GEM SX3 Synth?

olafydstie · Joined: Feb 17, 2008 Posts: 1 Location: Portland, OR

I'm looking to sell a General Music SX3 synth i have lying around. I googled it, and came up with next to no information. I have no idea how much i should be selling this for, I don't know if it's a rare synth people are interested in or just an outdated piece of equipment. Anyone know the value of these things?

seraph · Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 12:03 am Post subject: Re: GEM SX3 Synth?

xjscott · Joined: Apr 25, 2007 Posts: 232 Location: Appalachia

You're right there is no info about that synth on the web!

This thread here is already the #2 hit on google.

The #1 hit is the microtonal-synthesis page which claims the instrument supports four 12 note octave repeating microtonal user tunings that are programmable through the front panel and sysex:

http://www.microtonal-synthesis.com/micro_gm.html

You might try advertising its tuning support as a feature, but 12 note octave repeating support is fairly common in Roland and Yamaha consumer sound modules and no where near as useful as full keyboard retuning programmable via sysex, as with something with MIDI Tuning Standard support.

It's also not clear what sort of sysex messages it uses, whether standard or proprietary. If proprietary, the feature is not useful at all since to my knowledge GM doesn't publicly publish their manuals with their particular sysex specifications.