This was an interesting one. I’d never heard of the Akai VX600 until a couple of weeks ago, so I came into it with absolutely no preconceptions. When I saw it, I assumed it was a sampler. It’s actually a synth and surprisingly, given it only has 37-keys, it’s a six-voice poly synth. Perhaps most unexpected is the fact that it’s analogue. So with the surprises out of the way, I fired it up and discovered you have to run a computer controlled calibration and let it warm up. It’s actually quite reminiscent of the Oberheim Xpander in terms of workflow and quirks. You have two oscillators per voice with various combinable waveshapes, three envelopes, two filters, two LFOs per voice. It’s velocity sensitive and has aftertouch and midi. It’s also multitimbral and you can load different sounds for each voice (as you can on the Xpander). There’s even a multi-pin connection to get all the voices separately and a whole setup dedicated for use with a wind controller. It’s quite an oddball!