Admittedly, we admire Tom Carpenter. At what seems like monthly intervals, he delights the fan community with outstanding new devices. As a vintage connoisseur, he can draw on a wealth of experience and impressions of the “best of the best” synthesisers and thus offer corresponding concepts in the form of new instruments.
Alongside the COLOSSUS, the MAXIMUS AS300 is currently the most influential example. Put simply, it is an EIGHT VOICE synthesiser with DELAY and SEQUENCER per (!) voice, plus a separate mixer/performance unit and an optional AS400 keyboard. The AS400 – featuring 61 keys, velocity and aftertouch as well as pad touch controller – is specially built for the AS300 and has its own interface (which is ‘not’ MIDI).
The MAXIMUS AS300 and AS400 keyboard make for a monster that is priced in the region of 30,000 Euros. But size and price are only the raw key data. The musical flexibility that can be achieved with the MAXIMUS is astonishing – a flexibility that goes far beyond the classic EIGHT VOICE and is described in detail in the following YouTube video …
In any case, the MAXIMUS is one of those rare analogue synthesizers that actually gives the musician complete tonal freedom “per” voice. The fact that each voice can be played / controlled separately LIVE, with its own SEQUENCER or via CV/GATE, makes the AS300 one of the most dangerous synthesisers in history …
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