Basic Hardware

My core hardware is two CME keyboards, a UF5 and a UF6 with 49 and 61 keys respectively. They cost me $760 but they were velocity sensitive and had breath controller inputs. I took them all apart and cut up the case quite a bit to make a Hammond B3 kind of console. In between the two keyboard pieces and the slider controls, I built downward facing holes for two full width rack mounts. In there, I immediately was thinking of putting a TC Helicon Voiceworks ($750) for my harmony voices. On the other side, I put an M-Audio M400 Firewire interface with 4 in and 10 outs. That cost me $410. Later on, I filled up the rest of that space with a very special Yamaha VL70m Acoustic Tone Generator which was $840. It uses physical modeling technology which seems to do a phenominal job on saxophone, one of the main reasons I wanted it. It also has independent reverb, chorus, variation and distortion effects. It's important to remember though, it's monophonic, meaning it will only produce one solo instrument. What made this awesome is that I coughed up an extra $340 to get a custom chip from Patchman. This makes a huge improvement in the fairly ordinary sounds that come from this piece. Finally, I stuck a Korg Nanopad in the far right corner which I hope to put to good use.