Your all-time favorite or first synth...

[luke-chen]

Hello fellow softies, just thought of starting a geeky thread for us to share personal stories of our all-time favorite or first synth. I started out on my friend's roland d-20...I remember it had an 8-track sequencer + 1 drum track, a 2-line text display and editing patches was like scrubbing the toilet floor with a toothbrush...but boy, it was such fun

And how about those synth brochures picked up from Swee Lee, City Music and Yamaha. Many of my weekends were spent just flipping those brochures and (re)reading each printed word from start till end for the n+1 th time hahahahaha

- luke

 

[soft]

Hey Luke!

Mine was the Roland D20 too! Ha..haa.. I actually got it from Raymond Music at Specialist Centre. Imagine lugging the whole box and taking a bus home! I was like 17/18 then.

Some of the synth that I managed to get my hands was the Roland Juno 60 cos I was playing in a community centre band, Casio CZ, FZ series cos I was working part time at City Music. While at the same time, some of the Yamaha SY keys and RY drums because I was studying at Yamaha!

 

[luke-chen]

Hi James

I can picture the sweaty palms and the oozing warmth in the stomach on your bus ride home hahahahaha

The QY-10 and RY-10 later made their appearances into my life (after the D-20) too. Another friend had a V-50 and I also remember a lot of bus rides lugging stuff to each other's homes...and ya, I think I was also 17/18 as well hahahahahahaha

 

[Cheez]

I couldn't afford one until much later. The first I've played must have been the Roland JX-3P with the PG-200 editing module during secondary school days (in the school band). Then I got my first keyboard - a portasound (PSR - can't ever remember the model number, but is has got 5-6 small rubber buttons for pitch bend). The first real synth I actually owned was the SY77.

Since then, things start to change quite a bit. I upgraded very quickly to SY99 (my second synth), started getting controllers from money earned by giving part-time secondary school tuition (Roland A70 with E-mu piano modules etc). Then came the Roland JV series which was quite a revolution (I got the JV1080 not too long after it came out). After that, bought, sold etc (including Roland e70, Roland RD700). I remember carrying the Roland e70 in a softcase when I was taking buses - and it's not light. Now using Yamaha S90, but mainly into softsynth and softsamplers. Roland A70 still around - can't bear to leave it.

Have played and performed on quite a bit of synths, enough to give me familiarity for them: including Korg T1, Korg Trinity, Yamaha EX7, Yamaha CP series, Alesis QS8, Casio PX series, Roland D-50, Roland FP4, Roland RD150 etc. Of course, have tinkled around with many others (almost all of them) - because I believe a keyboardist should be familiar with as many keyboards as possible so he can play in different situations when any keyboard is thrown at him.

My favorite after playing so many of them - must have been the Roland RD700GX (which I don't own ). Joy to play, easy to control in live situations, quick layering and splitting, great sounds, expandable.

 

[luke-chen]

Hi Cheez, the SY99 is a VERY respectable 2nd synth by any reckoning!! It always reminds me of the star destroyer

Always wished my secondary school had an electronic music kinda ECA (would have been so nice to have access to a tascam 4-track portastudio) but I remember one time during teacher's day where the school loaned a Yamaha DX7 for our concert...that day was something!! hahahahaha

 

[Cheez]

I was able to use the JX-3P because my school military band has a combo band (that was like more than 20 years ago!). Talking about 4-track recorders, I used to have a Fostex 4-track which I used to record with. Fun. Those were the pre-DAW days...

Yeah! DX7 is one of those legends!

Actually, my first keyboard was the Casio calculator keyboard - which I'm sure James has one sitting in his closet (right James??? Sure brings back fond memories... ).

 

[joel68]

My first synth was...Juno 60... and moved on to DX7-FD2......also I had a Casio VL tone...even though it is small, it had the features of monophonic synth sounds...

 

[zzzxtreme]

my first keybord was a 37 note casiotone
i now own motif xs6, but i must say my favourite that i owned was Wavestation.

 

[zerosoul79]

cool

cool thread

My firsts are organs atcually.. remember having the standard yamaha with coloured buttons to push up (green, yellow, red etc) circa 1986 before I got myself a yamaha HC 2 organ in '90.

Very first synth xp-10 roland..bought it with my late dad when swee lee was at taka for a while

soon went to the Korg Triton Le's and Yamaha Motifs..

Now? still using my extreme and an x50 for those lighter moments.. I need to venture into soft synths asap.

 

[zzzxtreme]

[QUOTE=zerosoul79

hey there, how's the sounds of X50 compared to extreme? (64MB rom vs 32MB rom)

i sometimes play Arturia CS80V soft synth for that blade runner/80s nostalgia

 

[zerosoul79]

hi zzzextreme..

honestly x50 is ok.. my ears not that snob enuff hehe to tell much difference though although I do feel the extreme still cuts it better...

how bout the m50? tempted to get that.. coz i could use a sequencer which is of course not present in the x50..

 

[luke-chen]

the m50 got my eyes wide open too...and what a friendly and considerate price!

 

[varian]

New post? First synth? Luke Chen? Haha, hello from across the seas my friend! Am hunting on soft for a used P250 or equivalent digital stage piano for a friend and thought i'd wave hello.

I don't remember what my first (single-keyboard) electone model was, but i was too short to reach the pedals. Then after that came my beloved B-405, and i found photographs!

http://www.xs4all.nl/~wkoopman/electone/details/b-405.htm

It got me hooked on music, and although the pictures probably indicate otherwise, those memories really don't seem too far away. Still music to me.

As for the M50, i think it sounds great for the price. Don't quite like the touch as much but that's definitely a personal preference thing.

Cheers,
Varian

 

[zzzxtreme]

as far as i know, the M50 has exactly the same samples as in the M3. so it's all good

 

[SoNiCbRaT]

I love geek thread!

My first digital synth was Roland XP-10 as well... I remember using cakewalk to sequence it. I went broke becoz of it and I milked it till the last drop before going for Roland EG101 and KORG Triton ST88. It was the Triton that made me a KORG fan. My first analog synth was... hmmm... a bunch of mini-transistor radios. Then it was the Roland SH101.

All time favourite... Doepfer A100 system 1!!!

 

[bongman]

I had a Yamaha V50 which is a 4-operator FM workstation synth,
a Boss DR550 drum machine and followed by an Ensoniq VFX.

The Yamaha V50 was an under-rated synth at its time,
released at the same time as the Korg M1. The Performance
patches which comprises of single patches, gives a full
and big sound; however due to the limits of FM synthesis, by then
with wave table sample synthesis, the V50 didn't get the status like DX7


The Ensoniq VFX has many lush atmospheric pads but the OS
did not serve the hardware well enough and created many bugs.
Too bad, now it can't even power up.

 

[widdly]

First synth was a Korg Poly800. You had to load the presets using a cassette tape. It had a really annoying habit of forgetting all its sounds when it received a midi start message, which meant you have to unplug the midi when you pressed play in the sequencer then plug it in once the sequencer started. I sequenced it with Midisoft Studio on a 486. I also used a software sampler that could play a single wav file at a time. All that went through some guitar pedals into a tascam portastudio 4 track.

My current fave is the Kurzweil k2000r. It's crazy the kind of programming you can do with this one.

 

[zzzxtreme]

[QUOTE=widdly

widdley, sell all your stuff and get a PC361
PC361 is a "K2700" without sampler, plus their much awaited VA-1, plus double the power of KDFX, plus much improved VAST

 

[widdly]

Yeah those look pretty crazy, but if I had to sell everything for just one synth, I'd be going for one of those Roland V-synth's. They look like the most interesting new synths at the moment. If I won toto I'd get a Kyma and a Buchla 200e

 

[bongman]

First synth was a Korg Poly800. You had to load the presets using a cassette tape. It had a really annoying habit of forgetting all its sounds when it received a midi start message, which meant you have to unplug the midi when you pressed play in the sequencer then plug it in once the sequencer started. I sequenced it with Midisoft Studio on a 486. I also used a software sampler that could play a single wav file at a time. All that went through some guitar pedals into a tascam portastudio 4 track.

My current fave is the Kurzweil k2000r. It's crazy the kind of programming you can do with this one.

Oh? I bought a Korg Poly800 after the Ensoniq VFX.
The Poly800 died after I forgot to take the batteries
out of the synth. Now it's like a souvenir.