Synthesisers and Samplers by Ensoniq Corporation

Ensoniq Corporation was an American company that made a range of synthesiser and samplers that were used by many high-profile musicians of the 1980's and 1990's.

The company was eventually acquired by Creative Technology (the company behind the Sound Blaster sound card franchise that was the must have sound card of the 1990's) in 1998.  Creative Technology wanted Ensoniq for its approach to sound card construction.

On acquisition the company was merged with another success that Creative Technology had purchased, E-MU Systems. At this point the company lost its identity as the creativity of the Ensoniq Music Division was shut down over a 3-year period.

But while it was trading the company created some instruments that really found ground in the musical community.  While the company really found its market in the USA it struggled to have the same success outside the US.  While these instruments can be found in Europe there is not the same second-hand supply as can be found on the other side of the pond,

In 1985 the company launched the Mirage.  This was a sampling keyboard with a sub $2,000 price tag.  It was pitched against more expensive samplers that were available on the market at this time.  The sampler was only 8-bit, but 8-bit in 1985 was state-of-the-art.

In addition to the sampling capacity the sampler had 8-voices, Curtis filters, multi-sampling, event sequencer and a 3.5" floppy drive to save samples and compositions.  There was also an alternative operating system that turned the sampler into a wavetable-based synthesiser.

I purchased my Ensoniq EPS-16 Plus (sometimes written as EPS-16+) in 2018.  This was an impulse buy.  I had been looking at Ensoniq samplers and was really looking for a Mirage, but they were and still are hard to find a good example either working or as a project.

The EPS-16 Plus was introduced in 1990.  Technology had moved on and so did the EPS-16 Plus with 16-bit sampling available.  

The sampler that I purchased could only be described as a 'bag of spanners'. It was acquired via a friend of a friend arrangement.  It was described as in good condition and the photos that were sent to me were obviously taken when the keyboard was in better condition to the keyboard that arrived.  Thankfully it didn't cost me very much although I did pay for it to be shipped from Italy.  So began the restoration project on this sampler.

The next Ensoniq acquisition was the Ensoniq SQ-2 keyboard at the end of 2019.  The SQ-2 was the last evolution of the SQ keyboard range which started with the SQ-1 released in 1990, SQ-1 Plus released in 1990 and the SQ-2 released at the end of1990.  

Again this was another impulse buy from a contact.  Someone had bought this synthesiser that they wanted to pass on and just wanted their costs covered (£50). 

The SQ range of synthesisers generated their tones using the wave table method of synthesis. As I didn't have a synthesiser that worked like this at the time I made the drive up to Croydon to pick up it up.