flacid Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 I've been getting into the hardware side over the last 6 months messing around with a few different synths and drum machines. Yesterday I went into a music store and played with the Electribe production station and could have probably sat there for hours just fucking around with different noises. Once I've finished my current projects I will probably be getting one, unless you guys can recommend something else... What's the most fun (not necessarily 'best') piece of hardware you've played with/own? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nil Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 Monome 256, definitely. But I sold it. I couldn't find a way to use any more, and the money funded my then much needed new set of monitors, so I don't regret it. I was lent a 303 years ago, it was fun but (then) a pain to program. I'm considering building a small modular rig around Intellijel Atlantis module, to pair it with my Analog 4 and Five12 Numerology. I'm pretty sure it's going to be an amazing, immensely enjoyable rig to jam :) I'd love to play an Ms20 and an 808. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sweepstakes Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 Tough choice. Depends on my mood, really, but probably the Shruthi-1 and a tie between the Octatrack and MPC-1000. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Chesney Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 I have only kept fun things. Sold all not so fun things. A good synth with a neat workflow, great sound and has surprising twists and quirky results are the most fun. Paired with a sequencer that is intuitive and quick is alot of fun. An example of this is the CS30 sequenced with the A4. Paired with a good beat from the MD and i'm away. Most of the time the recorded results are far from good but the fun doing it cannot be captured. https://youtu.be/h-_DPb-Uf3M Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucas Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 I don't own that much stuff but here are the ones with which I have the best relationship: - Electribe SX1 : my first hardware gear. At the beginning I thought I would just use it for making drafts for tracks or occasionally use its synth parts for recording but finally i'm still using it a lot and it ended up being the beat machine for my hardware tracks. I know there are a lot of other drum machines which are way more powerful but I'll be fine keeping using my ol' Electribe before I'm rich enough to think about an Elektron or something else. I thought you can't reach a too decent sound quality with it but as a matter of fact you can, especially if you use its four outs cleverly. Dunno about the other Electribes though but I don't think I'd like an EMX that much, for synths sounds i think it's too basic. - TX81Z : acquired recently but I can already say I'll keep it for a long time, I've had a very good intuition since the beginning and it keeps delivering, yet staying mysterious (FM is still very mysterious to me lolz). It sounds great and it's performance mode (which basically allows you to combine several patches together in different ways) makes it pretty powerful. It's limited to 8 polyphony voices but it's still enough for it to be used as more than one instrument in an hardware config. - maybe I should talk about my mixer. without it my hardware setup would be nothing. so exciting to twiddle all those little buttons. before I owned it I never knew how pleasing it is to quickly send a snare hit into a fat reverb at the right moment (as an example). I have a Soundcraft GB2R but I guess any decent mixer or that price range would do the trick for me at the moment. PS: on the other side of things, I keep insulting my Yamaha CS1X and MPC500 on a regular basis. They're not bad boys but they often frustrate me. Those two are the ones I'll replace as soon as I can (probably with a MPC1000 which seems to be way better and the CS1X with an entry level rack format polysynth, with a decent amount of knobs). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digman Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 Teenage Engineering OP-1 is incredibly fun to mess around with Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Chesney Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 Nice Antape. I have still kept my Electribe Esmk2. It was/is really quick and fun and I tried to upgrade to a better sampler and kept buying and selling until I got enough money for a Machinedrum. The MD is the only Sampler/drum machine that has the same fun feel but obviously it's infinitely more versatile. I also started with a CS1x. Gave that to a local kid last year. I still think it sounds good but was a pain to get into the nitty gritty. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chunky Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 fenix ii Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d-a-m-o Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 - shruthi 1 is really good and versatile - Anushri is lot of fun (small sequencer, extra lofi drum machine, open to the modular world) - microbrute Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimpyLoo Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 of all the nice gear i've owned, demo'd or borrowed...the most enjoyable bit of gear I've ever played was the Boss SP-303 (aka "Dr. Sample") It's simple it's beautiful in this plain, austere sorta way it has really nice pillowy yet rubbery pads the 'vinyl sim' compressor is amazing and i've never heard another compressor do quite what it does it's got this dusty, dirty sound...essentially the sound of early hip-hop it's limited in this wonderful way that--much like cassette 4-tracks--forces you to be creative the lo-fi modes on it have this beautifully crispy, filthy sound My SP-303 is dead but I plan to replace it as soon as I have the bones to do so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Chesney Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 Weird, I had a 404 and hated the shit out of it. Love how everyone has such different needs and likes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danny O Flannagin Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 Weird, I had a 404 and hated the shit out of it. Love how everyone has such different needs and likes. The 303 has a lot less memory but throws some dirty on samples, which is something the 404 doesn't do. Anyway, in my experience, Korg is very good at making products that are fun to use while also having some depth. I love my pocketable monotron delay. Microkorg is also really intuitive and the monotribe is great at making crazy space sounds Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent Member Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 I've gone through a bunch of stuff that I loved, but the Teenage Engineering OP1 is definitely the most immediately fun instrument I've come across. Edit: I totally forgot the rush I got from doing tracks in OctaMED on my Amiga 500 when I started out, ahhh.. such nostalgic. Forever chasing those lost feels. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LimpyLoo Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 Weird, I had a 404 and hated the shit out of it. Love how everyone has such different needs and likes. given how awesome your current gear is i'm curious what sorta stuff you've gotten rid of any noteworthy bits? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest skibby Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 i almost got an enjoyable piece of gear the other day, but some jerk bought it before me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest kymppinetti Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 must be akai mpc 500, for now. i'm selling it atm. getting 1000 one on friday. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Entorwellian Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 The Korg Volca series. They have some serious flaws and quirks but you can master the things in a couple of hours and come up with clever and intelligent tricks to get past those flaws to make some really fun music. If you put them through some fx processing and slap a MIDI cable into it, you can turn it into a professional level dedicated sound engine for a decent hybrid setup. Because they're easy to learn they are also fun to jam with other musicians and friends who don't usually make tunes. Think its a tie between the Volca Keys and the Volca Sample for favourite unit. Volca Sample for jamming and Volca Keys for production. edit: also holy fuck the boss sp303! I got one of those and it's a fundamental piece of gear in my setup. I have it running through the FX Send and into a channel into my mixer so not only is it a decent outboard sampler but I also can use all of those awesome effects as the master efx. I would definitely scour the internet for another one if mine died. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
modey Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 Yeah the volca keys was my first real hardware synth. It was a good start! As for my favourites.. Sound design: MS10 - I haven't played with the MS20 much but I've spent hours with my bandmate's MS10; it's great Monomachine - I'm slowly learning how to make almost every sound I like with it Performance: Beatstep - I don't use it much anymore but the sequencer is simple and fun Electribe series - same as what others have said Programming: Monomachine again - plocks, yo! GBA with nanoloop - the sequencer is simple but it's very nice to program, considering the limited controls. Not to mention super portable since I use it with a gameboy micro. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YEK Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 my Kaoss Pad QUAD. lot's of fun fucking around with sounds, dragging your finger on it. can make some mental harsh noise Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Salem1976 Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 My drum machines. Volca Beats/ Rx-5/ Cr-8000 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucas Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 I also started with a CS1x. Gave that to a local kid last year. I still think it sounds good but was a pain to get into the nitty gritty. yeah it doesn't sound bad at all (I use it for pads mainly and it really have nice sounds) but I like to make sounds from scratch and in a lot of ways it's not designed to let you do that at all. Those "programs" you have to use as source material for building your sounds are full of already programmed parameters like for example a given filter envelope or say no velocity response at all (I particularly hated that one when I spotted it too late on a sound I was really happy to have found - a straight saw wave with no envelope of any kind but, you know, without velocity). lol I'm being hard with that synth which does some really nice job for me but it's just frustrating sometimes. If someone know where you can find straight sine/saw/square/noise etc waves (with velocity response) in that huge amount of programs please PM, you'll make me quite happy. monotribe is great at making crazy space sounds Agreed! The Monotribe is a really simple synth but I love its sound somehow. I think it sounds better than my Novation Bass Station 2 but it's hard to compare because the BS2 is way more versatile. As the clicking happening at every note on/off makes it really hard to use in a lot of contexts I ended up using it mostly for doing noises (fair amount of LFO modulation on filter cutoff and/or pitch). The filter sounds great and the LFO can be really fast - those to things combined definitely gave me some fun. I wouldn't use that in every track though and I hardly think about using that synth anymore. I would sell it for cheap if I wouldn't think I still could recycle its filter in an hypothetical future where I've learned electronics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Chesney Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 Weird, I had a 404 and hated the shit out of it. Love how everyone has such different needs and likes. given how awesome your current gear is i'm curious what sorta stuff you've gotten rid of any noteworthy bits? Not really, mainly standard stuff. Some stuff was good and got some good stuff from but just didn't gel like the korg radias, some I liked but made redundant like the FR mobius and others just straight hated like SP404, MPC500/1000, MC505, Yamaha SU200, RM1x, Mopho's, evolves, Tetra, R5 etc etc Some I tried in shops and knew straight away like the spectralis, prophet 08, V synth, and all the recent synths over the past 10 years. It's only the past 3-4 years I have been able to purchase higher value gear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leon Sumbitches Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 I second the Volca Keys, mainly because it's the only not-crap synth I have and it's hugely fun to play with; I got mine about a year and a half ago and neglected it for a while and I'm only just rediscovering the goodness within; as Entorwellian says, a MIDI cable's definitely recommended. As for other fun gear... get ready to laugh at me here. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Casio CTK900, in all its glory: This, as you can see, is a crappy Casio keyboard. Bizarrely though, it has a (limited) 'synth mode' where you can mess around with attack and release, resonance, cutoff, weird wobbly vibrato, plus effects on top of that. So for something basically marketed as a cheap keyboard for kids to learn piano on, you can actually go surprisingly deep. I've had mine for more than ten years and have been mucking around with it for so long that I almost know it inside-out and can get decent results with it super-quick. I've spent afternoons just sitting farting around making cool tones. It's the whole 'limitations bringing out creativity' thing that you always hear about- it's hugely entertaining sitting down with this craphouse and trying to make a synth tone that sounds like a mossy forest or some crystals or something. I always think it's weird that the guys who designed this put so much effort into all these cool features that, in all likelihood, 99.9% of consumers would never even use. It's been really nice for me seeing guys like Legowelt giving some love to '90s digital synths, it's nice to see that if you make friends with your gear you can get interesting results even if it isn't a fat wooden-ended analogue lush machine. Yeah, I don't really have much gear. lol. I'd love an SP-303 for doing Madlib/Ohbliv-style smoked-out beats. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Chesney Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 wicked mate. I use my PSS390 and 570 a lot for the same reasons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucas Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 this gear discussion aroused me and made me want to go to bed with my Novation BS2. 'night guys Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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