What was your first hardware synthesizer?

[thecontrolcentre]

Yamaha PSR 520, 1996

That's a snazzy one My first midi synth was a PSS680. Picked it up second hand in '92 (cost me about £150). Great for huge FM basslines.

[Spazspaz]

Second hand Roland Juno 106 (almost got a 101 instead) and then realised I couldn't hook it up with my 808.... damn I was stupid.....

[DrGonzo]

The Kawai K4! Damn how much I loved that synthesizer

[Ecofox83]

My first was a YAMAHA DX7 with SuperMAX extension ,the SuperMAX extension !!!!!!!

[buzz1]

My first was a YAMAHA DX7 with SuperMAX extension ,the SuperMAX extension !!!!!!!

????

[Halonmusic]

Waldorf Rocket

[kfraser]

Although I rented a minimoog and micromoog a few times before buying anything, the first I actually bought was an ARP AXXE and Little Brother, in 1980. Sold them for almost nothing to a friend in the late 80s. He still has them and they are still working. Bought a Roland MT-32 in the late 80s which I still have. This thread is a good reminder to get it out and dust it off.

[thermal]

Alpha juno 1 if you discount my bum purchase of a technics kn920, which wasn’t so much a synth as a general midi one man band type of thing.

[Tj Shredder]

My first was a Poly 800, followed shortly after by a DX-7 then a CZ-101...

[rob_lee]

Mine was a Casio VL-Tone



How about you?

Windows in town Dave back in the day I got a bank loan for this

[AdvancedFollower]

Not counting some cheap toy-like digital keyboard in the early 90's, as well as Music Machine for the C64, my first "proper" synth was a Novation Nova

[Ingonator]

First keyboards were some cheap CASIO ones with a few presets.

First proper synth was a Kawai K11 back in 1993 which is the keyboard version of the Kawai GMega.
I learned the basics of subtrractive synthesis and sound design with it. Editing at the hardware was tedious but i had a software editor for it.
It was possible to combine the filters of the 2 parts (each with a digital LPF or HPF) into a serial filter to get e.g. a Bandpass filter. Ringmod was possible too and could be combined with the serial filter.

Used it until 2004 which so far was the year where i bought and sold the most hardware synths and spent a lot of money during that year. IIRC the first synths that i bought in 2004 were a Yamaha SY77, a Roland Jupiter-8 and a Roland D-50.
In 2004 i also bought a Korg Wavestation EX that i still use (also as a second MIDi controller).

[synthgeek]

I had a Casio SK-1 as a kid, but my first "real" synth was a Poly 800 Mk II, which I still have. It later became the first synth I modded, but has since developed a power supply issue (unrelated). I haven't been in a rush to fix it, because there's no room for it in my current setup.

[thremuc2]

Hi everyone. First post here, nice to meet you all.

My first was a Roland MC-303! Groovy, haha. While I did not love the sounds too much (but well, first synth, what did I know anyway), I did love the quantization knob (especially in hindsight).
The next was an Ensoniq ASR-10. Wow, great machine. And with that machine in the room, I could turn off all other heating during winter...
Sold both in the meantime, and besides some nostalgia, I don't think I miss them much.

[jdoo]

My first synth was a Korg MS-10. Picked it up around 1980, slightly used. This was way, pre-internet, so the few pages in the included manual were all you had to learn with. That... and hit and miss / trying stuff out. I managed to get a handful of things out of it I could use. No patch memory.. So i used it on first song in sets only.