Cheap synths of the mid-1980's (part 1)
You probably won't find a powerful analog synth in the local ads or at a garage sale. Arps are under glass and Moogs are just about to ascend bodily into Heaven. Almost everyone in possession of an Oberheim 8-voice or Yamaha CS80 knows what they have and what it fetches on the electronic market.
A fully functional synth from the late 70's or early 80's basically starts at $350 for a non-Moog monosynth. There is a collector's market that is actively turning them from active instruments into a type of furniture. Couple that with the instability and unreliability of old electronics and you have something that's most at home in someones studio, powered-off and looking cool.
Which is often where they belong these days. When analog synths first came back into popularity, in the mid-1990's, they were cool because they were cheap and the electronics still had years of good use left in them. Now those years are often spent, and the cheap is long gone.
Inexpensive analog gear is going to be broken in some way. It could be broken in an expensive way. I once got a Sequential Circuits Prophet 600 (1982) from a friend for cheap with the intention of simply replacing its broken voice chip. The synth slowly gave up the ghost over the next few months. First, it became schizophrenic, then it stopped responding button presses and, finally, it stopped powering on. I took it to a very capable tech who fixed a number of problems, but couldn't bring it back to functionality. Even if it was fixed, the sheer number of custom, out of production chips and other parts would have made this synth hard to really use.
My philosophy is that your synths should last at least as long as your desire to play them. Worrying about their condition cuts into your creativity; if you don't know if vintage synth X will last another year then why take the time to program it?
Right now, most cheap synths come from the mid-to-late 1980's. At the time, a large number of new synthesis methods and hardware designs came onto the market. Samplers, digital-analog hybrids, ROM-plers, wavetable synths, FM synths, workstations, etc. all came out. With a few exceptions, these synths will be menu-based instead of knobby, black instead of colorful and plastic instead of wood. But many are also cheap and powerful.
Here are three synth lines I've personally used and would recommend for programmability, cheapness, and suitability for weird noise production.
Roland JX series. These are menu-based analog-style synths with digitally controlled oscillators. Nice string and lead sounds. They are generally available for $150 - $300. External programmers with knobs and sliders available but the cost of them together with the synth itself will put you into Juno prices ($350-$500).
Ensoniq ESQ-1, SQ-80, VSM. These are analog-style synths, also with DCO's that feature a combination of traditional single-cycle waveforms and primitive sampled waves. These feature three oscillators per voice, three LFOs, and genuine analog (Curtis) filters (for ESQ-1 and SQ-80). Friends of mine have complained about the midi implementation so do research if you want to add one into a complex midi setup. Around $150-$200.
Casio CZ series. Digital synths using "Phase Distortion", a kind of synthesis close to 2-operator Frequency Modulation with an interesting pseudo-filter (it controls the rate which your waveform becomes a sine wave), ring modulator and complex envelopes. I've made nice bass sounds with these synths and many in experimental/improvised music swear by them. They have a fairly nice layout with understandable signal paths and lots of buttons. Their price is around $75-$200, with the small CZ-101 sometimes getting higher prices than the larger synths.
I'm fairly ambiguous about the Yamaha DX series. Due to the sheer number of DX's out there, some are dropping below $200 in resale value. In one respect, there is lots of sonic possibility in 6-operator FM synthesis. In another, not many people want to try to program these synths. My first 'real' synth was a borrowed DX-9 and the only sound I was able to program was crunchy noise.
There are other cheap mid-to-late 80's synths I can't really recommend due to hard programmability, reliability issues, restricted sound palettes, thinness, harshness, and simple lack of eye appeal. These were the culprits when synthesizers became as ubiquitous as they became sonically invisible. In most pop music from 1986-1989, nothing "sounds" like a synthesizer but no sound was produced by anything but.
Sampler keyboards. Likewise, a ton are out there. Every major synth company brought out models starting in the mid-80's. Instantly avoid all types that require the OS to be loaded from disk. The disk drives in these are now around 20 years old and, if still working, won't last much longer. These drives are incompatible with modern PC drives in that they often read and write at a lower density. True, the Ensoniq Mirage uses Curtis analog filters but is only really worth the chip-value of those filters if the disk drive breaks. Those samplers that boot off of ROM can be used as midi controllers. As far as their sampling capability, you can do a lot better (and even grungier) with a good rackmount or soft sampler.
I also can't recommend the Roland D110. I pulled a this module out of the Goodwill Bins in Hillsboro, so I didn't put much money on it. Taking it home (and downloading the manual), I had a hard time simply mapping a voice to a midi channel and playing the sounds of this module. The interface was baffling to me so. I soon sold it. Friends of mine quite like the keyboard models such as the D50, so I'll keep my mind open about the rest of the series.
Many synths from this period do deserve their reputation for visual dullness and general obscurity. Many do have their partisans who justify how much (or how little) they paid for their awful synths by pointing out obscure plusses in the architecture. Unless the prices are truly fire-sale (and even if they are), leave behind anything you don't see yourself using. And enjoying.
As a post-script, I have to mention many newer synths are dropping into the $200-$300 range. Late 90's entry-level keyboards by Korg (N-5), Yamaha(CS1x), Alesis and Roland are now becoming quite affordable.
Stay tuned for part 2: Fixing common problems with your ancient junky keyboard.
A fully functional synth from the late 70's or early 80's basically starts at $350 for a non-Moog monosynth. There is a collector's market that is actively turning them from active instruments into a type of furniture. Couple that with the instability and unreliability of old electronics and you have something that's most at home in someones studio, powered-off and looking cool.
Which is often where they belong these days. When analog synths first came back into popularity, in the mid-1990's, they were cool because they were cheap and the electronics still had years of good use left in them. Now those years are often spent, and the cheap is long gone.
Inexpensive analog gear is going to be broken in some way. It could be broken in an expensive way. I once got a Sequential Circuits Prophet 600 (1982) from a friend for cheap with the intention of simply replacing its broken voice chip. The synth slowly gave up the ghost over the next few months. First, it became schizophrenic, then it stopped responding button presses and, finally, it stopped powering on. I took it to a very capable tech who fixed a number of problems, but couldn't bring it back to functionality. Even if it was fixed, the sheer number of custom, out of production chips and other parts would have made this synth hard to really use.
My philosophy is that your synths should last at least as long as your desire to play them. Worrying about their condition cuts into your creativity; if you don't know if vintage synth X will last another year then why take the time to program it?
Right now, most cheap synths come from the mid-to-late 1980's. At the time, a large number of new synthesis methods and hardware designs came onto the market. Samplers, digital-analog hybrids, ROM-plers, wavetable synths, FM synths, workstations, etc. all came out. With a few exceptions, these synths will be menu-based instead of knobby, black instead of colorful and plastic instead of wood. But many are also cheap and powerful.
Here are three synth lines I've personally used and would recommend for programmability, cheapness, and suitability for weird noise production.
Roland JX series. These are menu-based analog-style synths with digitally controlled oscillators. Nice string and lead sounds. They are generally available for $150 - $300. External programmers with knobs and sliders available but the cost of them together with the synth itself will put you into Juno prices ($350-$500).
Ensoniq ESQ-1, SQ-80, VSM. These are analog-style synths, also with DCO's that feature a combination of traditional single-cycle waveforms and primitive sampled waves. These feature three oscillators per voice, three LFOs, and genuine analog (Curtis) filters (for ESQ-1 and SQ-80). Friends of mine have complained about the midi implementation so do research if you want to add one into a complex midi setup. Around $150-$200.
Casio CZ series. Digital synths using "Phase Distortion", a kind of synthesis close to 2-operator Frequency Modulation with an interesting pseudo-filter (it controls the rate which your waveform becomes a sine wave), ring modulator and complex envelopes. I've made nice bass sounds with these synths and many in experimental/improvised music swear by them. They have a fairly nice layout with understandable signal paths and lots of buttons. Their price is around $75-$200, with the small CZ-101 sometimes getting higher prices than the larger synths.
I'm fairly ambiguous about the Yamaha DX series. Due to the sheer number of DX's out there, some are dropping below $200 in resale value. In one respect, there is lots of sonic possibility in 6-operator FM synthesis. In another, not many people want to try to program these synths. My first 'real' synth was a borrowed DX-9 and the only sound I was able to program was crunchy noise.
There are other cheap mid-to-late 80's synths I can't really recommend due to hard programmability, reliability issues, restricted sound palettes, thinness, harshness, and simple lack of eye appeal. These were the culprits when synthesizers became as ubiquitous as they became sonically invisible. In most pop music from 1986-1989, nothing "sounds" like a synthesizer but no sound was produced by anything but.
Sampler keyboards. Likewise, a ton are out there. Every major synth company brought out models starting in the mid-80's. Instantly avoid all types that require the OS to be loaded from disk. The disk drives in these are now around 20 years old and, if still working, won't last much longer. These drives are incompatible with modern PC drives in that they often read and write at a lower density. True, the Ensoniq Mirage uses Curtis analog filters but is only really worth the chip-value of those filters if the disk drive breaks. Those samplers that boot off of ROM can be used as midi controllers. As far as their sampling capability, you can do a lot better (and even grungier) with a good rackmount or soft sampler.
I also can't recommend the Roland D110. I pulled a this module out of the Goodwill Bins in Hillsboro, so I didn't put much money on it. Taking it home (and downloading the manual), I had a hard time simply mapping a voice to a midi channel and playing the sounds of this module. The interface was baffling to me so. I soon sold it. Friends of mine quite like the keyboard models such as the D50, so I'll keep my mind open about the rest of the series.
Many synths from this period do deserve their reputation for visual dullness and general obscurity. Many do have their partisans who justify how much (or how little) they paid for their awful synths by pointing out obscure plusses in the architecture. Unless the prices are truly fire-sale (and even if they are), leave behind anything you don't see yourself using. And enjoying.
As a post-script, I have to mention many newer synths are dropping into the $200-$300 range. Late 90's entry-level keyboards by Korg (N-5), Yamaha(CS1x), Alesis and Roland are now becoming quite affordable.
Stay tuned for part 2: Fixing common problems with your ancient junky keyboard.