Underappreciated Synths?

Mo-Kay said:
Yamaha DJX. Cheap and good..worth every pennt

hell yeah - i had one of these beasts a few years ago. cheap and good. lots of hands on control for a cheap beginners keyboard/synth.
 
Response to surpise Juno106

When Roland brings back an updated version of a classic then it really isn't completely underrated. I love mine and it fits right in.
 
ARP Quartet. We've been on something of a synth-spree this year, which saw the main studio acquire:

Korg Micro-Preset
Arp Odyssey ("White-face" Mk I)
Arp Odyssey (Mk III)
Oberheim OB8 (midi)
Arp Axxe (Mk I - arrived yesterday!)
Arp Axxe (Mk II)
Another Juno 6 and JX3P (heh...we like to have two of everything...well, these two were free, so we can't really complain - and the JX came with a PG200!)

...and the aforementioned Quartet. A re-badged Siel Orchestra - ostensibly a shitty little string machine with four (slight) variations (one of which doesn't work on ours!). Cost £50 on eBay, and it's seen more recording time than all of the others put together. Just sits in a mix in a beautiful way which nothing else we've got even comes close to matching.
 
Here's a few

From the additive realm, how about the Kurzweil K150 module and the Kawai K5/5000.

Also remember tweaking the wavetable harmonics for the user waves in a Kawai K3 using an old Atari and having a bit of fun.

Spent many an hour re-reading the brochure for the Octave-Plateau Voyetra 8, but never got any time using one.

So many obscure synths... :rolleyes:
 
Korg Polyphonic Ensemble PE-1000

Underappreciated because it was polyphonic in 1976. And Korg don't even acknowledge it on their site or in their history timelimes. The sound of 180 discrete transistor oscillators all at once was mind-bending. The filter pedal (traveler) and the detune were awesome.

Roland RS-09 organ/strings

Used as an effects pedal, via its external audio input, the best chorus processor Roland ever released, bar none.

Korg Poly-61

Without doubt the most undervalued, unique sounding synth of the early 80's. Way better than JX-3P or Juno Alpha/106 etc or any comparable synth.
 
I always thought that the Kawai K1 and K4 were great synths that were underappreciated. At various times I had a K1, K1r, K1m (still have that one), K4, and K4r. I do ambient electronic and new age music and those synths were great for that, especially pads, strings, choirs, airy sounds, bells, and sci-fi fx.
Like most synths, the presets were so-so. I did a lot of programming on them and came up with some awesome sounds that rivaled the popular synths of that time like the Yamaha DX7, Korg M1, and Roland D50. I now have a Kawai K5000r, which is in a whole different league. The K5000 was also not as well recieved by the market in general, but is highly regarded by knowlegeable synth users - especially for very original synthetic ambient type sounds.
 
Hands Down !!! Yeah Baby !!!

SY-77 AND SY-99...........SY-99 USED ON

Boys 2 Men "End of the road" track and most others on that CD.

What else to say.


PS dont forget the TX-802, Rack version of the DX-7II
 
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my yamaha sy22, definitely underrated. A helluva controller (aftertouch, even dynamics, nice wheels), just missing filters. But since it's one of the first wavetable synths ever I think they didn't know exactly what to build into it just yet. The 12 bit samples sound good in wavetable use, bad as raw samples. I love the pad sounds, LOVE the configurability, combined with softsynths (went all out a while back and bought some biggies, plus have all of the NI older ones like b3 and fm7 which is nice) and it's own sounds plus my korg digital piano as a piano controller for my NI akoustik piano 1.1 I have a grrrrreat keys setup.

by the way, I bought the sy22 used for $100. line outs don't work, but headphone out plus y adapter works fine with no perceptable hiss or distortion.

Now I just need to practice more!

I know the sy22 is undervalued ($150 often used now), considering it's potential and professional quality I'd mark it as a dx-7 competitor but with a very different concept of creating tones (wavetable+fm versus more advanced fm ONLY in the dx7).

Cheers
 
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