Akai S612 Sampler Mods

tablebeast · Joined: Sep 13, 2006 Posts: 12 Location: Vacuum

I just got my hands on a pair of these ancient Akai S612 lo-fi gems. I've wanted to experiment with one for years but never was able to get a decent one sans disc drive for a decent price. Last week I got two for about $100 each shipped! Not an insane price, but they both look to be in excellent shape and don't have the stupid disc drive so its a great deal for me. See, I don't want to mess with storing samples, that is what a DAW is for so I don't need that PITA disc drive at all. I want a live sampler that I can hack to the max for performance use.
So, I got two of them for sample bouncing and general mayhem. Should pair up nice with a mixer and some other weirdo sound sources. I looked far and wide on the net and can't find a bent S612 at all and this just blows my mind. I've seen other early Akai samplers bent in very cool ways, but no mods or bends for the S612 that I can find.
Oh yeah, so my point: does anyone have any info on mods or bends? I'm also looking for the updated OS chip and the original service manual. If anyone has anything they'd like to share in these regards it would be much appreciated. I plan to document all the modifications and post a site once completed. I just want to mod my pair and have no intention of doing any commercially, so consider it all open-source modding.

fengland · Joined: Feb 18, 2010 Posts: 50 Location: Burlington, VT

ever get anywhere with this? I finally sprung for one on ebay with drive - I've been looking at them and wanting one for years. I have electronics experience and I'm sure I could come up with some mods if I had a service manual. I'm sure data bending is possible (crossing data/address lines on the ram chip), I've done this on an s2000. The individual voice output has mod potential too - maybe a filterbank.

Paradigm X · Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2011 6:42 am Post subject:

Ooh, any info on the s2000 bends? Ive got one collecting dust...

Ive done a bit of searching, found the circuitbenders site, but no info, for obvious reasons.

Cheers Very Happy

sizone · Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2011 1:01 am Post subject:

Please don't do anything to mod the S612s. They're the only way to add a second oscillator to an Akai AX-60 and, as you have discovered, they're not terribly easy to find. Do yourself a favor and get an AX-60 to plug one of them into.