ilovefuzz.com

Would prefer analog, but open to anything.

All of them under $300...

What do you wanna play??? Do you want Piano and Tuba sounds or Space Shit???

Pocket piano is amazing and cheap. 150 for standard and 250 for midi. I love it. It's digital though. But it mostly dose arcade/video game sounding stuff. You can also score a micro brute for under 300. It's pure analog awesomeness. If your new to the synth world it's a great first step, the manual walks you through all the filters and how to use cv's and the sequencer. It's an awesome introductory to synths. However it's monophonic. I will say, even though that detered me at first, after purchasing it and seeing how versatile it is, I think it's perfect, I don't even wish it was polyphonic.

Those are the only synths I have logged hours onto and can safely recommend. (Mostly a guitar player)

Do you want something monophonic or polyphonic ?
Do you need patch memories or are you ok with one setting at a time ?
What kind of sounds are you interested in ?
Do you plan on playing it just by itself or on controlling it with something else. and if is what ?

Without getting the answer to these questions, all you're going to get is a list of synths people like, but not necessarily ones that would be good for you...

Yeah, there are actually a lot of choices out there, but tell us more about what you need the synth to do.

I second the microbrute...like fishtankdork, I'm primarily a guitarist and the microbrute was my introduction to synths. I watched a ton of demos and decided I needed to try out synths, and its a ton of fun. I got mine used for $180. Only drawback some people site, other than being monophonic is the scaled down keys. Its big brother, the minibrute, has full sized keys though.

Actually, that's what I wanted. I have no idea what I want in a synth, (I do know though that while I'd prefer polyphonic, I'm fine with monophonic as well) so I just wanted some people to post some of their favorite synths under 300. If they provide a description of the synth, great, if not, I'll just look it up. Before this thread really the only synths I'd actually seen/looked into are the volca keys, the microbrute, and the pocket piano, so I wanted to see what other synths were out there that people liked (emphasis on the liked, obviously there are tons of synths out there.

another $100 and you got yourself a used MS20mini, which is on a whole nother level

but for a first synth, a microbrute makes good sense

microbrute

At this point the ipad should be considered the greatest value in synthesis, because there are $20 apps that are more powerful than any hardware synth under $2k. Arturia's recreations are an amazing deal, synths that cost thousands in their original beast forms, for fucking pocket change. It's beautiful. An ipad with iMS-20/Animoog/Nave/Thor/iProphet/whatever is way more bang for the buck than you're going to get out of any mini/micro/brute/korg, at least as far as pure synthesizing power is concerned. The difference in power is so great in fact, it may even outweigh your need for real keys and knobs. One thing you can count on is that it will never leave you wanting more synth. You can just give it more, and turn it into an entire synth arsenal.

If you just want to learn about synthesis and see how it feels for you then check out the legendary (and FREE) Synth1 vst:

http://www.kvraudio.com/product/synth1-by-ichiro-toda



If you don't have a DAW to load it in there's several free vst wrappers that will get up and running without one. There's somewhere around 100,000! user patches floating around the internet if you want to hear what it can do, but otherwise you can just load up the init patch and fiddle around. As mentioned, there's a ton of inexpensive software options that rival hardware synths of all price ranges -- just buy a midi controller and browse around KVR until you find something that sounds interesting.

For $300 and analog the microbrute is about the only option unless you score a deal. Monophonic is a no go for me and honestly I don't give a shit about analog. I just want something flexible that sounds good! The Microkorg gets a lot of hate on the synth sites, but once you get to know it there's a ton of killer sounds in there beyond its reputation for being a trance/techno machine. I used it for ambient and drone and have yet to find the end of things in it. The matrix programming might not be for everyone, but I didn't find it to be that difficult to figure out and it let's you program everything from the front panel. YMMV.

How about this for $299 new?



For a few dollars more you could pick up a used Wladorf Blofeld if your not totally sold on analog or mono.

Oh btw, I have a Microbrute and love it. It's a great 1st synth for all ove ther reasons stated above.