Rethinking the Synth

Well having my VA synth stolen has put me into a reflective period about music, the instrument and what direction I want to go in. Its finding new sounds that really interests me and I wonder if the Nord, being digital is somewhat limiting to that end? Its a cool toy there's no doubt about it, I don't have much to compare it to because i've never actually used a modular type system. From what I've been reading even things like the minimoog are considered gimmicky by the old modular players because they don't allow for enough exploration with the internal wiring and all. But who can afford a real modular synth and who has room for one?

Then I found this and it seems rather interesting

http://www.paia.com/p9700s.asp

Anyone played around with one of these? Are they worth the money?

I've built guitar amps so i know i could build this easily enough.

yes i have one of those.

it's a good place to start a modular out on, most definitely. it sounds fine.

the routings are very strange, though, and the included manuals aren't all that helpful.

I had a relatively simple modular system. 5 VCOs, 2 filters, 5 envelopes, 2 LFOs, and some fx. IMHO, it wasn't enough and since I didn't have enough space or money to expand it to a point of being usable I decided to sell it and get other gear. What I found is that a modular system (at least for me) is good when you see it as a composition tool and not so much as a sound generator. Because in the end when you're exploring sounds, you can't save patches. And I found that you're either in "record" mode or in tweaking mode and the 2 are not very compatible when you're dealing with a modular. Just to unplug all wires and start from scratch I'd take a good 4-5 minutes. When you just want to record that's too much time and I would end up picking up other synths instead.

On the other hand, if you invest in enough sequencers and logic modules then it's a different story, because then the whole thing becomes an instrument and not just a sound generator. Lots of $$ to achieve this though. Don't know if this makes much sense to you but in the end I prefered the convinience of either complex synth with patch storage or simple monosynths with a killer sound for what they do best (bass/lead)

But in the future when money/space are not so much of a problem (let's hope right?) one of the plans is to build a nice modular system again.