360 Systems MIDI Bass 1980s

360 Systems MIDI Bass

Appox. Time of Manufacture: 1980s

Operational Condition: Fully-Functioning

Cosmetic Condition: Very Good with some wear and other light signs of the units age. One bottom rubber foot is missing. 8 out of 10 condition

Description from Vintage Synth Explorer:

The MIDI Bass has a very simple and straightforward layout with a limited number of buttons and knobs. The MIDI Bass logo dominates the top left corner of the player with a MIDI Channel selector switch next to it. In addition to choosing the MIDI channel number that it receives, the switch can also be set to the ALL position. Doing so causes it to respond to all MIDI information it receives regardless of the transmitted channel number.

The upper right corner of the MIDI Bass is home to the key priority switch. Setting this switch priority properly allows the bass note to follow a particular part of your performance. “Last Key” is the most commonly used setting, especially for performance work and when using a sequencer. It also has “Low Key” to extract the lowest note played within a chord while ignoring others and “High Key” for doing the same with the highest note within a chord. It is also possible to set the MIDI Bass’s range limit on both the upper and lower ends.

The lower half of the MIDI Bass front panel features a Volume knob and Pitch Knob along with five buttons. The first four buttons are used to select the different EPROM sounds, with position one always being the default sound when the player is switched on. a LED below the button indicates that a memory chip has been located and its sound can be played. The MIDI Bass was produced in both 2- and 4-sound models.

The use of something like the MIDI Bass has diminished thanks to newer hardware with samplers, but it is still an interesting player for collectors.