I found two - the Roland A-80 and A-50 both advertise polyphonic aftertouch, but contain no sliders or ribbon control...
...does anybody from arturia know if there is a polyaftertouch controller in the works?
This is the $64,000 question! I've owned two CS-80s and an A-80. The A-80 is great for a piano action, but the aftertouch is virtually useless - way to hard to press. I also tried an old Ensonique SQ-80. Not too bad, and very cheap. Feels cheap too, and mine had a few keys with very uneven pressure response. The A-50 might be good (and fairly small/light), but I never tried one.
The A-50 is neither small nor light. Dean Swan, one of the people who played on my albums in the early 1990s, has one that he still uses today. It's built like a tank and works flawlessly (the poly pressure is much lighter than the A-80's), and compared to the A-80 I guess it's light, but it's still over 30 pounds. Problem is, you can't find one anywhere... their owners don't sell them.
I think the best would be an old Kurzweil MIDI-board, although it's been years since I tried one.
The MIDIboard is a very good controller but has its downsides: the poly pressure is great and it has good onboard arpeggiation and program splits etc., but it uses an impact sensor rather than an actual velocity sensor, which means that if you play with a light touch, key bounce can cause notes to choke themselves off. Many well-trained pianists find this maddening. And it weighs enough to stun an ox. 75 pounds without stand and pedals, I think.
On the other hand, it has something you don't see in controllers any more: a flat top for stacking. In the old days, you'd put a MiniMg and a Solina up there, or a DX7; these days, a laptop running CS-80V and an Expressionmate would leave you enough room for another keyboard!
As far as I know, there are no poly-aftertouch controller keyboards being made. I'd love it if someone would make one!
So would I. So would a number of people. The question is, how many? Enough to justify the R&D to get the technology right and reliable?
I have been crusading for years, on the Internet and in my magazine, to get manufacturers to keep even ordinary channel pressure sensors in their keyboards, and no one in the USB/MIDI arena has listened other than Novation--most say it's just plain not going to happen with current or projected designs. Given that climate, demanding poly pressure may be tilting at windmills.
You have to remember: as opposed to the situation in the 1980s, where many companies that built synths made their own keyboard actions, there are now only two, maybe three, generic factories making all the keyboard actions in the whole synth world today. If they decide they're not making one with a particular feature set, you're not going to find it in the marketplace, especially not in controller made by small companies who have the most to benefit from supporting products like the CS-80V.
Ever wonder why there was a period of several years where you could easily get European keyboards with 4 or 5 octaves and channel pressure (The Nord Lead 3, the Microwave XTk, the Virus kb), but 3 octaves and less didn't have it (the original Indigo, the Nord Modular)? And suddenly several keyboards at once appeared with 3 octaves and channel pressure (the MicroQ, the Indigo II, and now the Nord G2)? The factory that made and supplied the keyboards changed its policy. If anyone thinks there's a manufacturer out there who really has enough pull to make the factories put poly pressure back into a keyboard action, they should start writing to them now. I recommend starting with whomever is now supplying Novation with 2-octave channel pressure keyboards, as they seem most open to suggestions...and Novation themselves, who seem to get a kick out of offering performance features no one else can match.
Fortunately it's not an issue for me at the moment; I have a colleague with an Ensoniq ASR10 he's not using, which should do fine for me as a controller. Once I've had a chance to play with CS-80V (it just arrived yesterday, thanks guys!), I will make a decision about getting something more permanent for using it.
I personally doubt that the demand for poly pressure keyboards will even be enough to make prices of Ensoniq keyboards on Ebay go up noticeably. Pessimism or realism? You decide.
mike
