DS-2500

Seiko DS250 – A strange and extremely rare Additive synthesiser from the 1980’s and used by J.M Jarre on his Rendezvous album. The DS250 has a set of presets built into it and it allows for you to stack two presets by pressing a dual function key to select layer 1 and layer 2; it is a little awkward pressing these buttons, so our version just has two sets of 16 preset select buttons which is much easier.

The D-250 relies on some form of additive synthesis to create its sound and produces tones that are not clean and pristine, but instead have a wonderful earthy, organic and grainy sound that have bags of character.

After searching for many years to find one of these illusive keyboards I was immediatly struck by its great set of presets, but I thought it was let down by not being velocity sensitive – So that was the first thing we added to Castle Instruments version. I also thought it could benefit from resonant filters, so we added those and also added velocity modulation to allow control of the Filter Cutoff and resonance; this really added so much expression to the sounds. We also added multiple filter types which can be selected from the filter menu on the interface.

We also added controllable ADSR for amp and filter, Hi-Pass filters, and MIDI syncable LFO’s; all of these extra features take the sounds way beyond what can be achived with just the hardware synth. Of course our version has the original sounds from the hardware DS-250 and we created the factory presets for you in the preset folder, but it is great to be able to go way beyond what the hardware can do and explore new sounds – sort of like if Seiko had added all these new features to their original hardware.

Our version also has two random patch generators – one for each preset layer which makes it easy to throw some chaos theory into your patch creation and just hit randomise until you get something you like.

Also included is a full effects section including: Chorus, Phaser, Flanger, Tape saturation/warmth, Reverbs, MIDI syncable Delays and an arpeggiator.

The Castle Instruments DS-2500 is great for taking a journey into the strange and digital world of additive sounds and textures who’s roots are firmly entwined in the original sounds from the DS-250 hardware and comes with 100 presets and 30 MULTI’s to get you started.