E-mu
Emulator II Replacement Main Control
Panel Overlay From Synhouse
Completely renew the control panel of
your E-mu Emulator II with this brand new replacement overlay from Synhouse,
manufactured of the highest quality polycarbonate and adhesive with
crystal clear printing and brilliant colors.
It is properly made of a sandy-textured polycarbonate substrate
material, with die-cut holes for the buttons, LEDs, and sliders, and
has the correct smooth clear plastic window over the LCD.
The E-mu colors:
The dark blue color is a slightly bright bluish dark blue that some
would say is most like the original Emulator II machines from the
second half of 1984, for reference I have included a photo of an
October 1985 E-mu advertisement that shows what is probably a fairly
early unit. While most of my Emulators are wrapped in padded blankets
and flight cased in the back of the Synhouse warehouse, I do have five
of them in front of me at home, and the dark blue on all of them is a
slightly darker and less blue than it is on this new overlay. I did it
this way because people have commented that Emulator II overlays from
other sellers in the past weren't as blue as they remembered, and I
guess the blue is a distinctive thing about E-mu instruments. I should
note, though that the differences I am referring to are very slight,
and the actual color difference between anything I have owned or seen
or manufactured is very small, too small to capture in some photos.
When I created this overlay set over the fall and winter of 2017, I
spent a lot of time working to achieve that bluer blue of the 1984
Emulator IIs that people talk about. The Emulator II overlays sold by
anyone else have been shown in many, many photos (dark and blurry
photos, and most often photographed through the plastic wrapper), both
from the seller and from people who bought them, didn't put them on
their instrument, and put them up for sale, don't show much of a blue
color at all. They have a blacker appearance in all photos I've seen.
This could be related to lighting or other factors, but I feel that my
Emulator II overlay set perfectly matches the E-mu blue that people
remember and see in old photos.
Emulator IIs that were used little and have been kept in the flight
case seem to have the darkest blue now, and my estimation is that this
is darker than it was 35 years ago, as things tend to darken.
Everything gets darker over time, from car seats to footballs to wood
to human skin. Emulator IIs that were used a lot, sold and resold (some
of these actually got steady use throughout the 80s, 90s, 2000s, and
2010s, not a lot of instruments can say that, even the mighty Minimoog
saw almost no use in America 1980-1995), often have overlays that are
severely faded and streaked, very badly on the little Moog wheels panel
overlay. In the upper left of this photo, you
can see a particularly
bad one, and on that one, just in the dark blue area, you can see it
has transformed into fifty different shades of blue, from badly
darkened by age to damaged almost to light gray.
I have total control over every aspect of every process in the
manufacturing of all Synhouse products. If I want it to be orange, it's
orange. If I want it to be a 5% darker orange, then it will be redone
in a 5% darker orange. If I want it orange with gold polka dots,
then it will be done in orange with gold polka dots. This isn't a
random process for me and I don't just take what I get the first time.
Big suppliers don't expect me to accept whole production runs of things
that were done wrong and don't look right.
The product in the photos below isn't streaked or
discolored, the photos are watermarked with faint purple writing that
says
SYNHOUSE all over it so that you know you are seeing the actual
Synhouse Emulator II main control panel overlay and not one of the
defective crap overlays that have been going around the forums and
sales sites for almost five years before this one existed. These are
photos of the real Synhouse overlay that no one else sells.
Click a photo to enlarge it:
Now see the
difference in detail and quality:
The overlay "set" (they don't
match
) shown below is NOT
from Synhouse.
This is the other Emulator II overlay that has been advertised on eBay
and elsewhere since 2013.
The same defective, mis-cut design produced again and again.
Click a photo to enlarge it:
