Hideaway Studio 6-Trax

Hideaway Studio, aka Dan Wilson, has been responsible for some of the more interesting sample libraries to have been released in the past 18 months. Quite a lot of the time the equipment being used has been lovingly restored by Dan Wilson and this latest library is an example of a synth being brought back from the dead – the synth in question being a Sequential Circuits 6-Trak. Dan writes:

In 1984 Dave Smith and his team at Sequential Circuits released the Six-Trak which was one of the first instruments not only to feature the then new MIDI control system but was an early multitimbral offering. As is so often with my ever growing collection of vintage synths at Hideaway, Six-trak number 1551 came in dead and was singing sweetly again after a few days of attention on the slab armed with the oscilloscope and soldering iron. Having rescued this little beasty from the grave I was confronted with an empty patch memory so I set about programming up 100 new patches which resulted in a mammoth sampling session rendering over 4Gbytes of material that was auditioned in Kontakt. Having cherry picked some 70 or so of my favorites I set about looping some 870 or so samples and programming up 100 new instruments in Kontakt.

I have to say I was quite surprised by what I managed to get out of what on paper is quite a humble 1-OSC per voice polysynth. I think there are a few reasons for this – firstly I found the Six-trak to have quite a dark nature to its sound and the filters are great with the whole self oscillation thing launching it into sometimes complete instability but on other occasions rendering bells and percussive sounds aplenty. The way the VCAs are also setup permits the filter to be somewhat overdriven which adds another dimension to its sound. 

Out now for £10, and requiring a full version of Kontakt 4.2.4 or higher, it’s available from the Hideaway Studio website along with a (rather fantastic) audio demo.