Help me find a hw synth for my daughter

Anything about hardware musical instruments.
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and of course she likes leds, shes only human :band:

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Lots of Led's? Novation X-Station 61 perhaps ... https://m.ebay.co.uk/itm/Novation-X-STA ... r=1&_rdt=1

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Pink, the synth has to be pink. :party:

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How sexist of you..

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Nearer budget, Roland Juno or the Yamaha equivalents I don't recall the model numbers-- the ones with stripped down limited patch editing of mox sounds. Or maybe Korg Kross/kromes in the same price niche.

Over budget- Roland fa06 or Yamaha modx6. I haven't used modx6 but in theory looks better to me than fa06 which I have but fa06 is more fun than a barrel of monkeys as well. Modx just in theory looks a little better.

A couple months ago perusing Sweetwater customer reviews of modx, there were disturbing numbers of complaints about hardware quality control problems which is not something I would expect from Yamaha who are usually solid built. Maybe initial release problems. I'd like to hear from some modx owners about hardware quality control. It made me a little less eager to get one and I don't have time or space for one anyway.

It's hard to predict what a kid will like. Pref for hip hop and what passes for modern r&b would imply electronics but I remember a younger 11 year old girl daughter of my daughter's boyfriend.

She stayed over the summer and I showed my "pretty big" old melodica and showed her how to read beginner songs. She tooted on that thing hours a day all summer.

So at end of summer I didn't want to give up my old melodica and bought her about a $200 Casio with lots of sounds, theoretically a lot more capable playing around toy and learning instrument than a melodica. I could have bought her a melodica but thought she would like the Casio better.

But she didn't stay interested in the casio. Maybe she would have lost interest in the melodica too, hard to say. Maybe I should have got her a decent harmonica or small accordion. It's just hard to say what a kid will like.

My millenial daughter and nephews are electronic with phones computers and games but they play banjos, mandolins, ukes, ac guitars. Go figger. Play old corny folk songs. Badly. But they like it. :)

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+1 for the Novation Circuit. It is a great self-contained groove box, with two different synth tracks and two drum/sample tracks. The sequencer is very intuitive, and the playable pads can be constrained to one of numerous scales - she will be composing and playing her own songs in no time (of course, you can also connect a standard midi controller, so you can also play it with a full set of keys). The synth engines are very capable (essentially the Novation Mininova engine), and with the synth editor you can go as deep into sound design as you want. Plus, it runs great on just 6 AA batteries, so very portable, and fun.

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We went to an instrument shop. The one synth that she really liked was a Sequential Phrophet 6. But I was under the impression that it was the look of it that she liked. Either way that one is quite a bit over my budget.

They didn't had that many syntths. Mostly MIDI controllers. And quite a few of those really looked like x-mas trees with all their LEDs.

She did actually like a Mini Brute (or if it was a micro Brute?) as well as a mini KORG synth. Forgot the name of that one , too, It had a microphone for vocoding. I think it was a clone of one of their older stuff.

She liked mini keys. However I still think normal sized keys are better. But..well...

I'm very thankful for all the suggestions and kind comments in this thread.

I've been into old synths for such a long time so this thread was a nice wake up for me. There are actually quite a lot of good and nice new synths out there.

At the end of it all I think we'll end up with a Roland JD-Xi for her. But before deciding I'll check some of teh old / used stuff suggested. Just to see what's offered in the 2nd hand market in my town atm.

Thanks a lot to everyone for your help in finding a synth for my daughter ! :tu:

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To tell you the truth you want quite much for a budget: 1. Analogue synth 2. Pianos 3. Means you want polyphonic...

Korg Minilogue XD or Behringer Deep Mind 6 is something you want.

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I don't mind mini keys at all. I used to hate them but that was when they were terrible. These days there are some excellent ones around. In fact, I reckon the KeyStep keys are the best I've ever used, full-size or mini. I didn't even find it hard to adjust to play mini-keys with one hand and full-size keys with the other. It isn't nearly the PITA I was expecting it to be.

I think the Circuit or JD-Xi are definitely the best options and they meet all your criteria.
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