Well, the CS-80 was heavy (100 Kg), but not as heavy as B-3, and many of us toured with those...the CS-80's big advantages were the polyphonic aftertouch, the 8 voice poly, and, of course, more user locations.

Being the flagship of their new CS-series synthesizer line, the CS-80 represented Yamaha's attempt to cram as much of the GX1 into a single-manual keyboard as possible. I played the GX-1...that was a dandy!

Despite only having 12DB filters and only one osc per voice, the CS-60 managed to sound warmer and more meaty than the flashiest Roland etc, it had both low and high pass filtering with their own resonance controls and they combined to make a superb bandpass filter...

The bigger and even more powerful brother, the CS80, was used heavily by Vangelis and most of his sounds can be copied on the CS60 too.

The CS-80 was mainly a studio machine, and at twice the oscillator power of the CS-60 was capable of both fat sounds, or the thinner CS-60 sound by only using half the oscillators...a choice, in other words.

In later years, they (the CS-80 and CS-60/50) received many upgrades that improved reliability a lot...some are still being used.

Quite a few made it on tours, but the CS-80 usually accompanied the high dollar high profile players like Stevie Wonder, who could afford roadies and techies.

The Polymoog was a blessing to me, as there were no other poly's on the market, and having the first one really helped in getting a foot in the door at studios...yes, it was a superb string and brass synth...being able to access it's filter was another benefit...I ran all kinds of instruments through it, including electric guitars and basses.

I felt it was more of studio tool, and after playing the CS-60 and others, the Polymoog's strings and brass still had the edge by a long way, and, at that time, strings and brass were the most important sounds to emulate.

In the long run, these instrument can really only be measured by the player's imagination and creativity.

I feel very lucky to have had the experiences I did with all the vintage synths and other keyboards, especially having access to many rare Yamaha vintage synths...some people haven't had the chance to actually play them in context (or in a band), and to actually "feel" the instrument's response...a big part of the charm, and not available on VST's.

The Memorymoog (and Memorymoog+) was notoriously unreliable - 1/4 of the first batch was sent back to the manufacturer. There were several revisions fixing a majority of the problems (which included everything from unstable tuning to power supply flaws), but Moog Music went bankrupt before the Memorymoog became a "finished" product.

Later on, companies like Lintronics and Bob Moog's Big Briar released third party upgrades which included simple MIDI implementation among other things, but nobody uses a Memorymoog on stage...at least not willingly, and even the studio units fail at an alarming rate. Talk with a competent technician before you consider buying one second-hand.

It is considered one of the most troublesome piece of gear to tour with...the Prophet 5 wasn't far behind...it took the Japanese to make a reliable synthesizer...companies like Kurzweil, and the older Ensoniq had incredibly creative ideas and features, but weren't nearly as reliable (the Ensoniq had a 50% failure rate) as the Japanese instruments by Korg, Roland and Yamaha.

I like vintage synths...but, I like vintage synths that work...not much fun having something I can't play and enjoy...especially if it cost me a bundle.

Anyway, it's nice to look back, but even nicer to have all the goodies available today, at a fraction of the cost, no less.

Ian