what I've been talking about

It occurred to me that I never posted anything about what an FB01 is or how I got it. I picked this up from the same pawn shop I got the REX50 from and it sort of sat on my amplifier looking sad with nothing but a soon-to-be-out-of-my-life prophet 600 to trigger it. I liked the sounds but didn't really know what to do with it until someone at the synthesizers.com forum hinted at how to use the Evolver as a midi trigger. I gave it a try and after a couple of false starts and a look over the instruction manual I brought it to life.

The FB-01 is simply an inexpensive, 8 part multitimbral digital FM synth module. It's only a 4-operator synth which is less than, say a DX-7. This simply means its sounds are not quite as good. You will need an external MIDI system exclusive editor to edit the patches. This can be accomplished by a dedicated editor program like Unisyn, or by creating SysEx control messages within your sequencing program. The FB-01 has a lot of organ, piano, brass, bass, guitar, percussion, and lead sounds. Basically this is a good source of typical FM-sounds at a low price. It is used by Hardfloor and Moog Cookbook.

taken from vintage synth explorer