The latest episode of 100 Things I Do details their epic journey to restore a ‘very broken’ Fairlight CMI IIx synth workstation.
The Fairlight CMI II was introduced in 1982 and – while limited by today’s standards – represented the state of the art in sampling synthesis and sequencing at the time.
If you want to see the full journey of repairing this rare instrument, check out the playlist below:
Nice job and funny, too. Its a pure labor of love, because at this point in technology, that GUI is like a dose of purgatory. In 2025, sample the presets and then run away. Its not like I don’t respect what it did. Kate Bush, Art of Noise and other early adopters set a great standard. As Zappa said of his Synclavier, “I have nothing but praise for the system, but its as expensive as f***!”
There’s definitely an element of “Because it was there”, in tackling a project like this, or like you said, a labor of love. What a fantastic project and accomplishment!
I think there are a couple other reasons, though, to restore old instruments like this.
First, for many of us, owning and playing a synth is mainly about understanding the music we love at a deeper level. It’s not that different than owning a piano used to be. People didn’t do it because they thought they were going to be a great concert pianist, they did it because they enjoyed playing and it gave them a deeper appreciation of the music they loved.
Many of us grew up loving electronic music, and playing these instruments lets us experience and understand the music we love on a much deeper level.
The other thing is that these are still great instruments that are fun to play.
While early digital instruments have been improved on in a ton of ways, they were great instruments in their time and are still great. I own a Yamaha DX5, for example, which a $35 Raspberry Pi can beat for raw synthesis power. But the DX5 has a fantastic feel, and is really nice to play, That’s something that’s not diminished by the passage of time, at all.
Spot on.