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Kenton MIDI Retrofit

Kenton Electronics produced a retrofit for the Chroma; it was discontinued as of the end of 2002, and they kindly sent me their self-install documentation for reference and historical/technical interest. I don't know whether they will provide technical support any longer; keep this in mind if contacting them. This section also contains the user's manual.

Eirikur Hallgrimsson [21030467+], who bought the Kenton kit, writes that it is "a very generic retrofit kit, that requires at least a dozen random wires to be soldered to odd locations on various boards ... It's not pretty. ... [it] does NOT, NOT, NOT support sysex, so it is not compatible with patches that have been stored with Galaxy or some other MIDI librarian." [May 1999] Christopher Now writes, "this is different from the Syntech and the (horrible) JL Cooper MIDI converters, and It works great ... I don't own one - I borrowed it from my old boss who is also a Chroma user. I believe it is functionally identical to the Syntech along with some MIDI diagnostic utility to it. It also transmits MIDI as well as receives it." [March 1999]

The Kenton retrofit installed. Photo by Matt Thomas [21010021].

Erik Vellinga [21010268] writes, "The Kenton kit only receives one MIDI channel at a time, and I know the Chroma can do 16 voices at once through its interface. The Kenton kit does not support/ translate it like the [Syntech/Chroma Cult kit] does into different programs. It also does not have SysEx features like parameter changes, so you must edit the sounds the old fashioned way. But you can send and receive Program Dump, only in the Kenton SysEx format making it non-compatible with the Cult dumped programs found on the Internet." [June 1999]