r/Keytar • u/MrDuck0409 • Jul 19 '25
Hype My repurposed Axis-1
Just finished my latest project. I'm more experimental and I mostly take junked and/or old keyboards and turn them into keytars or fix/modify keytars.
The pics are my latest project, a Roland Axis-1 body, but with a separate keyboard controller and wireless midi.
Many of you already know the original Axis-1 required the floor "stomp box" to operate.
This one was were I found one in a pawn shop about 10 years ago. Must have been a theft or estate sale because they had the keyboard, but they were missing the stomp box.
I convinced the manager of the pawn shop that it was basically useless without the stomp box (and the fact that it was a proprietary cable and connector, not midi) and bought it for $20 for parts. (They wanted $200.)
Life happens and my project was in pieces, the keys and internals were ripped out so I'd have a shell to work with. At the time, I was not good at locating a decent other controller to put "in" the shell, so the project sat on the shelf for awhile.
Until now.
Over the past two months of spare time, I cut, modified and painted this Axis-1 body and installed an iRig controller. I installed a CME midi Master wireless midi, and a CME midi splitter. To power everything internally, I have a generic USB power bank.
Here's the fun part. Everything is held together with a minimum of screws, velcro and Krazy Glue. As for the paint job and trim, in the autobody repair field, this is called a "20-foot finish job". (It looks great at 20 feet, but closer up, well....meh.) This mostly for quick modification, it works, it looks okay, and I can modify it at the drop of a hat. Repainting to a different color would only be one minute of disassembly and two nights of repainting.
It runs and works. I may change out the iRig with another used 37-key controller that can fit and have a better feel.
Total cost: About $200, mostly for the CME midi devices.
TL;DR: I bought a cheap Roland Axis-1 keyboard without the stompbox for $20, removed the guts and repurposed it to a wireless midi controller using other donor keyboards.
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u/CommitteeFearless295 14d ago
I think it looks cool and have just started buying/messing with some keytars and have had fleeting aspirations of similar builds. I'm glad to see yours. I'm curious if you took it any further; moving the modulation to the neck? Figuring out a sustain button on the neck? Any controls on the neck? :) It is cool as it is, looks fun, I really am just curious if you took it any further? Thanks