Yamaha CS80

To all group members living in Japan:

Japanese main TV channel NHK found me enough attractive from all 128  
millions of inhabitants here and selected me and my CS80 for their  
well-liked series Yomigaeri Maisuta (Master of Renovation).

It's half documentary and educational, half entertaining program,  
which introduces somebody who has something rare, old, special - it  
can be anything. That thing is repaired, restored, renovated, and the  
story about the owner, the thing and its renovation is recorded, and  
these sequences are then commented by the guests invited to TV studio.  
Then owner and renovation specialist enter, renovated thing is  
brought, owner can try it, comment, and express his thanks for the  
renovation.

So this time it's about my life story, work, coming to Japan in 2003,  
and mainly about a rare analog polyphonic synthesizer from my  
collection - Yamaha CS-80 from 1979. As an expert in the field of  
electronic musical instruments and long-year collector I have  
established in my native country - Czech Republic - the only "Museum  
of Electro-acoustic Musical Instruments" (between 1989-2003), and had  
a good luck to buy this instrument in 90ies from one Christian radio  
in Slovakian capitol Bratislava, as partly non working. Before my  
moving to Japan I have closed the Museum and sold about half of  
instruments (the most rare were bought by Technical museum in Vienna,  
were restored and became the part of permanent exhibition there). But  
CS-80 travelled with me to Japan together with many other machines of  
my recording studio and the collection. In fact it did a world tour -  
from Japan to USA, then to Slovakia, and then it returned to Japan. As  
I understand electronics and do all repairs and maintenance of my  
gear, I was going to restore also CS-80 but then an offer from NHK  
came which I accepted.

Program is moderated by Nachiko Shudoh and comedian duo Taka & Toshi.  
Besides three decorative TV celebrities for making various sounds the  
production has invited as the special guest an excellent and famous  
Japanese keyboards performer Minoru Mukaiya, a member of my favorite  
Japanese jazz fusion formation Casiopea so finally I could enjoy  
meeting him. He explained basic info about analog and digital  
synthesizers in simple and entertaining way and showed a little bit  
Minimoog, Roland vocoder and Yamaha Motif. We became quickly good  
friends as well as with Mr. Kawazoe who did repair of my instrument.  
BTW, that evening after the TV studio recording Mr. Kawazoe showed me  
his huge collection of synthesizers - he owns over 400 pieces!

I'd like to invite you to watch this 60 minutes program, broadcasted  
on BS Premier on:

July 2nd, 9 pm
July 6th, 12 pm (midday)

There's some archive of whole this series to found on the internet but  
it looks like some Chinese pirate server :-)

I wish you good entertainment and all the best.

Daniel Forró
Kakamigahara
Japan