Hurrah for your hardware bargains (as well as your secret bargain lustings)!

[dark water]

Greetings!

Which hardware effects or instruments do you feel have been great bargains in terms of their quality, use and price?
Also, any lustings after potential bargains would be very welcome too!


BTW, I was sure there was a general hardware thread round here for a while about GAS attacks, bargains and effects/instruments talk, but I couldn't find it.
(I know there's one about GAS for hardware synths, and also another about posting studio pix which usually incorporates hardware stuff, but hey...)


Anyway, today I was delighted to pick up this Sherman Filterbank 2 beauty for approx 60 per cent of its RRP:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sherman-Filt ... SwIStajyK8

It will go nicely with my Vermona DRM machine and Roland 201 space echo in particular


More importantly, what hardware stuff do you feel has rewarded you in terms of quality and value?
And is there any hardware that you feel is an excellent price for what it offers, and that you'd still like to pick up?

Cheers,

[thecontrolcentre]

Teisco 60F Synthesizer cost me £50 in '94 ... still in use and going strong. It was my live bass machine for years. Nord Micromodular for £100 in 2000 was also a pretty good deal. It's my only digital hardware synth. I picked up a LAG Tromine classical guitar for £45 in 2012 which got me back into playing after breaking my left wrist and little finger ... still struggling with bar chords.

I'm not really looking for anything new atm, altho' there are some lovely shiny toys out there ... got more than enough as it is, and many manuals to read

[Mushy Mushy]

Scored a mint MKS50 & MK70 ten years back for £100!

Combined they’d be close to £1.5k now.

[dark water]

Fair play TCC and Mushy Mushy: some excellent bargains there, and good to hear they're going strong

Although a bit dull, I'm hoping to pick up a Drawmer DF320 soon: a great addition for noisy vintage synths (especially if subsequently applying a distortion pedal to the signal). I bought a good second-hand one with its original box etc for around £90 a couple of years back. There's a couple floating around ebay without boxes atm, but I'm sure I can get a better one in good time for cheaper.

[gaf_thit]

Synthstrom Audible Deluge for about $1000, not that cheap, but for what it can do... supercheap IMO

Behringer Deepmind 6 - $663 - Again not that cheap, but they cost more around here.

Anyway, superhappy with both and feel like I've done two great deals - Instant inspiration and enthusiasm...
Don't tread on it please

[Tj Shredder]

Anything you use long and intensive is a bargain.
Oldest gear still in use:
Fostex MixTab Midi controller
Yamaha CBX K1 Midi Keyboard controller
Peavey RQ-200 Mixer
Esi Quatafire 610
JBL Speakers at least 30 years old
Kensington ADB trackball and a small ADB Apple keyboard...

Newest bargain
Zoom ARQ-96

Not cheap, but best investment since long...
LinnStrument

[dark water]

^^ Nice list, and fair play on those JBL Speakers!

In passing, I hope Roger Linn stays more loyal to his hardware customers than the software ones he turned his back on, despite opportunities to avoid doing so.


@gaf_thit: Behringer get a bad press over at Gearslutz in particular, but not many people at KVR seem too concerned about them in fairness.
What's your take on the Behringer products that you've used?

[Distorted Horizon]

What's your take on the Behringer products that you've used?

I've read horror stories around the webs but personally I've never had any issues. Friends that have had B, if I remember correctly one had issues with some mixer. Worked otherwise but faders started to make some nasty noise when moved.

[vurt]

behringer: ive had one of their xenyx mixers for a long while, no issues at all. does the job.
their fx pedals, had quite a few over the years, soundwise not too bad, but the stomp boxes can be a bit flimsy. but, for the price of a few beers what do you expect? the echo-machine is still in my chain with delays that cost more than ten times more, im just very careful with my feet these days

[thecontrolcentre]

^^ What's your take on the Behringer products that you've used?

I had a Behringer Eurorack 16-8-2 mixer for a few years. It was ok, with great routing, but one day it started buzzing and then stopped working altogether. It worked out cheaper to replace than repair ...

[donkey tugger]

behringer: ive had one of their xenyx mixers for a long while, no issues at all. does the job.
their fx pedals, had quite a few over the years, soundwise not too bad, but the stomp boxes can be a bit flimsy. but, for the price of a few beers what do you expect? the echo-machine is still in my chain with delays that cost more than ten times more, im just very careful with my feet these days

Aye, recently bought one of their middle of the range audio interfaces for the laptop (so still only about £60 then...). Excellent quality and built like a brick shithouse, which is good because I knocked it on the floor earlier. Also got a matched pair of their cheapie pencil condenser mics recently (£40 odd), which piss all over the AKG C1000S I've got.

[D-Fusion]

Microkorg XL+ Red Limited edition with Black and Red Keys $333

[toine6]

Congrats on your Sherman Filterbank 2. I've got one, but have barely touched it in the last 5 years, only because life gets in the way, but I'm ready to use it again. I just noticed yesterday that Audio Damage has a plugin called Filterstation2 based on "the classic serial/parallel/stereo dual filter topology, made famous (and some would say "indispensable") by the Sherman Filterbank and its many clones. "

The future is now as far as great potential bargains. I'd have to say that the Behringer Model D, Neutron, OB-XA-, and possibly Pro-1 are all crazy deals, although they may end up showing their discounted prices weakness in terms of longevity (time will tell). I'd throw the more costly Roland SE-02 in there, I know Studio Electronics, who helped them design it, are TOP notch in quality and sound.

From the past. I love my Korg Monologue, it really has THAT mono analog sound that I've been looking for all these years. Arturia's Minibrute is really well made, so I'm gonna throw it in there, even if it's sound quality needs a bit of coaxing with external fx to make it exciting, no presets, and it's not a sound for everybody. My Alesis Ion is a great synth just in terms of power under the hood, it's knobs, lights, and screen, but it needs external fx and is not immediately satisfying preset wise, also the text size and color are horribly hard to read. The Roland JP-8000 is a hell of an interface, even if I barely use it. Gary Numan used the JP-8000 and it has a great aggressive sound if you use it right, it's not just a trance machine, it can sound kind of cutting, agressive and dark.

Here's what potential future bargain may be in the works, and got me excited today. Tracktion has apparently made their Waveform DAW work for the Raspberry Pi operating system. Now, not many people know much about Pi, myself included, but the potential bargain awaiting there is something to keep an ear on the wire for. Pi is basically an incredibly cheap and simple computer based around Linux. Supposedly, having such a simple and straightforward machine means that it will run audio super efficiently, like 30 tracks. As far as I can tell it's still a work in progress, they need to finalize a proper soundcard, and I have no idea how streaming samples would work, but there's something freeing and exciting about it's potential. Windows is so bloated and long in the tooth. It would be nice to have a really simple, cheap, and dedicated machine, with a snappy and immediate response, just for making music and doing basic things like browse the web.

[sjm]

My personal nomination is the M-audio Ozone 25 I picked up for EUR 17 on e-bay (no P&P).



I actually just bought it to quickly audition presets and use with the laptop. At some point, my studio was out of commission for around a year, so I ended up using it with my second PC as my audio interface and MIDI controller. It was essentially my studio (+guitar, bass and mic). It even has phantom power.

I ended up recording a gazillion guitar based tracks with vocals using that thing. I don't think I'd ever been that productive over such a long period of time before.

[jacqueslacouth]

My Roland SH101 which I picked up brand new as a run out in a Sydney music shop (Venue Music RIP) for $125. Was my only synth for 20 years. Eventually sold it after all these years of hard labour (and it was showing) for $650!