards live playing, they'll sound a bit crude sometimes on a stereo but coming out of a PA and competing with a band, they make themselves heard.

Customer Support: N/A

Overall Rating: 9
The mellotron sounds make this a very useful module - i still use it for recording all the time for their authenticity. The fender rhodes sounds are pretty good too, remembering they are just samples. The hammond sounds are at least usable, nothing spectacular, same as the moogs, arps. Some nice pads as well. Bottom line - some hard to get sounds for studio work, and for live playing, very good for screaming organ, mellotron, punchy electric piano, thick pads.

Submitted by Anonymous at 09/09/2002 12:40

Price Paid: US $399

Ease of Use: 10
Could not be much easier to use! You can download the manual from their website if you need one. It is a great manual and you should certainly have one...it is very easy to read...a blessing.

Features: 10
It is a sure bet that most people won't be utilizing all the functionality of this unit. Sure beats buying all the individual antique keyboards. I've owned many of these machines including RMI, wurlitzer, fender rhodes, vox organ, farfisa etc etc. This is much sweeter than dealing with those...although I really like the styling of the vox organs. I'm looking for one....goes with my Danelectro

Expressiveness/Sounds: 10
Generally, the sounds are very good. There are a few clunkers, but what do you expect with so many sounds? Just ignore them and use the great ones. Lots of great Hammond sounds. Others complain about the inclusion of those, but frankly it is the sound I use this for the most. It is a classic.

Reliability: N/A
haven't had a problem

Customer Support: N/A
never called support

Overall Rating: 10
I would get another if it was lost...providing I could find one. I looked for one for a couple of years. I got one in the scratch n dent section of Musician's so-called Friend. They were horrible to deal with and in fact it was advertised as a vintage keys plus, but when it showed up it wasn't the plus model. They refused to make any sort of price adjustment or toss in the missing memory module...and they were very rude to boot. Quote: Yes I know you didn't get what was advertised, but it was still a good deal. Can you believe that? Anyway, after I got over the bitterness I was able to enjoy it fully.
And I think it was a good deal. I have bought a lot of musical and recording equipment since then...but not from Musician's Friend.

Submitted by Anonymous at 06/05/2001 21:39

Price Paid: N/A

Ease of Use: 9
Not many buttons or wheels to access the menu,but this doesn't seem to be a problem. The edit functions are very easy to use and to setup.

Features: 8
No sequencer, no loops but just a straight forward synth module with excellent filters and modulation capabilities. Everything you need to program a good sound. The midi patching options are excellent and come in handy.

Expressiveness/Sounds: 10
No reverb or other effects, except maybe chorus and tremelo through some lfo programming. But this little rack sounds absolutely funky.
Use it in the studio and for giggs and it cuts through the mix when you need it and stays in the back when its necessary.Great Hammonds, lovely moogs, wurlitzers, dark pads. Could be better the 808 and rhodes sound. Don't solo with the acoustic piano but use it in a mix and it works very well. Don't want to mis it for the world.

Reliability: 10
Never let me down.

Customer Support: 6
Asked for extra sounds and emu sent me a disk full of sounds, unfortunately in atari format.

Overall Rating: 10
I would certainly buy it again. I've been playing it for 4 years now and still I get compliments from professional keyboardplayers for my authentic sounds. Love the sound quality and the variety of sounds.There are lots of analog emulators on the market (Nord, Roland Virus etc...) But not with the extra Hammond, wurlitzer or even piano sound.

Submitted by Peter Bressinck at 01/08/2001 06:25

Price Paid: US $800

Ease of Use: 10
This module is very easy to use as is all of Emu's rack modules.

Emu tends to be heavy on the Pianos and Organs and Clavs etc... I would have prefered more synthesizer patches and strings.

The manual is very easy to understand. I wish all manuals were as easy as Emu's manuals.

Features: 9
This is a 32 voice polyphonic rack unit that is 16 part multitimbral.

No built in effects, but an external effects unit can be plugged into the 6 outputs. There are several ways to plug in an FX processor. The outputs on the back can double as inputs when a cable is plugged into it halfway.

It can be expanded to have another 8 megs of samples. It comes stock with 8 megs.

It has extensive midi capabilities, it responds to velocity, aftertouch, pitch, modulation, etc.. it can also have controllers assigned to the filter and filter resonance etc.

There is a 6-pole and a 4-pole resonant filter. They tried to have a Mooglike filter and a Roland like filter, the filters are good but they are not comparable to Moog or Roland.

No sequencer. It is a very flexibly little box, many useful sounds can be programmed out of it.

Expressiveness/Sounds: 9
Where this module really shines I think is in its string sounds, FX and bass sounds. The string sounds it has are mellotron, prophet5, fairlight, etc... The Bass sounds are Moog, ARP, Prophet etc.. When I say it shines with the string sounds I mean it. There are some horns but they leave a little to be desired. In its keyboard section, there are many, many, many organs, and hammonds and electic pianos, etc.

There are also a ton of synth wavforms that can be used to construct sounds. There are saw, sine, square, and noise wavs from Moogs, ARPs, Sequential, and many others. I wish that the waveforms were not filtered and were a little more raw. They went through the trouble of sampling a ton of vintage synthesizers and they left the filters on. I guess this could be either good or bad, because the filter makes the synth in some cases.

The sounds on it are ok but not great, it kinda ticked me off that Emu put so many damn organs and hammonds and junk like that in here, especially after I spent so much cash on it. Maybe I was expecting to get more minimoog, prophet5, tb-303, tr-808 and 909 sounds in this box, and I expected it to sound like the real thing, not happening.

Let me get one thing straight, this is a ROMpler in every respect. Although there is an ADSR, LFO(random, saw, square and triangle), and a multimode filter the sounds are not generated by the oscillator, they are simply played back through the filter.

This unit is good at making sounds on it's own but it is not an analog emulation in any way. Emu kinda marketed it to be an analog emulation and they fooled me...

Even though some of the sounds suck, there is quite a lot of stuff in there that can be editied and some very unique and interesting sounds can be created. I would say there are more useful sounds than sucky ones. The ones that suck the most are those lame Hammonds and Organs and junk like that... did I say that already? ;-)

Reliability: 10
This thing is rock solid, I bet I could drop it out a second story window and it would still work.

This is a safe unit to gig without a backup, and I wouldn't say this about any synth either.

Customer Support: 10
I hate customer support so I never even bother trying to call. I hate sitting there waiting and listening to elevator music, while the "rep" is probabbly sitting on the other end of the line surfing the net or picking their nose or eating a bagel or something. >:-P

Since I haven't needed to call them I guess that means they built a good synth and made a good manual. So I will give them a 10.

Overall Rating: 9
The sounds are not that bad if they are taken out of context, this is not an analog emulation, this is a ROMulation heh. I don't think I would buy this again because I've had it for 5 years and I'm tired of it's sounds. It had some impressive sounds but it just didn't have staying power for me.

This unit is used quite a bit in Techno and Industrial music, it's used by Meat Beat Manifesto's Jack Dangers for instance and it's used by Bigod 20 on the song "Swallow me". I'm sure there are a ton of others I'm not listing but to make a long story short if you listen to one of these Vintage Keys and it sounds good to you, go for it, if not, get something like a Korg X5, Roland XP-30 or a Yamaha CS1X.

Submitted by pawL stevenZ at 11/10/1999 07:25

Price Paid: N/A

Features: 9
There have been a lot of questions regarding the differences between the CK and the VK modules. Here is a summary of both from Daniel Means (from their spec sheets.)
VK has portamento, an alternate volume envelop, and filters (one per voice). The CK does not have these features.
VK has 18 bit samples and 8 megs of memory (16 megs in VK+). The CK has 16 bit sampling and 8egs of memory.
CK has 2 banks of effects including delays, reverbs, chorus, flanger, phaser, fuzzes, and ring modulation. VK/VK+ has only chorus.
VK has 384 presets, CK has 4 banks of 128 presets, 2 banks of which are overwritable. The VK+ has 512 presets, 256 of which are overwritable.
VK/VK+ has 3 pairs of stereo outs, 2 of which serve as sub-outs that can be summed at the main outputs. The CK has only one pair of stereo outputs. Therefore, no separate signal processing for different voices on the CK.

Submitted by Anonymous at 06/05/1997 10:49