“Legendary” Gear: Unreasonable Expectations

[01010111]

I recently got a piece of gear I never thought I’d own: a Prophet 6. It’s a lovely instrument. The raw sound of the oscillators is excellent. The filter sounds so nice that I finally understand why people like resonant filters. The clock-syncable on-board effects are as nice or nicer than anything I’d get to go with it. Not everything on it’s perfect, though.

Even though it has voltage controlled oscillators, they don’t drift in a very chaotic way. They don’t have the nice random chorus effect of something like the minilogue. The modulation options are arbitrarily restrictive. You can’t pitch modulate osc2 with the lfo when you’re using osc2 to modulate osc1. The filter doesn’t let you tune it outside of semitones. So, manually sweeping the filter and finding those weird harmonics isn’t really possible. The cross mod doesn’t get very extreme either, so using it to generate harsh, musically tuned noise is difficult at best.

So, all in all I kind of wish I would’ve just gotten a minilogue and called it a day. Now that you can transpose the minilogue’s sequencer, the only thing the Prophet has on it is “better” effects. I can’t say I’m happy with the Prophet 6. The sound-quality improvements are things that would really only be noticed by someone else in a studio or some other basement dwelling synth nerd.


tldr: the prophet 6 sounds nice, but it’s definitely not worth the steep price or high praise it frequently receives. What “legendary” gear have you guys tried that wasn’t that great?

[UglyCasanova]

MS-20. Sounded fantastic, but for live use I don't have time to patch 10 cables and twiddle an equal amount of knobs. Got the iMS-20 app which has presets and sounds pretty much identical (has a bit more low end), sold the hardware MS and never looked back. OG classic beaten by a $30 app.

Edit: but I will say that running both the hardware and software synth in parallel through my stack grew some extra hairs on my chest. That was huge. BWAAAAAAAA!

[Pepe]

In my case it's also a synthesizer. I was so disappointed by the Sequential Circuits Prophet 600. I'm so glad that a friend loaned it to me before he sold it. I had never paid more than 1,000 € for it. All these knobs on that synthesizer look promising, but all the controls only correspond to limited digital settings. Especially the filter frequency knob is a pain tu turn, because you clearly hear all the rough steps. Similar to what my KORG Poly-61 does. To be honest, I also didn't like the Prophet-600's sound too much. I'd rather love to get my hands on a Prophet-5.

[frigid midget]

Klon Centaur

[Chankgeez]

The "unreal expectations" thread?

[alexsga]

space station. eventually got one for stupid cheap but yeah, was a bit of a kids toy

[Chankgeez]

[01010111]

Another one of mine was a Fender Twin (although, it was a Red Knob twin so ymmv). It sounded nice and it was louder than anything I’d ever heard, but something about it didn’t quite sound right to my ears. The clean sound made my guitar sound more like an acoustic guitar than anything else (I hate the way most acoustic guitars sound for some reason). And I REALLY didn’t like the way it sounded with fuzz. It made everything I put through it unbearably high-pitched. Currently, my favorite guitar tone is clean and straight into the mixing board.

The only other “legendary” thing I’ve owned is the Hollow Earth tremolo. The functionality was all there, being able to draw your own waveforms was undeniably awesome, but it was a little lofi for my expectations. Still cool, but didn’t end up working for me.

[01010111]

In my case it's also a synthesizer. I was so disappointed by the Sequential Circuits Prophet 600. I'm so glad that a friend loaned it to me before he sold it. I had never paid more than 1,000 € for it. All these knobs on that synthesizer look promising, but all the controls only correspond to limited digital settings. Especially the filter frequency knob is a pain tu turn, because you clearly hear all the rough steps. Similar to what my KORG Poly-61 does. To be honest, I also didn't like the Prophet-600's sound too much. I'd rather love to get my hands on a Prophet-5.

The filter frequency on my Prophet 6 has those same rough steps? I heard it was because they wanted you to be able to easily tune the filter to different notes/scales/etc. I wonder if that “feature” is on all their instruments?

[retinal orbita]

Maybe not “legendary” in the same way as a vintage synth but I recently got a Line 6 FM4, they’ve been really hard to come by and I picked it up for $100 CAD at a used shop after looking for what felt like two years - the synth effects are kind of cool but the filters are weak as fuck, the pedal feels so friggin’ cheap (I was expecting that part) and its preposterously big.

It’s not bad - but based on Justin Pearson’s endless cool Locust tones I was maybe hoping it would be a tad more.... intuitive? I’m determined to make it work so I’m hoping it’s more of just a matter of unlocking some secret gems. And they are there! But I was really hoping to have it as an envelope filter and they just don’t cut it the way an analog pedal is going to at all. So my Mr Black Fwonk is staying for that part.

As a noise toy it’s fucking great - don’t get me wrong here. I’m no hater!

[crochambeau]

Hardly "legendary" but I was underwhelmed with the Yamaha TX81z.

The synth engine is cool, but there was a very definite background noise on both examples I owned, and while I'm hardly the dude to complain about background noise, this particular instance was out of step with my expectations.

[$harkToootth]

GREAT Thread idea 01010111! I think about this stuff all the time. How you can score a "legendary" kit for a great deal and then get home and be like, "Oh wow... I much prefer my original bit of kit. My S/O is going to kill me. I'm sad now. Where are the Oreo O's?" I'm going to comment on things before I post mine. YIKES: This got really long and boring so I put it in NSFW.

NSFW: show

inb4 it's "subjective". I thought 01010111's original post implied that. We've been through that concept a thousand times in other threads. Let's not make this thread an "everybody gets a trophy" thread It's about how you use it! Making music... wow it's not the synth it's the programmer... new sounds! ROCK ANNNNNDDD ROLL!.

Let me preface with I have never owned, or played a single Dave Smith instrument (be it Sequential Circuits or DSI).I don't know what it is with Dave Smith offerings... they get pretty consistent feedback on the internet. Underwhelming is the word I see a lot. It's a shame because they are so expensive (having production in San Fran ain't cheap... I get it). I don't know, they never appealed to me (can't afford it anyway AMIRITE GUIZE ) so it's nice to see people as articulate about synths as 01010111 and Pepe expressing their reservations, of how it did not work for them.

space station. eventually got one for stupid cheap but yeah, was a bit of a kids toy

I had a minute to get one for "cheaper than current value" (not "stupid cheap")... I passed. The "no editing" would kill me.

Similar to what my KORG Poly-61 does.

I think 85% of my synths are KORG at this point. KORG love 4ever.

...Line 6 FM4 ....Justin Pearson’s endless cool Locust tones...

I too have considered picking one up if I can find it stupid cheap... solely because of Justin Pearson. I need to re-watch that Pedals and Effects multi-part episode on his set up. He runs some dirt after it right? Could that be it?

For me... nothing crazy... just a tube amp. One of my first big boy purchases. Probably because of the time I went to High School and people were all like You need to get tube amp. I still have it. I still use it. I think, like a lot of our mistakes, I just understand the gear market a lot better now, and could have gotten something else for way cheaper on the used market. For the record, it's a a VOX AC-15. I'm not hating on VOX, just the concept I blindly followed.

Also, not quite this

Currently, my favorite guitar tone is clean and straight into the mixing board.

but I'm pretty close, logistically at this point.

I have reissues of classic synths... I got for way below retail cost so it wasn't an arm and a leg... I'm into them but like 01010111. I'd probably be happy with the new Minilogue XD in place of two of them . At this point I'm speculating, I think, especially with electronic music, the "classics" we've come to know and love, were compressed and EQ'd a whole bunch but people have come to expect the synths and drum machines to sound like the records, right out of the box.

[$harkToootth]

...and while I'm hardly the dude to complain about background noise, this particular instance was out of step with my expectations.

I found this very funny

[repoman]

I don't know who Justin Pearson is but this came up"

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oRAVNUWTOk[/youtube]

TV used to be so inventive.

[Pepe]

Similar to what my KORG Poly-61 does.

I think 85% of my synths are KORG at this point. KORG love 4ever.

Those are my synths:

Korg 800DV
Korg DS-8
Korg DW-8000
Korg M1 EX
Korg Mono/Poly
Korg monotron
Korg monotron Delay
Korg monotron Duo
Korg MS-20 mini
Korg Poly-61
Korg Trident
Korg Wavestation EX
Korg X-911

All KORG and I'm super happy.