The Fairlight has arrived!

So, the day came yesterday for me to collect the Fairlight CMI III and bring it home in preparation for its restoration.

I had sourced a van to hire and being incredibly mindful of cost, decided to go for a “compact” van, namely a Ford Transit Connect. Not sure if that’ll mean much to anyone outside the EU but these are small vans with big insides! Peter had given me approximate measurements but right up until we loaded the system, I was a bit nervous that I had made a bit of a cock up!

So, myself and my good friend Howard, himself a closet muso with a passion for music tech, set off from sunny Suffolk towards Lincolnshire. With the incredible weather we’ve been having, it really was a pleasant drive across our amazing corner of England. I’ve always been very proud of East Anglia and this trip on a warm summer’s eve further reinforced my local pride.

We eventually arrived in the small village where Peter’s friend Kent had been looking after the system after Peter had left it there before he departed back home for Australia. Aside from Kent’s spectacular home and surroundings, Howard and I were made incredibly welcome and we were shown into a room where the CMI sat, ensconced in bulletproof flight cases. Kent’s wife Claire tried to persuade me to buy an old 24 track mixer (more on this another day) and the room in which the Fairlight had been resting seemed full of amazing things. Anyway, not wanting to impose and out stay our welcome, Howard and I started to shift the cases to the van. There were three ‘Bulldog’ cases, still solid as a rock and showing their age by virture of the fact that the Bulldog phone number in London was still prefixed 01! UK residents will remember when ALL London phone number began with 01. Nowadays, there are numerous prefixes for our great capital city.

There was clearly some corrosion on the substantial clasps that held the crates together and a distinctive “damp” smell about them, a combination of a couple of decades of fustiness, good old fashioned “gear smell” and some kind of water ingress. However, everything seemed ok, so we quickly loaded the cases into the van. There was also a cardboard box that contained a hard drive and tape streamer, along with numerous 8″ floppy disks and a raft of tape cassettes.

Once loaded, we set off for home, stopping only for a McDonalds 😉

Howard had to be dropped off before i got home, so it was down to me and my pyjama wearing wife (bless her) to unload, which we did with more ease than I had expected, leaving the cases in the lounge overnight.

This morning, after a trip to the shops, I began clearing space in the studio, casing up my Alesis Fusion and boxing up my Prophecy, which made me a little sad, but space is at a premium here! Meanwhile, my wife moved things around in our garage in preparation for the empty cases. First up the stairs was the mainframe. I had hoped it would fit under my desk but as it happened, it was just a smidge too wide. I’ll be perfectly honest here. I knew these things weren’t small but they weren’t kidding! And the build quality is immense. These systems really were hand built and crafted from premium materials with strength and solidity being paramount. I guess in today’s market place where companies charge premium prices but often deliver less than premium goods, stuff like this just doesn’t exist anymore. A Fairlight really is worth every single penny, in every single respect.

Next up the stairs was the musical keyboard, which again is pretty hefty, being made of solid wood. Thankfully this did fit where I wanted it, replacing my two remaining hardware synths on a sturdy double braced stand. Finally, after receiving some cleaning attention from my wife, the monitor and alpha numeric keyboard took pride of place atop the iconic musical keyboard.

I have to say, seeing the system set up in my room was a pretty special moment. For someone who has dreamed about owning a Fairlight since the early 80s, seeing one set up in my own studio is pretty damned amazing. It’s kind of difficult to describe the feeling I get when seeing this machine at close hand, a machine that I yearned and lusted after for so many, many years. And I know I will be a wreck when we get to power it up and i can really start diving into all it can do.

So, here’s a video and a gallery of pictures from today. A box of parts is already crossing the globe from Australia, so hopefully, I can get started on bringing this beast back to life. I envisage that the mainframe will be up and running first, and that I’ll be able to trigger it from other devices first because the Fairlight keyboard will need some work before it’s capable of controlling.

Keep checking back for updates! 🙂