Ensoniq ESQ-1

Don't you just love it when you get home and an E-bay packet is awaiting you in the hall? Well I do. I recently bid on an Ensoniq ESQ-1 on E-bay and I won it. It arrived today very quickly after the payment was made. So not all is scam on E-bay fortunately. On the left you see the box it came in and on the right the synthesizer after I unpacked it. I hooked it up right away after getting a power cord, because it didn't come with it. Probably the German guy I bought it from thought we have different power outlets here in the Netherlands, but actually they are exactly the same. But well I have about 50 powercords in spare here :) So no problem really. I knew from the auction text that the battery was empty, but did not realize that it didn't have any presets to play with. The first thing that has to be done is replace the battery now. I'm still doubting if I'm going to do that myself or leave that do the guy that is repairing my Juno 60 as well.

It turned out also that it has no headphones out. Normally the first thing I do is hook a pair of headphones up and fiddle around. Well I did put it anyway in audio out left/mono and got some sound, but only on one ear and quite soft. Not surprising off course, but at least I heard how it sounds. I played around with it for a little while. It sounds nice and digital like it is supposed to :) Editing on it is quite easy. The display is very big and you have a lot of knobs that go with the function you are editing. It has even a build in sequencer, but I'll probably never be using that, because I do everything in Sonar. It actually has very nice LFO's en very nice envelopes, much more parameters than on most synthesizers. That will mean that you can make complex sounds with it. Promises nice things :)

Well this is my first Ensoniq synthesizer and it sounds quite different from everything I already have, so it is a nice addition. I hope that I can use some nice sounds from it on future tracks. But first I'll take it to the studio and play around with it there and look on the internet what kind of battery I need. And well I don't have to backup the presets, because there are none :) Probably I'll put the factory default presets in it when it is finished. Oh and before I forget to mention it, Jean-Michel Jarre used this synthesizer as well, that was one of the reasons for me to buy it. You can find some more information on this synthesizer here if you like:

http://www.vintagesynth.com/ensoniq/ens_esq1.shtml