How much can I get for the kids ??

For sale on eBay [Link in title], these are more rare than the proverbial rocking horse shit ! When I see one of these, my immediate memory is of that gorgeous string sound that Stevie Wonder eeked out of his on Village Ghetto Land on his seminal Songs In The Key Of Life album. Of course, many other keyboard luminaries have used these, such as Keith Emerson, John Paul Jones, Benny Andersson of ABBA and Hans Zimmer.

It was this flagship synth that set Yamaha’s analog ball really rolling, spawning other, more affordable synths like the CS80. The same thing happened with the CDSX…

[Picture via DVDBORN]

…which spawned the legendary DX range and the VP1…

[Picture via DVDBORN]

…which formed the basis of Yamaha’s acoustic modelling technology.

Sadly, nowadays, companies like Yamaha no longer produce vastly expensive, over indulgent and prohibitively sized behemoths like this anymore. The GX1 cost £40,000 back in 1975, which was four times the cost of a house back then ! In this day and age of software synthesis and hardware sales falling quicker than Victoria Beckham’s body mass index, I doubt we’ll ever see them again.

So, revel in the opulence, and maybe one of us can save a few quid and bring this beauty over from the land of Oz.