keyboard/synth recommendations here

The Korg MS2000 is pretty damn nice too. That's another one I think you ought to consider in that range, depends on how many keys you want though

The Korg MS2000 - THIS THING HAS WAY MORE BLINKY LIGHTS

I don't know anything about keyboards, though.

The Korg MS2000 has a good organ preset sound, and is an excellent synth as far as overall tweekability, saving patches, ease of use. Don't be blinded by the blinky lights, it's a solid synth.

Of course, it's not as meaty and huge as a proper analogue synth but it's way more convenient for touring.

So far, all the keyboards on the Cleft & Cloven stuff have been begged for and borrowed - Microkorg here, a Korg Triton we had for a week, a Nord Lead I borrowed for an afternoon, etc. I'm THIS CLOSE to buying an Ion, though.

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Farfisa Combo Compact, Elka Combo Organ, Hohner Pianet T, Arp 2600, Sequential Circuits Prophet 600, Univox Electronic Piano, Arp String Ensemble, Casio CZ-101, Kurzweil K2000s, Akai-MPC1000. Almost everything is in need of cleaning/fixing of some sort, some of it is borrowed from friends.

my dream? A Wurlitzer 200a. I just don't have the space (or money) now. But I absolutely love the sound and feel more then anything other then an actual piano.

not that I'm a great pianist, quite the contrary, but there's nothing like playing a real piano.

Is the CZ-101 the one with the cheapo VOCODER?

The Nord Electro is, I swear, a great delight to play. But for the money it costs it's more sensible to get a Roland XP-30 or something in that vein. The Roland sample-based patch system of a few years ago still sounds awesome, and it's *easy* to find them second hand and quite cheap. Some people doesn't like Roland that much, anyway.

Buy a MIDI-to-CV converter and a cable with an S-Trig connector. Sweetness follows.

http://www.vintagesynth.org/misc/virusb.jpg

I really love our KORG Mono/Poly which is a vicious beast and a bit annoying but such crunchy zaps and swoops.

My favorite synth of all time is the Roland SH101, we've got two and they rule, it's just such a good sound and so well laid out. Nice gurgles. You can sequence it by running DIN synch through a 707, a pain in the ass but it works.

on the synth hospital angle, my ARP 2600 is missing a power supply cable (a weird looking custom job), AND its dedicated, separate keybaord unit. I have the big modular vertical half, but no juice and no keys. Should I despair?

I am not fundamentally opposed to virtual analogue, but I have gotten very sick of the sound of JP-8000, MS-2000, MicroKorg, and Access Virus individually. Especially the JP-8000. I can't suggest these to anyone in good conscience. I have not used the Alesis Ion, but Alesis gear is invariably cheaply built. They're fine for a $100 noise gate or $150 drum machine, but I wouldn't buy anything too serious from them.

For acoustic/sample-based sounds, stay away from the Rolands. All of them. There is a nasty, tinny quality to the sound, and this applies to all of their sample-based instruments from the JV-1080 on, because they all use the same engine. It will sound okay to you in the store, and you will be cursing it in a few months. I have not used the Nord Electro, so I can't weigh in on that. I strongly suggest a sampler and a few good CD's for this purpose. Go with software (Kontakt) or an Emu. I think Akai puts some kind of aural exciter circuitry in their output stage that gets obnoxious on anything besides drums.

Moogs - The Mini is fabulous. Most of the others are not, in my opinion. The Prodigy, Rogue, and MG-1 can make one or two nice bass sounds, but the brand name pushes their price above value. The MicroMoog is trash, alng with the Opus-3 and Satellite. There is no distinctive "Moog sound", contrary to popular myth, as differing filters etc went into them all. Hell, no two Minis sound exactly alike.

Underrated/priced analogues:

Yamaha SY-1 or SY-2 - These things are fucking brutal.

Kawai K3 - yummy sample + analogue filter pads/leads

Akai AX60 - rips a Juno to pieces

Siel DK-600 - most other Siels are trash, and this thing's internal circuitry is fucking terrifying to look at.. still a nice deal

Ensoniq ESQ-1 - great modulation options, sample+analogue filter.. look for the SQ-1, actually.. it has more waveforms

Ensoniq Mirage, Sequential Prophet 2000, Emu Emax, and just about any other sampler with analogue filters will bring you lots of joy.

I haven't toyed with any new hardware synths in a while. In the software category, I am enamoured with how effective the Korg Legacy Collection (MS-20 including FX version, Polysix, Wavestation) runs. The Arturia stuff (ModularMoog, Mini, CS-80) sounds great but I've had crashing issues with all of them on more than one machine. They seem to be more concerned with pretty graphics than efficient code.

Kontakt is fabulous.

drool that looks like so much fun. Not sure if the sounds live up to the originals but if it did I would be so on that.

I have a jp-8000 and its kinda cool but mostly I just use it as a controller. Kontakt would be my weapon of choice right now but I bought Reactor sessions to save on cash. Its interesting and the library has a ton of cool stuff but what I really wanted was a killer sampler and that i dont have at the moment.

But also, there's no need to wait for the midi/cv converter to start playing around with the inputs on the back... it's especially cool to run another synthesizer into the keyboard input, then you can add a ring-type distortion to the sound, and even route the resulting output back into the synth again a bit for some extra distortion... and there are of course more fun combinations, all depending on what it is you feed the moog and how you tweak the filters & mod controls.

apparently trent reznor ran much of his drums through one to give it them unique, hard to replicate sounds.

as far as the power, you should be able to get the fixed easily, no? there's one guy near philly who is THE man apparently for all arp repairs. One day I'll bring him mine and give him a few hundred bucks and get it up to shape:

http://www.discretesynthesizers.com/arptronics/Arptronics.htm

The Moog Prodigy is a lot of fun, and has amazing bass tones. It has some pretty sick leads as well. That said, I wouldn't pay market price for it these days...

The Alesis q8 has a good piano, a couple great electric pianos, and some okay organ sounds. The rest of the patches sound pretty terrible/useless. I don't play it very often because just accidentally playing one of the cheesy new age patches is enough to ruin my day.

The dx7-fdII is my newest synth, and it's great fun. Lots of metallic sounds, and a really usable keyboard. Rhodes patches are pretty cool.

My Microkorg got stolen while my band was in scotland. That was a really fun synth, although my fingers tripped around on it. I've heard/seen the Micro a lot recently. Q & Not U used it on Power. Blur used it a bunch on Think Tank. Seems to be pretty popular. I've heard that the new alesis micron is supposed to be much better than the korg, but I have yet to play it.

Right now, I'm drooling over: Akia AX60, SH101, Jupiter 8.

I have been enjoying the Arturia Mini-Moog softsynth. That Tassmann is pretty cool too.

I think the one synth that has yet to be mentioned, and it is kind of funny considering the initial post, is the SCI Pro-One. They are still going for about 450 usd, they sound great, have a lot of mod routings, trig in... A great little synth, Juan Atkins would not have a career if it were not for this little devil.

Another synth series that is completely over looked are the EMU romplers. They are not cool, but it is telling that every single producer in scratch magazine have at least one module in their rack. I just traded a s3000xl for a PK6 proteus Keys this weekend and I am completely shocked at how much bang for the buck you get with these units. Huge sample sets, great kits, a lot of bread and butter, a ton of z-plane filters, huge polyphony, decent synth keyboard with nice aftertouch, really deep programing(almost as deep at the Morpheus; lag processor, math functions, huge mod matrix, multiple envelopes all available on a per layer basis but sans the function generators) a ton of outs, and to top it off they go for next to nothing second hand.

They are not cool, and you are not going to twiddle three knobs and get rippin analogue tonez d00d, but if you are willing to invest time into programming they are probably the single best synth buy on the market. I can guarentee you that you can pull out of the emu's that people will never be able to guess where they came from. If you have a good understanding of subtractive synthesis and modulation functions you can pull crazy noises out of these boxes. Completely under-rated and the presents don't even scratch the surface.

Thinking of getting a cheap 90's ROMpler, and I can't decide between Roland 1080/2080/1010 and E-mu Proteus 1000/2000/2500. Seems like the pianos and "real" instrument sounds on the Rolands are better, but the synth sounds on the E-mu are better. Anybody have these and can advise me?

It has to have a good piano, though, as one of the main reasons I'm getting this is so that my wife can play our MIDI keyboard without having to hook up the computer.

My Ensoniq TS-10 is rather good at Rhodes and organ sounds. Not too bad at piano either, although I have heard better in that case.