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Realistic S650 At a Glance
Picture needed	Released: 1985? \| Specifications Read reviews

Tommy Boylston writes:

This was Radio Shack's version of Casio's mini SK sampler. It only has 4 sample pads (8 seconds all together) but it gave you the ability to transpose a sample all across the keyboard. Although marketed as a toy, it is still a useful piece of gear in my opinion. The internal drum tracks are total cheese as well as most of the sounds, but who cares about internal when you have a built in mic to capture you favorite burp and fart noises. This was my first sampler and damn near 15 years later, I still use it. It has that real gritty sub 8-bit sample tone that comes in handy for abstract and ambient sorta stuff.

The sample time was of course an issue, so what I used to do was play a record at like 45rpm and sample it to the keyboard via the line input. I would then transpose the note until it was at the tempo I wanted (keep in mind, it's hard to catch a loop with just 2 seconds of sample time). The sound was all groggy and sick but so nice at the same time. This worked really well with sampling basslines and pad type sounds.

Although in the year 2001, there are samplers that are obviously more practical than this...it's still nice to break this puppy out and burp into the mic as I did when I was like 12!

Comments About the Sounds:
The internal sounds are all pretty cheesey...Especially the

(Thanks to Tommy Boylston for this info.)

Links for the Radio Shack Realistic S650

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Synth Site | Radio Shack | Realistic S650

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