Check out the Siel Orchestra 2.
Essentially it's an Arp Quartet.
100% analog , old and cheap (<300E)
For strings and pads it should be a good tool.

Read this:

http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html

Should give you all the info on how to understand and tackle your problems in a low cost way.

check http://www.ucapps.de

dunno bout your knowledge in electronics and soldering skills, but basically you can build yourself a midi controller with just the things you need.

site may look a bit confusing at the beginning.

The Return Of The Swamp Thing

never saw the 1st one though but its pretty bad..

Never experienced that particular problem although I did have some other technical issues.
Technics are easy to repair.
Check this guy on youtube, he has lots of videos about specific problems and how to repair the 1210s.

http://www.youtube.com/user/viperfrank

For those without tv, arte has arte +7 which allows you to rewatch some of their programs online.
The whole Berlin special is online atm if anyone is interested.

http://plus7.arte.tv/fr/1697480.html

basic introduction to tape recording: http://arts.ucsc.edu/ems/music/equipment/analog_recorders/Analog_Recorders.html a friend 'gave' me his teac tascam 32b. gotta say i was very excited about puttin mixes through but after some try outs i got disappointed, too much noise when tryin to get to a dece...

don't trust the guy at the shop, bought recently a new mac as well and that problem the rme 400 has with the fw chip used on some macs happened to me as well.workaround on the new macbook pro is to get an express card 34 that adds fw 400 to the laptop. for more info read the loooong story on the rme...