Generalmusic Equinox Pro 88

The faders used to editing are good, You can save a lot of time with them, but the display are too small, maybe a editor software could solve this problem, but I've never found one. Editing through the display is too slow, I don't know what happens, maybe a too slow processor, but the keyboard needs to process every switch between the menus, and this makes all too slow.
The presets are not too bad, especially if you wish to work with some vintage sounds, like Deep Purple, Keith Emerson, Wakeman, etc.
The manual seems too simple for me, for beginers. You can find all things you need, except if you program the keyboard very much(like me). If you do this will you find some bugs on the OS.

I think 64 voice polyphony is the minimum for a good keyboard, but in this case 128 will be better, cause you can work with 32 midi channels. I use many sounds simultaneously in perform + sequencer mode, and this makes the polyphony small.
The effects seems good, You can edit practicaly everything. It could be better if they make an option to copy efects from single patches to performs, this could reduce the programing time for me a lot. or the possibility to link the effects from patches to the performs.
The sequencer are not great. better use some cakewalk and save as midi files and then just switch the patches on equinox and re-save the file on internal HD.
as only expansion possibility you find one vocal processor and more ram memory (30 PIN, can you believe they use this old things?).
Has and interesting groove machine and sequencer, but I don't use it much, can't say much about them.
The hammond simulation are great, but you need to use it only on drawbar mode, if you try to save as perform you lose vibrato and other things more.
Is great as controller in perform mode, cause has 2 MIDI in, out and through and you can control many thins using the faders.
Sampler had saved me some times, cause some patches are not possibly to build on equinox, like vocal OHS, and I use this very much. but is better use some SCSI device and forget disks and SDS to send samples, too slow.

If you want to use grand piano, el. pianos, wurlitzers, rhodes, hammonds and vintage sounds are this keyboard OK, but if you search acoustic sounds forget it. the strings are bad, all they have some flanger, and is impossible to remove this.
Never use the presets, they have to much reverb, some have 3,6 seconds of reverb, I think this is TOO much. You need to program even the presets to make good sounds. The good thing is that the keyboard has 16 user banks for patches(but only 1 for performances). Drum sounds are bad.
The sensibility to velocity and aftertouch are OK, you can select 5 diferent sensibilities.

Its a good keyboard, especialy if you use it as controller and for pianos. Its to heavy, like 35Kg, cause of the keys, the 76 and 61 keys models are not so heavy, they are OK.
Its better use this keyboard and add some rack modules to make strings, voices, drums and sfx sounds.

In my city no one was capable to solve the problems I've found on the keyboard, I was trying for 1 Year until I was capable to solve the problems, but I did it alone. the guys from GEM on Italy answered all my mails and send the pieces for me for free, and offered to make a complete revision on the equinox in a short time too. all for free(cause I had the warranty). Its just hard to find someone capable to solve the problems if you are not on Italy. Make it yourself.

I play keys and piano for 6 years, on studio and on the road, and used a Roland XP-80(never will use another again), an Akai S2000 and a Kawai K5000W (the K5's are great, I'm now using the rack model and will never sell this piece of my keys set).
I am selling this keyboard, but only cause I am much time on the road, and the Equinox 88 Pro are too heavy and too great for me. buy it if you want a good keyboard like the 2500's and 2600's (from kurzweil) for a very good price(but make sure you use the Pro Kit on equinox). Equinox is well known as "the K2600 from the poor man".
I hate the bugs on OS, but you will find them only if you are a great keyboard programmer, if you simply change the effects and the rom sounds you'll never find a problem.
Its a little slow on programming and on sounds change, but not slow as the Trinity and Triton(do not know how the Triton Studio and Extreme works).

Using the latest operating version. Purchased new in 2001. This keyboard although touted to be a live performance keyboard is not. it is built for the studio or workstation. When I talk built for live performance, i think of the ensoniq VFX/TS series. If you've owned this series of gear, you'd know what i was talking about (patch selects, scrolling w/o choosing, line a sound up in the edit buffer and switching w/ a punch of a button, etc. Not totally intuitive at 1st, unless you've owned a Kurzweil before, but similiar to a Kurzweil. One push of a button and you are in hammond-mode. Effects someone difficult to understand unless you play around w/ it.

64 note polyphony, Fatar keyboard action, many effects, 16-meg of onboard samples, 8-meg of sample memory that is battery-backed, optionally an additional 32meg of DRAM (lose ram loaded sounds at powerdown or reboot. left/right outs and 2 additional dry outs, which i hate conceptually. Should be able to route effects through the additional outs, i.e. should be user choice to say yes/no to routing effects through aux. outs. To use the aux out, must be in performance mode, not sound mode (another negative). Reason, if you want to use a motion-sound and have a separate output for the motion sound, you are forced to use the aux outs. when converting the drawbar mode to a performance to do this, you lose vibrato/chorus because these options are built into the effects section. when routed to aux outs, you not only turn off the internal leslie but also vibrato/chorus. Big plus, when in drawbar mode it has the hammond sliders on the unit (like a K2600). partial minus, there are only 8 sliders, not 9 like a real hammond. You lose the 1 1/3 slider. There are ways around this to actually get all 9 but the ease of use becomes much more difficult. Can load additional Kurzweil/Akai and wav. samples into the machine and store this in the 8meg battery backed ram, or 32 dram. big minus, although you can load a large sample via various media (CD, computer, Jazz drive, etc. if you choose the floppy disk option, you're sample can't be any bigger than floppy storage capacity. Ensoniq TS/ASR allowed for splitting a sample up on several disks. Equinox doesn't allow this, therefore your options are to install a harddrive, or carry around a zipdrive or CD drive.

Drawbars sound pretty decent. Not the greatest hammond in the world but decent. Leslie simulation is very accurate to a 147 leslie. Big disadvantage: a 147 leslie "fast" speed is not that fast. Although the equinox allows for varied rampup/rampdown times, there is no variable control of the slow speed nor the fast speed. The fast speed is just too slow for me but there is no way of speeding it up. The leslie sim has sampled the drum speed correctly and the horn speed correctly. you can definitely hear the two in the sound. as far as accuracy, it is very accurate. I just don't like the fast speed. Solution? i bought a motion-sound pro 3T and not only do i now get the faster speeding leslie that i want, the motion-sound actually changed the color of the hammond tone so that the hammond "tone" now sounds much more authentic than when it uses the built in leslie simulator. don't know why, but it sounds 100% better.
Pro 88 comes w/ a hard drive that houses the pro 2's acoustic piano, rhodes, wurly, and clav. I have all of them loaded in the 8 meg of battery/backed ram. Acoustic grand is very good, the rhodes is very good, the wurly is average and the clav is OK. Since i play classic rock 70's music, i use the grand piano, rhodes, clav and hammond almost exclusively. This keyboard does a more than adequate job of sampling these instruments. hammond is hard to play w/ the 88 weighted fatar keyboard. i also own an equinox 76 version (unweighted) that i use exclusively for hammond (when gigging)and for practice because it weighs only 37 pounds. 76 key grand piano sucks; i'm still looking for a replacement. i was able to get the rhodes, wurly and clav from the 88 into the 2meg of ram but can't load the grand piano because: 1) doesn't fit in the 2meg of battery-backed ram and 2) the sample won't fit on one floppy disk. for what i use it for, piano, elec piano and hammond, it sounds very good. rest of the sounds (strings, brass, synth, etc.) are average, not great. The user interface is very similiar to a Kurzweil K2600 and some people have called it the "poor man's" Kurzweil. 9's for the pianos and electromechanical samples, 6 for all other samples. since i use the piano and electromechanicals almost exclusively, it works nicely for me.
I've heard alot of complaints about the sequencer but i think these issues were addressed in the latest operating release. don't use it, so i don't really know...

for how i use it, it has never locked up on me and has never given me any trouble whatsoever. It is very heavy, about 55 pounds, due to the Fatar key action. i've gigged w/o back on this keyboard almost weekly for three years now w/o issue.
Metal case is built like a tank. i've also never dropped it!

forget it. if you are not from europe or you are not italian, you will be ignored. HOWEVER, there is one guy in the US that worked w/ the development team that is very knowledgeable. He knows all about the keyboard. if you contact peavey tech support in mississippi and ask for tech support, they will give you a number for GEM in Illinois. When you contact them and ask about the equinox, they will put you in touch w/ the guy who knows all. If you write him, expect an email back w/in 24 hours. Only because of him would i say that their support is very good. Otherwise w/o him i would say support is non-existent. I've pinged GEM in europe w/ email at least 10 times and have never even received an acknowledgement. Again, if it weren't for the one guy in the US, i'd give them a zero.

for what i use the keyboard for (classic rock applications), piano, rhodes, hammond, it works well. Keep in mind i'm using the pro2 piano, rhodes and clav. these samples come w/ the 2 gig hardrive on the 88 equinox and just have to be loaded once into the 8 meg memory. The onboard piano, rhodes and clav don't cut it.

To play the presets is easy (as on almost every instrument).
Making your own sounds is not too complicted either, given that you know a thing or two abaout synthesizers. It's possibly a bit complicated for a novice, but then everything worth using is. The OS is a bit strange, but once you get your head round it, it's great. Compared to other instruments with similar features (there aren't too many of them) it's quit ok.

64 voice polyphony, up to 4 effects simultanously, 88 fully weighted keys (i love the action, others don't, simply a matter of taste), built in hd, 8 MB non-volatile memory, mine is upgraded to additional 32 MB of volatile memory. about 1000 presets, memory for 2000 user-patches. There's nothing that can touch the features even today except the big Kurzweils (2600x ,2500x), but they are three times and more the price I paid.

The Pro Version(which I use) has some of the piano and e-piano patches of the pro-pianos by gem. I used too own one and I loved it. It was used by Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson, by the way.
Pianos-10
Orchestral sound-8
Synths-10 In this area the equinox shines. It may not be your cup of tea, because it sounds different then the usual synths, so be sure to test the sounds before you buy one.
Organ-This instrument has a dedicated drawbar-organ-mode where the sliders control the harmonics. I used to carry a organ-sim around, no need for that anymore.
IMPORTANT NOTE: some of the presets are quite good, some not that brilliant: If you don't plan to make your own sounds, don't buy this thing. That's the point where it starts to shine.

Physically built like a battleship. The OS is not the worlds most stable one. Be sure to install the latest version (11/2000). It takes care of most of the bugs.
I used it live and it never ever crashed on me. I only play performances and pre-loaded samples live, so I can't comment on the sequencers, arpegiators or grooves stability.

Never dealt with them. The website has not too much information but supplies the os-update,so too me it's ok.

If it were lost or stolen I would immediately repalce it. I bought it, because it was quite cheap. I was absolutely astonished when I checked it out. It has become my main piece of equipment. In fact I'm thinking of buying a second one an take only the two on stage(this time a 76 key version, simply for the fact that I like for some parts an unweighted keyboard better, cause it's faster).
I'm playing keyboards for 22 years by now and I have played almost everything during that time( excluded are the unreachables: Fairlight, Synclavier etc.): analog and digital Korgs (I still like the Trinity), analog and digital Rolands, Ensoniq, Kawai(or Teisco, my first synth was a SX-400 in '81), Moogs (Source and Prodigy), Clavia, Quasimidi, Yamaha, Siel. I used to carry a Rhodes, a Clavinet and a giant double-manual Crumar-Organ around, and I#m eternally grateful for miniaturisation.
I love the sound of analogue synths but you wouldn't catch me playing one on stage. Too much embarassing moments of spontanous detuning. Shoot me, kick me, give me animal names, nobody down in the crowd (except for musicians, of course, but who wants to be a musicians musician, apart from dream Theater?) cares for the gear, they care for the sound

Equinox Pro 88

64 note polyphony PLUS: the onboard sequencer memory is independent of the programs, meaning that you can play FAT CHORDS right along with your songs in playback mode without note cutting off or dropping out! AWESOME!!!

AWESOME! All programs can be layered and stacked - PLUS each program can be independent mixed, panned, and FX however you want! What other keyboard can do that??? None!

Sometimes there are freeze ups and lock ups. You have to reboot the keyboard. This is frustrating, however...I've never lost my data, songs or sounds during lock up. They auto-restore even after reboot.

Decent, but should be improved since this is an awesome board. I own several top of the line Korg and Roland units, the Equinox definitely is strong competition and beats up the others in many areas.

9. Outstanding keyboard. All pros should have one.

I'm using the latest software, which is late 2000 i think. Out of interest, Sound On Sound's review of this synth had two cons. One was the small LCD, the other was no stereo sample import. This new OS has stereo sample import. Nice :) Moving on... The presets.... the preset sounds vary greatly. They seemed to have put heaps of good ones in the middle of hundreds of terrible ones. As the synth has over 2000 user preset spaces (WOW, nothing else has this) i recomend copying out the 'good' sounds you like into this area, and not using the default banks. It's hard scrolling through heaps of bad to find those classic favorites you like. They have also implements a patch find feature, under the help button. Like Roland's, this lets you choose "bass" and go through all the bass sounds in the keyboard no mater where they are stores. Great stuff. Editing patches is easy, it's straight forward with good graphic feedback (nice graphic envelopes, multistage loopable with separate envelopes for on/off velocity etc etc) but i find it a little bit menu driven... i have an older GEM synth which had a screen twice as large, this is a step backwards, but then again there are MANY more options on the Equinox. The manual GREAT for things that it covers... meaning that there are some features which aren't in the manual at all. I will soon be starting up a very good website about this keyboard (the one existing site sucks) with turorials and info about the features not missing in the manual, plus the easy solution to some common complaints (you just have to know the way it wants you to do it ) I rate ease of use 8, because if you plug in and just play presets, it's dead easy. The instrument can be as hard or easy as you want really, although a little daunting at first. You can go really in depth though if you want, and although complex is easy considering what's capable. The manual is in a ring binder so updates can be inserted, and also holds your OS disks in pouches at the back. Nice and proffessional.

It has two midi in, two midi out, two midi through. It has two internal 16 part midi busses. The first is for real time play, so you can have 16 part real time performance. the second is 16 part sequencer. Yep, they are seperate. You also have FULLY assignable (with 16 user banks) faders and 8 fully assignable buttons, with a bank toggle so that you have 1-8 and 9-16 for each of the 16 presets... hope that makes sense. You can select if a fader or button affects midi out 1 or midi out 2 or sequencer or performance play. Not all. You can however make it affect multiple channeles. For example, one fade that controls the filter cutoff on all 16 real time play channels at once... Yum :) Faders can be prgramed in reverse 127 to 0, so they work backwards, or within a given range, ie 60-120 so the fader only works in that CC# range. If you don't know what i'm talking about, don't worry... it's just good and customisable to control other midi equipment.. saves you buying a Kenton Control freak etc. It has a very capable effects section, some effects better than others. You have two modes, 2+2 and 3 way. In 2+2, you have four effects, two for the sequencer and 2 for real time play. first bank is reverb, second is modulation effects, with HEAPS of options presets and customisations. You have send levels for each effect on each of the 32 midi channels. In 3 way, you get one reverb block and one modulation block as above, plus a Pro FX block. This is shared between the performance and sequencer, with individual sends. The Pro FX block contains some wicked effects... the piano damper model from the Gem Real Piano is here as is some Ring Modulation (!) and distortion, lofi and all sorts of things. Some are fantastic. If you get the optional audio proccessor board you can run external equipment though these effects, and i want this board. The ring modulator can be modulated from an internal ajustable occilator, or from the left channel, affecting the right, then making the right one stereo if that makes sense. All FX have many options, so you can gate them, ie if you play loud, the sound is not effected, but if you play quietly the effects turn on (great for weird stuff). Expansion wise the standard ones have SCSI option (for CDrom for sample import, or Zip drives for backup, does not work with external hard disks) up to 32mb of volatile 30pin memory (hard to find, needs 2x16mb) or 8mb battery backed sample ram (keeps contents on power down) also the volcal processing board which lets you run external sounds through the effects section, also has basic vocoder and real time 4 way harmony options... i haven't got this board yet so i don't know how good it is, stay tuned because i'm getting one and i'll keep you posted. I have all the other options though, including the 2 gig internal hard disk for storing samples and backups of the instrument. You have one 'block' loaded into memory at once. this has all your presets, settings, samples etc, all in subfolders. you can load a whole block off disk and have another 2000+ presets ready... it's great. far more flexible than the opposition. you can also copy folders of files within blocks between blocks. Haven't used the onboard sequencer much, but it's great in that it's separate to the rest of the keyboard so you can use both at once, and there is also a groove sequenver mode which can do all sorts of DJ midi looping type stuff which seems i have a feeling there is a way of getting a lot more out of than what it was intended... i feel it's possible to use it acid or motif style... i'll post details if i find out a way of doing this when i have time. Feature wise, it's very, very deep. there are nice touches, like two headphone sockets, and one switched pedal jack, and three assignable switched or proportional jacks, (feel like a pedal for cutoff, a pedal for volume, and a pedal for ressonace, and a sustain pedal all at once anyone? :)

As compared to current gear (Roland XV etc) the default sounds, mostly, are kinda bad. If you are after presets, don't go here. Get this keyboard as a controller, and get yourself an EMU Command Station and a Roland XV 5080 and a Triton Rack (in what ever order you preffer). What i can say in it's favor, is that it's one of the best boards ever for making your own sounds, but more importantly the presets sound DIFFERENT. they don't sound like everything else on the markey coping each other. Some have obvious glitches, some have FAR FAR FAR too much bass (ahh, but as if you can have enough :) and i find a lot of them a good source of inspiration and with programing the board can sound like the rest of the meat and three veg stuff on the market. I hated the sounds to start with, but i have a Roland JV series and Yamaha S80 series keyboard for the standard stuff, and i use this for making odd sounds. I will release better sounds for this keyboard because what is out on the net for it now does not do it justice. A lot of the rom waveforms aren't that good, which dosen't help. But atleast it can play samples. Bug me to make sounds for it, on ICQ at 7683760. I have the weighted 88 version, which is good now i'm used to it, but for most things you might be better off with the 76 key version. this goes for any keyboard. most weighted things don't have such a good velocity range. aftertouch is great, and i really love the feel now i'm used to it.

It's been mostly very stable, only locked up once and i use it ever single day. i've heard rumors about the sequncers being unstable, but i haven't used it that much. Bear in mind that some of these rumors i found out to be not true, the person didn't understand what was going on (ie, it shows one sound on the screen, and plays a different one, but they were looking at the synth half, not the sequencer half. It's VERY VERY heavy, so gig wise i'd get a yamaha S80... but i'd use this in my studio every time. Build quality seems fine, my other GEM keyboards have survived being dropped a few times.

Umm, i'm in Australia. The people here are ok if you bug them. They helped when i wanted to buy the thing, parts for my aging gem board though (wx2+, which i dropped and got cracked plastic) these parts took nearly a year to arrive. But apparently the factory was closed for the winter? I don't know. Anyway... i haven't tried their help for use, i've worked it out myself. If you have problems, icq me on 7683760 i'll try to help you out.

It was $3500 AUD brand new, with all options except the vocal board. For something with 2 gig hard disk, sample play back, etc etc 88 weighted aftertouch keys it's really hard to beat. NOthing else comes close. But it's a very personal keyboard, by this i mean you have to spend time with it and it won't do everything because the standard sounds aren't all that great. Deffinately try before you buy, i didn't... i bought it without seeing it (no one had one) and i was happy, then i wasn't, and the first week was a love hate thing, now i absolutely adore the beast, so see how you go :) Anyone living in Adelaide South Australia that is thinking of buying one and wants to have a hands on try, it could be arranged. Contant me on ICQ# 7683760

I'm 20yo, been playing piano since i was 3. Can't read music, but i compose my own. 'nuff said. It's worth what i paid for it, i'd say it's worth more. It's great. If stolen i might replace it with a 76 note one with all the options, i might not... i'd have to think about it. I love it's flexibility, i hate the fact that i slightly preffer the filters in my older Gem keyboard which had no control over them. grrr :( I nearly bought a yamaha motif... then i relised i was duplicating gear.. similar to my S30 for my needs. I didn't need the extras. Great sounds though, no graphic envelope editing, the Equinox is far more flexible. No user panel sets for controling external gear with the motif, but then again nothing has that. the Kurzweil does to an extent, but not as flexible in this way. Ohh yes, on features, it has an organ drawbar mode. It helps me make music for sure, but it's not good for sitting down and quickly whipping up a song. It's more good for inspiration when your stuck, or trying odd sound designing ideas out on. It's GREAT for extra sounds in a song, like when you need something strange flung in there.
IF you want to talk to me about this keyboard, my ICQ # is 7683760
This is a rather positive review, because i like this keyboard and don't like the fact that it has a bad reputation because there are some stupid people on here that do not appreciate it. It has plusses and minuses, i am aware of that, and i've tried to be balanced. Other people on here have been very much "ohh i love it it's better than everything else" or very much "it's sh** over 1000 sounds and they all sound like farts" (this one made me laugh :)
Try it for yourself... i don't think it's in production anymore so you may not be able to buy it new. If you want a good controller keyboard, get it.. if it's your do everything keyboard, go yamaha Motif or Triton (I prefer motif, mainly because of preset sounds, triton better for making your own though)
I give a rating of 10 because it says fantastic value... which it is. But this is my opinion. I'm well aware that some people might HATE the thing for their own reasons. I love it :)

Equinox 88 Pro is the Italian workstation from GeneralMusic. It's very simple to use, very clear display and quite comfortable operation with the menus. Editing is soooo easy, since you have 8 sliders, 2 wheels, 8 buttons, all in real time.

This is where it stands. It has a huge set of wonderful features, that is nearly impossible to tell each one. Drawbar mode, master keayboard, 250.000 events sequencer, 2 MIDIs, 16MB ROM, 2048 user patches, Grooves, Arpeggios, Sample import,.... unbelievable!
The keyboard feel is heavy the right way. Not too much, but very consistent. I don't miss my Yamaha Grand C1.

I should say Ok for synth. Very interesting and uncommon synth patches, very rich and present. The sounds are convincing, the best sounds are synth pads and leads. When going to acoustic, it's average, it has got nice pianos but average brass/strings. It suffers a bit in the guitar patches (but who is buying a keyboard for having guitars?). But you can import samples from AKAI libraries or from Waves. I have the PRO version, which is equipped with hard disk and PRO sounds. Nice! I like the acoustic pianos coming from the GEM PRO2 samples.

The only defect it has is that it is too heavy (29 Kg). On the opposite, it is OK for gigging, since it is rock solid.

In Italy it's OK.

I love the synth sounds, the features, the keyboard feel. I hate the weight and the transportability.

11100 flash system version very stable.
Edit it's not the best but you can work with it.
The manual it's non graphical very limited.

Love the groves, the drawbars, the sample player 32 meg, very ok. And all works fine.

I found the sound very good for classic rock, jazz rock , but a little old for the new forms of music.
The Pro sample pianos and the drawbars are very good.

If you depend on the sequencer... no.

They are slow but ok

No Keyboard offers you too much for your money.
I use l a Trinity and a Kurzveil k2vx and I like more the Equinox.