"The only remedy was to hit them quite hard with a large iron bar..."

TimeOut

It's funny to read about them having to whack the E-mu Emulator with a bar. I see these pop up on Craigslist every so often, but the disk drives are always broken. A synth buddy of mine used to have the follow-up Emax model which corrected all the disk drive design flaws, but it was ridiculously huge and heavy. I remember helping him move one day and carrying it felt like some kind of funeral procession.

i had an Emulator II(the +HD version) back in the day. i bought it used for just under $800 with about 20 or so floppies. the only thing i didn't like about it was it reeked of cigarette smoke. other than that, it worked fine. i sold it eventually because i didn't have the space for it. won't be able to pick up another one for the price i bought it for, that's for sure.

This was one of my cousin's jobs when he was working for them with OZ PA, they even had a 'lump' hammer strictly reserved just for this very job, he used to have to smack the Emulator's metal legs to get it to reboot. I really miss listening to him tell me stories like this sat in his garden during the summer. Gone but remembered constantly.

Salford Corner wrote: I really miss listening to him tell me stories like this sat in his garden during the summer. Gone but remembered constantly.

It's hilarious how temperamental a lot of early synth gear was and still is. I own a Juno-60 which if I don't play for a long period of time, I end up needing to use a blow dryer to get the keys working properly. If there's any kind of dust build up, the keys will go a bit crazy and trigger notes twice at random when I press them. Makes from some very interesting synth solos, haha. Plus nothing beats the look on people's faces when I pull out the blow dryer before a gig to make sure it's good to go.