Deep Synth Thoughts

Hello from synthland. A lot's happened since I last wrote, well, really just one big thing specifically — I moved (back) to the land of perma-wet (UK). One benefit of this was being forced to sell or store much of the ol' synth load, which wasn't that much to begin with (hic!), but is always a good exercise. I've been enjoying a maxi-minimalist setup in my new space and doing my absolute utmost to be frugal. But alas all things must come to an end.  With my new environs (not to mention to pain of direct to customer US tariffs) it's fitting that the first new unit in recent months is actually a 100% British device, as English as clotted cream and queuing: the MKSREC 1 12-bit Drum Sampler (aka a new version of the EMU SP-1200). Ok, no... this thing is about as English as air conditioning; Jimi Hendrix going to London to make it big is a better analogy, but it's homegrown nonetheless. Plus the MKSREC1 is officially the best version of the SP-series ever made, hand...

A good chunk of this blog has been dedicated to older or at least "post-new" stuff, but never fear, my GAS keeps my new gear purchasing function working just fine. One recent acquisition that has now become a personal fav is the Moog Messenger.  I've been in contact with all the various iterations of 21st Century Moog (Old School, Grandmother, and Sub25), and I can't say any were particularly mind-blowing. (I'm leaving out the Mother ecosystem synths here, I love those.) The Old School had a bass-heavy, dull high-end sound (plasticky, for lack of a better word) that I've come to feel is the hallmark "flavor" of modern Moog. The Grandmother definitely sounded "older" but was also flawed by a bizarre filter gain reduction design where the volume dropped when you opened the filter up past a certain point (completely independent of resonance; check out Tony Allgood’s excellent modification write-up here ). Sadly, they carried this filter desig...

Finally caved and got one of these. Tariffs are about to rain hell on the synth markets and while I've traditionally been very anti-B*, here was one synth where I didn't feel like it was really treading on the toes of anyone currently making products. Well, it does kind of sort of tread on the Waldorf M but in such a non-1:1 way that you can't just write it off as a copycat clone.  So here's my brief take on it and, in reality, a simple Wave vs M take (Quantum gets to sit this one out). The M has a ton more features so I'm just sticking to the basics. Also worth noting that the 3rd Wave should also be in this mix but I’ve only played one briefly and anyway the basic feature overlap should be pretty obvious.  Pros : -grit is great (seems to be the same as Waldorf M in MW mode, as Starsky Carr showed, but still feels crunchier?). The stepped modulation that comes with the OG oscillator mode is also very authentically crap (crap meaning good). -LFO in OG mode is awesom...

Things have been relatively quiet over here in synthland recently--it's hard to find the desire to write about synths while your country crumbles around you. But let's pretend none of that is happening for just a second, mm'K?. Throughout synth history there are related synths that, "on paper" purport to be the same thing internally, but in fact sound very different. Think the brighter oscs and more aggressive filter on the MKS-80 rev4 versus rev5, or the slower envelopes on the CS-15 (compared to the 5/10/30). Sometimes these things are just good fodder for the anoraks to one up themselves down the pub; sometimes these things actually result in real differences in sonic potential. Today's piece is about the latter. The Microbrute (mB) is a stripped-down, diminutive version of the Minibrute (Mb; read my ode to the OG brute  here ) with a couple of obvious "balancing" features, i.e., the CV ins/outs, and the legit sequencer geared toward live use. It...

Happy new year folks! New year, new me? Nope. In fact, for my first post of 2025, I thought I would dredge up a 5-year-old thread I made on a forum that I no longer frequent. The contents of the post are still accurate, the only real (a very real) difference is that not long afterward vintage synth prices went skyhigh during the COVID pandemic thanks to homebound investors with nowhere else to put their money. Prices have come down somewhat since and there's still plenty of good vintage synths to get for decent prices but forget about every buying some things for less than multiple 10s of Ks. Anyway, on with the post:  Decoding vintage synth seller lingo: a user guide Given how increasingly difficult it is to navigate the vintage synth market these days, particularly for first time buyers, I thought it would be helpful to provide an extensive, if not exhaustive, list of terms used by sellers  that one might run across in places like  eBay  or Reverb, and their actual...

I've mentioned before that I have a bad habit of rebuying things.. twice... thrice... quadrice?! Ninety-nine percent of the time said item doesn't stick around for long--my gut was never wrong, it was just my memory that was failing. Well here's an exception to the rule that is worth celebrating: my third time's a charm go around with the OG Korg MS-20 MK1.  MS-20s have always been a perma-cool and low-rent DGAF synth. Scraping and abrasive, they were the counterpoint to the Rolands and Moogs in the heyday of techno and then the indie-electro resurgence in the '00s. It's hard to believe that at one point they were commanding upwards of $3500 in the mid-aughts, but then they were the perfect synth for a leather-jacketed johnny come lately with zero synthesis experience looking for maximum on-stage poseur potential. Turn up the resonance and turn the filter and your neck to neck with the guitarist in terms of loudness.  I was never particularly interested in that...