I am having difficulty with my SMAC producing a very low volume on the Treble side, but only when I drive it with my Roland V-Accordion. When driving from a Yamaha HS8 organ or MIDI keyboard everything is fine. When I drive the HS8 from the Roland, equally, everything is fine. Has anyone any answers?
Mike O'R

Hi , i own 2 technic smac modules ,one connected to my elkavox83 and the other to my concerto digital accordion .

More information required !!

is the Roland sending signals that reduce the volume levels of R1 and R2 on the smac ????

Regards ....Giovanni

It must be, although the volume bars on the SMAC display show as full on, but the sound is barely audible
Mike O'R

Hi Mike

I had some thing very similar happen with my concerto & smac set up .

The engineer over the phone adviced me to remove the audio cables L & R from the smac , plug in a pair of earphones into the earphone socket on the smac . can you hear any sound ..in my case i could hear it very clear and Loud .
The problem i had was bad connection in my audio lead .
If you get full volume from the earphones ..look at the leads , sockets on the smac or even your mixer !!

hope this is of help .

I went to to Texas accordion Convention , those folks were getting some very good sounds out of their Roland V accordions

Regards ..Giovanni

Pardon my ignorance fellas but what is SMAC 1200 - what does it do - what do you use it with?
Rog

The SMAC 1200 is Technics' KN 1200 keyboard "in a box". It's the only MIDI expander produced by Technics and is no longer produced. In a nutshell, it's a great little expander with everything the KN 1200 had, except a keyboard.
Mike O'R

Thanks Mike but what do you do with it?
Rog

You couple it up, through MIDI IN to any MIDI instrument's MIDI OUT (e.g. a MIDI keyboard, organ, or MIDI accordion) then play just like a regular keyboard. The SMAC has plenty of voices and styles, plus a disk drive and sequencer.
Mike O'R

I must be dim, Mike...but what does the term expander mean. In other words what does this thing play; what do you play; where do midi files fit into all of this; why is it no longer needed with today's Technics keyboards?
Rog

Rog, It's just like connecting two different keyboards together via a MIDI cable so that you can play both keyboard's sounds, from 1 keyboard. The SMAC had all the sounds, styles etc. of the KN1200 but was housed in small module without the actual keyboard. So, it needs to be totally controlled from an external keyboard, or controller - for example a PC executing a MIDI file.
The controlling keyboard can be just a 'dumb' keyboard with a MIDI output, or any other arranger instrument with a MIDI output. These devices or 'Expanders', which were made by all the major manufacturers, could be daisy chained via MIDI connections to produce the the sounds etc. of the arranger keyboards, on which they were based. They were naturally cheaper than the instrument on which they were based and only required the addition of a 'Dumb' MIDI keyboard to allow you to produce sounds etc. from a range of expanders, if you so wished.
I still have one which was manufactured by Kawai, tucked away in a cupboard...........

So basically, they allow guys like Mike and Giovanni to produce all the sounds of a KN1200 - while playing their MIDI accordions - in addition to the accordions own sounds......... Get it ??