I just recently acquired an old Kurzweil 1200 Pro 1 synthesizer. I’ve had to replace the LCD screen as the electro-luminescent backlighting on the old one was pretty faded. I put in a new LED backlit one, and had to cut down the screw posts to fit the deeper profile in, and added a small pot inline to set the contrast. It’s now very clear, and the unit sounds pretty sweet – (in a sort of 90’s synth way).

I’m now starting to get to grips with all it’s many features, and am developing a MIDI application to control the unit as I go along, so far I’ve got full front panel control and display working. Next step is to get full control of all the many synth parameters and layer settings.

The application is being developed in Linux using the excellent Juce class library – see http://www.rawmaterialsoftware.com/juce.php for an overview. The beauty of the Juce libraries is that they can be easily recompiled to target Windows and Mac (and iOS/Android too but I’m not familiar with those areas yet). It’s main strength is it’s good support for music devices, both MIDI and audio. This extends to developing VST applications too.