bad_electric

I love my dotcom system. I have a 22 space portable cabinet loaded with 3 VCOs, their brilliant filter, a couple ADSR envelopes and a 24 step sequencer. It's basically a minimoog and a sequencer in one box. It sounds like a Moog as well. Brilliant work from this literal Mom and Pop business from Texas. Instead of spending your money on all the flash-in-the-pan coffee table synths that are on the market today, you can subscribe for a monthly delivery of a module. The build quality is very nice and the price is unbeatable. The owner and designer, Roger, will come to feel like a friend. Must've been what Moog felt like in the 60's. I highly recommend.

It's a Juno 106 with speakers. Some say the additional circuitry for the amp affects the tone of the synth. I've never heard an A/B comparison. It sounds great either way. These are high maintenance synths if they haven't already had the voice chips restored or replaced and the power supply recapped. Be prepared to either pay for service or learn a thing or two about electronics and soldering. It's actually a pretty straight forward thing to work on.

This was designed by the Italian organ company, Solton (whom are still in business), as a brilliant Italo-Disco auto accompaniment machine. It has an 8-bit sample based drum machine (with individual outs), 3 analog VCOs for bass and leads, a paraphonic string/organ section and individual outs on all of that stuff too. It's also very compact and dense with a Roland Jupiter type of styling. It's a very specific kind of machine but it's really fascinating and fun. Programming difficulty is pretty high as you only get a couple LEDs and a 3 character dot matrix display. Once you figure it out, the creative possibilities are vast. I particularly love the string section. It's one of the thickest and weirdest I've heard. No options to tweak it but it sits really nicely in a mix.

I bought my 388 in a non-operational state for $300. One of the best gear purchases I've ever made. I've been working with mine for over 3 years now exclusively as my recording medium. I love the interface, the limitations it imposes and the way it constantly pushes me to try to make a better recording on it. I could easily see dedicating myself to this machine for years to come.