An unusual special feature of this instrument is the "playright mode", which switches the right keyboard section to pentatonic tone scales, those vary with the actual chord (selected with the left hand) to force the player to play what establishment considers harmonious (a bit like an Omnichord). The cheesy single finger accompaniments are quite over- orchestrated and thus less versatile. The percussion is made from simple low resolution samples and resembles much Bontempi GT 759. There is also a MIDI- out jack and a simple sequencer with data storage on audio cassettes. The preset sound and rhythm selection is a bit awkward, since you have to press buttons multiple times to step through them, and the demos appear between the rhythms. Initially the PCB stank badly of epoxy.

The Amstrad Fidelity CKX100 seems to be extremely rare and likely was only released in Spain (I bough mine from eBay), since the manual, box and warranty card is in Spanish and I neither saw the CKX100 nor any other Amstrad keyboards elsewhere yet. The company Amstrad was known in 1980th for cheap and often poor sounding stereo sets and the famous Amstrad CPC 464/ 664/ 6128 home computer series. In Germany their HiFi and computer stuff was sold under the Schneider brand.

main features:

• 49 midsize keys
• 2 built-in speakers (sound bright and fairly bassless, stereo)
• main voice polyphony 8 notes (only 3 with accompaniment, 1 in trio mode)
• 10 semi- OBS preset sounds {elec piano, synth 1, guitar, flute, bells | brass, synth 2, harpso, organ, strings}
• 28 preset rhythms {r & b, hi-tec, pop, swing 1, dixie, samba, march 1 | rock 1, disco, funk, swing 2, hoedown, salsa, march 2 | rock 2, reggae 1, hip-hop, bounce, country, bossa, waltz 1 | boogie, reggae 2, heavy metal, ballad, barock, pop-cha, waltz 2} (selected in a sequence by 7 group + 1 select button)
• volume & separate rhythm accomp volume slider
• vibrato & sustain button
• trio mode ("auto harmony" button)
• single finger accompaniment (manual chord mode with rhythm off)
• "playright" mode (switches keyboard to pentatonic scales selected by the current single finger chord)
• tempo +/- buttons (21 steps)
• rhythm fill-in button
• keyboard drum kit mode only during demos {whistle, hand clap, dog, cowbell, bell} (each 3 pitches)
• many orange, green & yellow LEDs
• main voice sound is based on 2 layered static digital waveforms with independent simple envelope; with some low tones mild sample aliasing noise gets audible. The sound is stereo; the 3rd keyboard octave is panned to the center, lower notes only to the left channel and higher notes only to the right. Percussion is made from thin sounding low resolution samples.
• complex multi- chip hardware (crystal clocked):
• CPU= "8J2, HD63B03XP, Japan" (64 pin DIL)
• IC8 (sound IC)= "ST, M114S, 28832" (40 pin DIL)
• IC5 (RAM?)= "KM6264AL-10, 844, Korea" (28 pin DIL)
• IC4 (EPROM) ="VER. 2.22  4D37" (28 pin DIL)
• IC7 (EPROM) ="VER. 11.5  19R7" (28 pin DIL)
• IC9 "KIA7769P, 8L" (16 pin DIL)
• 8 KByte RAM, 48 KByte ROM
• simple sequencer (polyphonic record/ playback with accompaniment, no edit)
• 7 long and complex orchestrated demo melodies (those mute their main voice during manual play)
• jacks for AC- adapter, phones, line out, tape data saving, MIDI out