Cheap synths

[Todd Madson <crash@waste.org>]

Well, I'm primarily a guitarist but have a knack for tracking down
cheap synths.

I bought a Casio MT-240 10 years ago for $90 because it was riddled
with PPG Waveterm samples.  It's MIDIable and once you process it 
through my Lexicon gear you'd never know it was a $90 keyboard I 
bought at a discount store.  We used to do juvenile pranks with 
these keyboards in the store years ago, ask if you want what we did.

Gear score number two: when a keyboardist friend of mine bought a 
Kurzweil 88 key weighted board and Korg M1R and some Roland synth,
he let his Korg Poly 61 rot in his basement.  I told him I was 
learning keys so he let me have his old Poly 61.  It's got that
eighties sound, a great arpeggiator, and can be used for a bunch
of pads and stuff for drones and loops.  Again, I process it to 
death to get relatively modern sounds out of it.  I like using the
arpeggiator with delays to create hypnotic loops.

Gear score number three:  I got a Yamaha CS1X synth late last summer
for about $400.  It was the floor display model and it was in great
shape.  They tossed in a MIDI interface and I was ready to rock (sort
of).  This one actually has knobs and pretty decent sounds all by it-
self.  This one also has a great arpeggiator and a lot of analog and
chimey digital bell sounds as well, and samples from the wavestation,
PPG and Moog/Prophet sounds.  Great for drones, loops and atmospheres.
It even has great lead sounds.  A good deal.  The most I've spent on
a synth so far.

I'm hoping someday to find some other synths at basement prices.  I
was keeping an eye on the Ensoniq Fizmo because it was being discontinued
and it was as cheap as $200-400 at local stores.  It's a real waveform
synth ala PPG and had some hypnotic pads with great animation.  I hear
it's a bear to program but I don't care if I can get it cheap.  I was 
probably driving the salespeople at a local Mars nuts with my beehive
of ooze and drones with goofy solos on the top (faux digital flute?)

Hey!  One mans Casio is another mans Synclavier.  I should mention that
the sounds I go for are not the typical bar-band-cover-tune sounds, but
giant aluminum locus waves and reverberations.  What works for me might
make you sick.

Now, I have yet to find something that will play great retro sounds, 
modern eerie sounds, will let you sample and record stuff to discs,
make stuff sound like an old record with scratches and also sound like
a symphony orchestra string section (with cinemascope sound quality)
but I'm sure someday something like that will exist.