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The top ten most underrated synths


Phil O'Keefe

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Interesting, and a lot of good suggestions. Nice to see Ensoniq on the list. If it was "keyboards" (including ROMplers) rather than "synthesizers" I'd suggest the Ensoniq MR76/ZR76, which had an amazingly good piano for a board with only 32M RAM, a sweet stereo Rhodes, and a whole host of usable sounds not to mention killer drum samples. I wish they'd put half as good a piano in my Nord Electro 2.

 

I don't think it was underrated, but the Roland Juno 60 was a great affordable vintage synth. Also the Korg Poly 6 (and perhaps the Poly 60, which IIRC was the same thing with MIDI, but I never played one.) Those were at the very beginning of the polysynth era, pre-MIDI (though I got a MIDI adaptor for my Juno 60), yet surprisingly affordable, for the day. (Still about $4000-$5000 in today's money!) And with knobs. After that they all went to menu diving, with inferior controls e.g., amps without super fast attacks, and grainy pitch modulation, and you had to spend a real pretty penny to get a polysynth with a soul. No doubt there were some I never knew about.

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An interesting article and list - thanks for sharing that. I agree with learjeff above about the Roland Juno 60. That was my first "real" synth back in the 80's after learning some of the basics of synthesis on the little mono Yamaha CS-01. I also agree with the article about the Oberheim Matrix 1000. Its a great box of sounds.

 

But I've always thought that some of the most overlooked synths were from Kawai, in particular their K series. I've owned a lot of them over the years and still have my K1m, K4r, and K5000r. For the kind of ambient music I do, these synths have excellent pads, strings, trippy sound effects and textures. The K5000, which was the last model Kawai produced before dropping out of the synth market, is a monster synth, especially for sound design and electronic music.

 

As far as others, I might add the Yamaha FS1R. Its a bit complex to work with but capable of some unique sounds. Also the Korg Karma, which was my main synth for years (as you can tell by my user name.) For someone like me who is more of a synthesist or soundscape designer than a "keyboardist," (actually electric guitar is my primary instrument) the Karma function has really added a lot to my productions that I couldn't have done without it. I created all the basic tracks for my last 3 or 4 albums with it, until I got an M3 more recently. I also picked up a used Korg Trinity Rack, which you don't hear much about, but I was impressed with the depth and detail of the sounds in it.

 

I'm sure I could think of more, but that's what comes to mind at the moment.

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Interesting' date=' and a lot of good suggestions. Nice to see Ensoniq on the list. [/quote']

 

As a long-time ESQ-1 owner (since they were new), I was pleasantly surprised to see it on the list - and I agree - it's a very under-rated synth.

 

I don't think it was underrated, but the Roland Juno 60 was a great affordable vintage synth. Also the Korg Poly 6 (and perhaps the Poly 60, which IIRC was the same thing with MIDI, but I never played one.) Those were at the very beginning of the polysynth era, pre-MIDI (though I got a MIDI adaptor for my Juno 60), yet surprisingly affordable, for the day. (Still about $4000-$5000 in today's money!) And with knobs. After that they all went to menu diving, with inferior controls e.g., amps without super fast attacks, and grainy pitch modulation, and you had to spend a real pretty penny to get a polysynth with a soul. No doubt there were some I never knew about.

 

I think you mean the Polysix and Poly-61. :) Both are good boards, but you don't see a lot of them around - at least compared to the Junos / JX-3P / JX-8P, etc. BTW, Korg has a really good version of the Polysix (iPolysix) available as an iPad app. Click the link to check out my review of it.

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Good question!

 

These days it seems older machines that were thought of as cheap junk when they were new get branded as classics...MS20 and Poly 800 come to mind. A decade ago I would have said ESQ-1 because it was never as popular as the Roland, Korg and Yamaha stuff in the day but now it's become hip because it mixes analog filters with low-fi grungy samples.

 

Overrated, well that would be a really long list :D

 

OK, I have one. Now that modular is all the rage again and DIY is hip, where's the love for pAiA? They have been selling a modular synth kit for less than $600 for about 15 years now but noone ever mentions them.

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"Underrated" is a tough call. I wouldn't consider most of those to be "underrated" as most synth fans know and love boards like the Prodigy. Nice to see the CS-15 on the list---that's a pretty good call.

 

But as long as the theme seems to be 'bargain' and rack mount synths are included, it's hard to beat the EMU Proteus 2000. Great sounds, can find them easily for a couple of hundred bucks, and all the various expansion ROMs available make it still an amazingly cheap and versatile sound module.

 

Not 'underrated', but a good bargain.

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I always had fond memories of the Akai AX-80. Maybe because it was my first "brand new from the store" synth, as well as Akai's first effort. I recall it as having pretty usable sounds, but a little shaky on intonation. What really did it for me was the cool blue bar graph display across the entire keyboard, each bar representing a different parameter. That display was pretty much my "aha" moment for grasping the programming of an analog synth, whereas prior to that I was pretty much just using factory presets. Something about seeing a graphical representation rather than just a changing number clicked with me. I never did see another one in the field.

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Good question!

 

These days it seems older machines that were thought of as cheap junk when they were new get branded as classics...MS20 and Poly 800 come to mind. A decade ago I would have said ESQ-1 because it was never as popular as the Roland, Korg and Yamaha stuff in the day but now it's become hip because it mixes analog filters with low-fi grungy samples.

 

Overrated, well that would be a really long list :D

 

OK, I have one. Now that modular is all the rage again and DIY is hip, where's the love for pAiA? They have been selling a modular synth kit for less than $600 for about 15 years now but noone ever mentions them.

 

Good point about PAiA, but then again, how many people have the soldering chops and patience to build one? I suspect they'd be more popular if they offered a pre-assembled option.

 

FWIW, I've never considered the Poly 800 to be a classic. YMMV

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Good question!

 

These days it seems older machines that were thought of as cheap junk when they were new get branded as classics...MS20 and Poly 800 come to mind. A decade ago I would have said ESQ-1 because it was never as popular as the Roland, Korg and Yamaha stuff in the day but now it's become hip because it mixes analog filters with low-fi grungy samples.

 

Overrated, well that would be a really long list :D

 

OK, I have one. Now that modular is all the rage again and DIY is hip, where's the love for pAiA? They have been selling a modular synth kit for less than $600 for about 15 years now but noone ever mentions them.

 

Unless I miss my guess, the Ensoniq MIRAGE, at the very least, was the FIRST workstation/synth keyboard to introduce a VERY REAL Piano sound!

 

That occurred in 1986--at least it did in my hometown of Anchorage, AK.

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I saw this article the other day and thought it was rather interesting. I'm not sure if I agree with all of their selections or not though. If you were to make a list of the ten most underrated synths, or affordable vintage synths, what would you put on it?

 

 

Maybe TWO lists.

 

One for Synths.

 

The other for Workstations.

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Unless I miss my guess, the Ensoniq MIRAGE, at the very least, was the FIRST workstation/synth keyboard to introduce a VERY REAL Piano sound!

 

That occurred in 1986--at least it did in my hometown of Anchorage, AK.

 

I think the Mirage and ESQ-1 were both released about the same time - '85 or '86, somewhere in there. I purchased my ESQ-1 in 1986 or 1987... hard to believe it's almost 30 years old now!

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I consider the Peavey DPM-3 exceptionally underrated. It had a unique way of transposing sound that I've never found in another synth.

 

More recently, M-Audio's Venom. It got no love when M-Audio was sold to InMusic, and you need the computer editor to do anything significant - and IIRC it was never updated when the M-Audio inexplicably changed the firmware prior to being acquired.

 

Don't know if the Casio XW-P1 is underrated per se, but people who ignore it because it's Casio do so at their own peril. It's unique...as if it had been designed by Martians who had heard synthesizers from intercepting radio transmissions but had ever actually seen one, so they came up with their own idea of what a synth architecture must be.

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Makes sense and seems reasonable to me. :) So... what would you put on your two lists? :)

 

On the workstation side, definitely the Casio MZ 2000.

 

Priced at about $1500 at the time, this rig was loaded to the hilt with features, yet somehow, most people didn't seem to care, except devoted Casio fans.

 

http://www.casio-intl.com/asia-mea/en/emi/past/high_grade/mz2000.html

 

 

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One of my last keyboards was a Casio :) :)

 

I heard their Hybrid Digital Pianos (designed in collaboration with Bechstein, which were just announced earlier this month) at Summer NAMM. I was sworn to secrecy so couldn't say anything, but was very, very impressed. So Casio's making waves on two fronts - consumer-oriented digital pianos, and synthesizers.

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