Pan Toys MC-73 (digital squarewave keyboard with C64 sounds & accompaniment)

This rare squarewave keyboard from 1996(?, part of the sound chip number) is yet another small member of the MC-3 hardware family. It has less features but the sound is very similar (see there).

On the keyboard stands no manufacturer, but on eBay I saw that they were released by Pan Toys (and likely others);

main features:

notes:

The case design (speakers & "voice/ style/ song"- knob) was inspired by the Yamaha PSS-21 (see PSS-31), while the control panel buttons look much like with MC-32. Like with Pan Toys MC-7, the power LED flashes as tempo indicator. Unless volume is set extremely low, the sound of my specimen sounds rather bassless and somewhat distorted; possibly there is a design flaw in the amplifier.

The main voice sound is much like MC-3; the "mandolin" rings. Also the accompaniment and rhythm sounds like with MC-3, but there is only a single finger accompaniment and no manual chord mode with rhythm off. During accompaniment, also the fill-in pattern contains accompaniment notes. There is also no programmable drum pattern, but only the rightmost 5 keys can be switched into drum kit mode (sounds like MC-3 drumpads).

There is a simple record/ playback sequencer which records all sounds (maximum 51 notes) and control panel events. Unlike most other such keyboards, the playback tempo can not be changed with the tempo buttons, but instead it even records tempo changes in the rhythm. (Pattern is erased by power off.)

The 8 demo melodies employ the currently selected preset sound. They play monophonic with standard accompaniment and repeat each in a loop.

The demo melodies are:

The misspelled "Unterlanders Heimweh" is not like the melody on Casio VL-Tone 1, but corresponds to the folk waltz on Elite MC2200 (see there) and Casio MT-36.

question: There is a strange "1 key 1 note" button; normally such buttons start a "one key play" feature to play the demo melodies or sequencer contents note by note, but this one makes only the "record" LED flash (another press turns it off) and otherwise seems to do nothing. Does anybody know what it is for? (I have no manual for this instrument.)

Regarding the CPU type label, also a variant called "MC-25" may exist, which appears to be the genuine name of this hardware class. The preset sound and rhythm list of the Pan Toys MC-73 resembles Bontempi ES3000 (aka MC-2100) although the latter has different hardware and less polyphony.
 

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