Synth recommendations

Stomper · Post by **Stomper** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 7:43 pm

Martian Telecom wrote:really, a vco mono synth doesn't sound like a digital poly synth? You just aren't programming hard enough.

you can make similar sounds on all synths but each has its own character and will never sound the same.
its the same with softsynths and even more with analog.

Martian Telecom · Post by **Martian Telecom** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 4:59 am

no way, I have been getting these sweet patches that sound like a k5000s out of my minimoog. You just have to be smart and find the hidden knobs on the front panel.

AK · Post by AK » Sun Oct 12, 2008 9:53 am

Does anyone have the Monomachine?

Heard one live last night and was totally blown away, I know jack about it though apart from what I just heard at their website. I actually thought it was an 8bit 'game machine' type synth until yesterday....

On a side note: I don't believe in getting the 'latest & greatest' synths ( well I might if I could afford it but.... ) I recently bought a Roland JV1080 rack unit for £100 and it's proving to be a wicked source of sounds. Editing is a pain but if you are familiar with Roland stuff of a similar era, it's a breeze. Because it's a sample based synth, you get a lot of aliasing on some sounds but there's some great noises to be made from this, the layering options are huge and there's a pile of wicked efx in there to boot.

As for new synths, I was seriously thinking about that Waldorf Blofeld but I have yet to hear it make anything but 'hard' edged sounds. I'm not sure how I'd implement such material in my music but the price is tempting for the features. As for older synths, I'd rather like to get my hands on a Korg Poly 61.

steevio · Post by **steevio** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 12:24 pm

i can tell you a good synth to avoid; the Alesis Andromeda.
on paper its an amazing synth, pure anlogue signal path with digital control, amazing modulation possibilities, its like having a 16 part multitimbral polyphonic modular analogue synth without all the wires.
but its the most annoyingly fiddly machine to program with fischer-price knobs, unreadable display, and a modulation matrix that was designed by geeks not musicians. it killed my creativity and its the only synth i've ever sold.

rounser · Post by **rounser** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 3:07 pm

Martian Telecom, just wanted to say that you're completely right IMO on both points, and that it's refreshing to see such a realistic opinion expressed amongst all the hype and bollocks.

Thanks for telling it how it is. Gear is the least of our worries.

Martian Telecom · Post by **Martian Telecom** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 9:53 pm

be aware that the poly 61 does not have midi. cool synth otherwise...

AK · Post by AK » Sun Oct 12, 2008 10:05 pm

Martian Telecom wrote:be aware that the poly 61 does not have midi. cool synth otherwise...

Yeah, I think there's a model that has MIDI. Not sure as I type though. I'm no synth expert.

It's not so much the Poly 61 sound I crave, it's those brassy DCO type synth stabs you get with those synths, ala, Poly 800, Korg Poly 6, very full on and there's a nice tone to them which I like.

I'll sort it out, all the best guys. I'm off to get rat arsed....

Martian Telecom · Post by **Martian Telecom** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 3:26 am

The Poly 6 is VCO and sounds huge but still no midi. The Poly 800 came out right as midi came out and it responds to basic note info but only in omni mode. I learned this the hard way years ago when I bought two of them at the same time and could not figure out why I could not get them to play separate patterns. The Poly800mkII came out a bit later and had better midi implementation and swapped out the chorus for a digital delay.

The poly 800 can be had cheap but it doesn't have a warm full sound like a juno 106 or a huge vco sound like a poly 6. It is very thin and reedy sounding. Surgeon used it all over his early stuff, a lot of it was just a poly800 and a 909.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmCmW1EYuo0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1I5Vn1ECwA

I would love to post Badger Bite which was his signature Mill's rip-off anthem but it isn't on youtube. You will notice that he always used the gain on the mixer to over drive the poly 800. that was a cheap way of getting it to take more space in the mix because it was such a small sounding synth.

If you are looking for cheap hardware you might want to look into early Ensoniq stuff like the ESQ-1 or the SQ-80. The SQ-80 was Aril Brikha's main board during his classic period in the 90's. Groove La Chord is nothing but filter modulation routed to polyphonic aftertouch on an SQ-80 being fired by an MPC. They don't cost more than a few hundred dollars these days.

It doesn't really matter what you use, you just have to find a way to make it work for you. My next purchase is going to be whatever old digital synth I can find on Craiglist for a hundred bucks.