Instrument Registry: Model 2102

There is the possibility that model 2102 Chromas were manufactured for the Scandinavian market, though the reasons for this would seem difficult to understand given the European standard 2101 — see the blurb for 2102001 below. Mike Jaynes reports that his Chroma #21030671 internally had "21020010 written with the same black felt pen and then lined out and the new number written above. I suspect it started out as a 220 Volt unit and was changed to ship domestically."

21020001

Anders Gustavson, Sweden

"Has a small defect. The metal switch for one of the keys are broken. Therefore the highest key won't sound." For sale in November 2007. It was probably bought "second hand at Deluxe (instrument store in Stockholm) apparently originating from Keyboard City (also a Stockholm Store during the 80's and 90's)." Jesper Ödemark [21010135], an acquaintance of the owner, writes, "2102 apparently seems like the Scandinavian batch and my only guess (as a polar bear myself) is that the Swedish demands on electrical security was extremely high compared to rest of Europe back in the days. For example, all Korg synthesizers from the 1970's and early 80's have had the internal transformer bypassed and replaced with external PSU (my MS-20 is an original Swedish one and I have owned both MS-10 and PS-3200 designed like that too). Same goes for some Simmons units etc (I recently sold a SDS-8 with external PSU and Swedish S-mark (electrical safety mark)." See Chroma + Expander FS in Sweden. [November 2007]

21020003

Joakim Uddling

"My synth was bought new in Stockholm/Sweden back in 1983. I used to have two of these, actually bought the other one for spare parts in New York in -87, but one of my friends who helped me to fix this one got the other one. Mine is fully functional and is equipped with a MIDI kit. I made an album with my band a couple of weeks ago, where the Chroma was the ONLY synth featured... Did the same thing two years ago, (with the exception of a Nord Lead on one track);-)" [January 2001] "It is wired for 220-240 volts, since it was bought brand new in a store in Sweden by myself. I do also have a vague memory of some technician here in Sweden who modified the power unit frequency in some way to solve a problem with the different AC frequencies used in Sweden and USA. (50/60Hz)" [October 2001]

This instrument was for sale in August 2005.

Ola

New owner. [October 2005]

21020006

Harald Svensson

"I bought it in Göteborg 1983 and I paid 38.800 skr (about $5650 in today's exchange rate). I have the JLCooper midi interface built in. I used it for many years and for a long time it was my main gear. It can be heard on records with the jazz group Entra Live. Unfortunately I haven't used this lovely instrument for a long time. It is quite heavy and I use my iBook for synth sounds. But it still works perfect with exception of that the double pedal is out of order and some problems loading patches from tape. I also had the power supply exchanged." [October 2012]

21020010

See 21030671, about which Mike Jaynes writes that the "original serial number was 21020010 written with the same black felt pen and then lined out and the new number written above. I suspect it started out as a 220 Volt unit and was changed to ship domestically." [November 2005]