Vintage is overrated. Lesson learned(rant)

[Rangtangtang]

hmmmmmm ....... some vintage gear is a waste of time but so is some virtual gear too. If you think 64bit operating system is better then a bit of analog might be handy too.

I recently bought Korg 707 keyboard, vintage FM synth,

and

I bought the 707 because I like the FB01, and it has the same chip

The FB01 is a Yamaha DX and digital and obviously does not have the same chip as a Korg. ...so there....

[himalaya]

Sure you may be looking for "that" sound. Which no other synth can duplicate exactly, but "that" sound was 25 years ago, the people who got "that" sound were just making music with whatever resources they had.

I say stop looking for "that" sound, and start making the "next new" sound.

We have plenty of gear, sound palettes, options that musicians would've killed for 25 years ago.

On a different note, (more reflective, so let no one take this to heart) I find this sentiment a bit sad. It is depressing to live in times where a 25 year time span is regarded as a significant passage of time, making any music style/sound that was pioneered 25 years ago not worthwhile of pursuit.

I could understand this if we were talking about 100 years, but 25 ? This kind of endless pursuit of that 'next new' sound is as cliched as the lust for that 'vintage' thing.

[Kenton]

For me "Vintage" = "Parts are no longer available from the manufacturer should it go wrong"... and it WILL go wrong eventually.

(I know - I used to fix gear in a previous incarnation).

That said,
I do have a couple of very old pieces of equipment that I love dearly.
I also have some "vintage" pieces that sound really quite awful by today's standards.

I suppose it's like guitars - on average, people will take care of the good ones and the bad ones will get trashed over the years.

A Korg 707 though.... Not really what I'd call a "desirable" synth.
Vintage Digital is a bit of an oxymoron IMHO.

K.

[UltraJv]

Years ago, everybody had analogue. Its all there was. New analogue gear came out with better spec and everybody lusted after it. Then came digital, everybody lusted after that, analogue was old fashioned. Funny eh? Lets call it marketing.

[steffensen]

For me "Vintage" = "Parts are no longer available from the manufacturer should it go wrong"... and it WILL go wrong eventually.

True. But, more and more replacement parts are getting made today, that sounds/works just as good as the real thing. Those Juno 106 voice chips for example.. theres a lot more than those however.

[living sounds]

A great many people buy a Little Phatty or a Tetra because the world seems to run on transistors and discrete components. Forums full of experts dictate the analog/vintage superiority. And so you by one.. and, well, frankly you're underwhelmed. So you persist for a while, and you just can't shake the feeling that it's just not moving you like the forums said it would.

There's a big difference between a Little Phatty and a good vintage synth. I got rid of the Phatty because sonically it cannot compete with my vintage synths (or some of my more modern synths, for that). It's not discrete, BTW. By and large the good vintage synths smoke the new stuff, just for the fact that modern synths of the same quality would be far too pricy to manufacture. They mostly compromise on the sound quality. There are great modern synths (Sunsyn, Cwejman, technosaurus, Studio Electronics for example), but those cost a lot more than comparable vintage synths.

[Count_fuzzball]

There are great modern synths (Sunsyn, Cwejman, technosaurus, Studio Electronics for example), but those cost a lot more than comparable vintage synths.

They cost more in comparision to the prices of vintage synths now, or back when the synths were released?

[living sounds]

There are great modern synths (Sunsyn, Cwejman, technosaurus, Studio Electronics for example), but those cost a lot more than comparable vintage synths.

They cost more in comparision to the prices of vintage synths now, or back when the synths were released?

Now, of course. Back in the "good old days" there was a big market for expensive, quality synths. Professional tools made to last, without the guys from the money-counting department excessively demanding lower manufacturing and material costs.
Today you can pick up these old synths for pretty good prices, or could at least not long ago, prices seem to have picked up quite a bit after people realized how much better these synths sound compared to most mondern analog synths, let alone virtual synths. Collectors play a part, too, I suppose.

[sockofgold]

"I bought a single vintage keyboard, and it turned out to be broken, so now I know that you're dumb if you buy vintage gear."

[mao]

First... a 707 is not Vintage at all. The 707 is a cutdown version of a DS-8 which have a good multi-fx on board. The DS-8 is a joint venture between korg and yamaha and is an experiment to give "human" control to FM synthesis.

So... if you really like FM synthesis as you said... you can buy a Yamaha FS1R and be in heaven... or just use a NI FM7/FM8 if you feel more comfortable with large display and a mouse.

Yes real Vintage needs care, this is part of the game. Nobody force you to use a jupiter 8 so... leave Vintage to people who likes to use it and likes to spend time on removing dust and searching for spare parts.

Simply have fun with your VST.

[Vstream]

To summarise my opinion about analog synths.
I like the look, the sound (and sometimes the smell) but I don't like it's reliability.

I owned a Jupiter 8, juno 106 and other analog gear but I do not regret selling them.
Over hyped, yes... If someone buys a TR909 for 1000 Euro...
It's a discussion with a never ending end but IMHO I really don't see any difference using quality samples or virtual emulations.

I sampled the polymoog keyboard's Vox Humana sound a few years ago and seamlessly looped the samples.
The lowest note is a 18 second loop and with some clever programming (like a random start position of the waveform) you can make it less static sounding.
If you layer this sound with the string1 and string 2 you get a huge sounding string not possible with the original polymoog keyboard.

There is some digital vintage gear I still own like the JD800, JD990, D550, GEM S2R but that's because these are not available as Vsti.
If I need a sound from one of these I'll sample it and import them in Camel Audio's Alchemy.

[living sounds]

Over hyped, yes... If someone buys a TR909 for 1000 Euro...
It's a discussion with a never ending end but IMHO I really don't see any difference using quality samples or virtual emulations.

Where can you get a 909 for 1000 EUR?

I like using the real one for the fact that you can tweak it in real time, every hit sounds different, processing it through outboard right from the output and mixing through a console, it's got a groove (timing isn't 100% exact but very musical), the programming with the way the accent works etc. An emulation doesn't sound close. Good samples could get you closer, I agree, but I've yet to find any where a 909 was really thoroughly sampled through no-nonsense converters.

That said, it's a PITA to sync to the computer, difficult to fit in a song, with two compressors behind the kick drum output the noise and hum becomes audbile and it is sort of limited.

But somehow I use it way too much to sell it.

[zerocrossing]

It's funny, I went though this a little while ago. I got a hanker'n for some analog sound... but for me my most recent long term experience with one was a Poly-800 and before that a Juno-106. Since then it's been recordings, and VA. So I started down a path and after playing with some old stuff and some of the new stuff I ended up with a MoPho. Yeah, the VCO fans will laugh at me and call it a digital synth, but if it is, then it is. To me, the old stuff seemed like a heartbreak waiting to happen and anything decent was ridiculously priced. The less expensive stuff from Roland didn't do it for me either. I liked the new Moog stuff and the Andromeda... but holy crap they're expensive.

So now I own a MoPho. I like it. Vintage? Not remotely... but I can get it to scream and cry. I even supplemented it with a Prophet 08.

Could I get better tone out of a dusty old classic? Maybe. Can I get amazing sound out of Poly-ana? I think so. Last night I sparked up an old project called "Ana is Poly" and along with Poly-ana lived Battery, AmpliTube (now updated to v3), Alchemy and Gladiator. At some point during my little jam I sat back and thought, "this sounds fracking awesome!" None of my hardware boxes were going. Just a bunch of cleaver little code bouncing around a computer chip.

I love it.

[do_androids_dream]

...have a bunch of freeware, Minimogue, Iblit, Proteus vx, Bass Station, V-Station(free with my controller), etc. I was jamming on these VSTs, and was like wtf?? Why am I messing with all this dusty old equipment?

um, because it sounds a hundred times better?

sorry, couldn't resist!

seriously though, i have reconsidered the idea of buying vintage synths simply because of possible future repair costs or lack of replacement parts etc.

[himalaya]

"Ana is Poly"

My friend, Poly likes Ana, but don't tell it to Monophonique, our mutual friend from France, as she would be jealous. Monophonique and Ana go way back in time, and their friendship is legendary.