I agree with the above about the mopho, as I preached about it in another thread somewhere else. It's pretty much a modular synth in a lil' yellow box. Not hard to use and very rewarding. Save up and get good stuff, it'll be worth it, that way you can concentrate on making better music than wishing you had the "better" ( ala more expensive) stuff.

edit: Oh and you can make some super hard, fat analog kicks with this thing, i've been making analog drums and sampling them into my 606 to use on the pads to play freestyle.

Yeah, totally agree.

If you ever see one of these on Craigslist or a pawn shop...

http://www.vintagesynth.com/novation/nov_bsk.php

anybody have, used or know about the novation xiosynth? its a relatively cheap synth keyboard running bout 299$. I've never used one, but seen some demo's and it looks pretty cool.

it is built cheap quality, sound is not gonna blow you away but it's perfectly good to use

i've always been curious about the xiosynth ^^ cuz i'm a fan of synths will small footprints.

i know it's obvious, but you could use the 'vintage synth finder' to sus out low-priced synths:

http://www.vintagesynth.com/local/synthfinder.html

the settings are a little absurd, but read their descriptions and you can narrow in on stuff.

my recommendations are simply to get something polyphonic (cuz mono worx great for bass, but is limiting, i find), something with sub-osc controls, and a sequencer.

i use the (sleeeeept on!) SH-32. no sequencer, but otherwise a very solid tabletop synth, with a lot of power. plus it has a 'hold' button which worx great for getting my drone on.

^ I'd say the SH-32 and xiosynth are probably pretty evenly matched in terms of how they sound..

obviously there is a bit of difference in the character between roland/novation, but I'd say they're on the same level of quality as each other.. the xio might be a little less 'steppy' in some of the controls - the novation synth sound is verrry smooth.. sometimes that is good, sometimes it can be hard to get not-smooth sounds out of it though.

Sometimes I actually miss my SH-32... but other times I even forget that I ever owned one.. .I think it's great for the price, but I've moved up a little since back then.

If you want a small keyboard, the xio is worth a look-in, the microkorg/microkorg XL are probably the most obvious choices.

fair enough ^^. it is steppy and the interface on the 32 is absurd. but i gotta say i do like the thickness of it when you start dialing it in.

how does the mopho's sound compare to the microkorg (besides being only monophonic) it really sounds appealing, but idk if i'm ready to drop a lot of money on one when i want a 555 too.

if you dont care about polyphony, the mopho will tear the microkorg to shreds

If you do care about polyphony, there's a new one out actually. The Dave Smith (Mopho4) Tetra. It's not even that much more expensive, so it might be an option. It has 4 voices instead of only one.

it should be noted that while the MK is awesome for lower end stuff
there is MASSIVE amounts of aliasing on the higher end

and it starts to sound out of tune unless you cut off the highs completely with a filter

Yeah, it's why I got rid of it, but most people will use it for the bassline stuff.

what exactly is aliasing?

its complicated for a technical explanation but if you play in the highest octave youll hear it on long notes. its like an out of tune type sound

you cant really notice it in the mix but sometimes it rears its head