Owner: Chris Jones

The Max is a 6-voice, multi-timbral analog synthesizer with a 4-octave, 49-note (C-C) keyboard. It was designed to be attached to a Commodore 64 computer (one of the more music-oriented personal computers of the time). Owing much of its design to the Six-Trak, the Max lacks pitch and modulation wheels as well as the Six-Trak's "stack" mode which allow you to stack all six multi-timbral voices for a very complex monophonic sound. It has an onboard sequencer, which has a 500 note maximum. The sequencer features real-time recording (although it has no click-track), looping, and once you assign it to a voice, it will play independent of the rest of the keyboard. Once you shut the Max off, your sequence is lost unless you back it up via MIDI dump. However, when you turn it back on, you can choose from two demo sequences permanently stored in the Max's memory. The Max's MIDI implementation is pretty good for its time. It can send and receive on any MIDI channel and features Mono mode, MIDI program and sequence dumping, and switches to enable it to receive program changes and external wheel receive. However, it does not have a MIDI Thru jack.

On the front panel is a single keypad, a single volume knob, buttons for transpose and tune, and 16 buttons used to operate the sequencer. Programming is accomplished using proprietary software for the Commodore 64 personal computer. The Max can also be programmed using the Six-Trak keyboard or the Prophet-T8. The back panel features a power switch, a power-in jack (8V AC), two 1/4" jacks for stereo out, MIDI IN and OUT jacks, two 1/4" audio output jacks, and a Stereo 1/4" main output jack, which doubles as a headphone out.

[from The A-Z of Analogue Synthesizers, by Peter Forrest, published by Susurreal Publishing, Devon, England, copyright 1994 Peter Forrest]