It offered everything I wanted (despite being a hideous neon green monster, but I don't judge on cosmetics if it gets me where I wanted to go): decent sounds out of the box, some seriously decent alternate sound engines with the whole "Plug out" thing, and knobs and sliders and things to make it go beep-bloop in the night in real time.
I scored an open-box one with warranty for $340, and couldn't say no. Given a choice between Roland and a few "less desirable" vintage units that might have issues of their own, the shiny modern thing won out.
A month later, I'm still pleased with the thing. It makes many, many fun noises. It responds easily to external MIDI control (and yes, I hooked it up straight away to both the guitar-to-MIDI monophonic thing in the Boss GT-100 and my actual guitar synth), and while the actual physical keybed isn't what I'd call "good", it's consistent and in its own way mimics the old godawful Gen 1 analogs that were nothing to write home about.
Onboard effects (all three of them) are serviceable. There's no menus. There's no "press X for alternate Y" combos except for a set of alternate LFO/sound source stuff that they patched in after launch. What you see is what you get in manual mode, and switching from the default synth engine to one of the plugouts is instant. Boom, you're playing the built in or a Pro-Mars (or one of the other plugouts) with the touch of a button, and the corresponding "not used by this synth" controls aren't lit up so it's clear what will do things. The plug-outs aren't cheap but they're not terrible, and aren't crippled in any way when loaded on the unit except that when you power it off, they're gone if not paid for.
The oddball fun of this thing is that the presets as well are intuitive with no menu-diving. There's 8 presets on tap (which was upped to 64 in a relatively recent update, adding one of two "press and hold a button" commands in the entire unit), and can switch straight back to pure manual "what the knobs and sliders are set for" instantly on demand as well, or tweak the preset with the controls as desired. Oscillators are straightforward, with six LFO shapes installed initially (and another six with the same free software update that adds a few distinctly *non-analog-sounding* choices with the same level of control, notably a vocal synth for vowel silliness and a cowbell that's tweakable for instant bad vintage drum machine, as well as a FM synth). Both are controllable to a fairly deep level, and can be synced (or not), and there's a sub-oscillator as well. Cross-mod of the oscillators is adjustable, can tune the second osc to put it out with the other one, and there's a mixer section to make it all fly in real-time. The mixer itself is actually amusing in that it starts adding a bit of crispy overload as it gets turned up past halfway on each that's reminiscent of overloading the Space Echo's preamps and it's useful for a bit of overdrive for each osc as desired as well).
The thing that surprised me is I've found a use for the onboard arpeggiator (and the built-in "scatter" wheel that shifts patterns as you twist it) - I've never been a big sequence or arpeggiator guy, but set right (and there's a convenient flashing LED surrounding the tempo dial to visually show what it's at), it's less mechanical than a lot I've tried and rewards a certain amount of 'play it rather than turn it on and trance out.'
It's 4 voice poly (or selectable to unison voicing or pure mono if you're so inclined), and I'm happy with both the shrieking upper end and a thumping, nearly inaudible low end if so desired.
Can tie sweeps and envelopes to a separate LFO section as well, and assign that LFO to different automations with a rotary dial per-oscillator.
It may not be analog, but I certainly have not felt cheated by the thing at all. It's small, light, and sets up quickly on my desk when I want to play with it, but is small enough to sit on top of my desktop rack unit without getting in the way.
Not sure how many of the plugouts I'll end up shelling out for, but it's a $50 discount per to hardware owners so it's not godawful given how integrated the things become with the unit itself.
But realistically, it does what it says and is a lot more versatile than the typical "I'm an EDM DJ" demos showcase it as. With an external analog chorus and one guy's demo of setting it up, it does a more than passable Juno as well, which was a happy bonus.
It won't be something that "gotta be analog, gotta be modular" is going to run for, but as a sound creation device that delivers a punch well above its price point, I cannot complain.
