I want a hardware synth and could use some advice

[glokraw]

A woodshop? Can you imagine how cool a cherry, maple, koa, or mahogany shell would be, for the innards of a typical Nord xxx?

'Love the smell of melting red plastic in the morning...'

[ninellllllllllll]

I was pretty impressed by Novation Peak & DSI Prophet rev2. The former is so versatile in sound it produces. The latter is just making really fat sound. Going to buy rev2 when settle somewhere.

[ninellllllllllll]

I also had 0-coast for a while and sold it b/c it's too cold and it was really hard to get anything besides bass and noisy stuff.

[zerocrossing]

Pretty much narrowed it down to the West Pest and Minilogue XD module.

Advantage of the West Pest is I can take it with be anywhere, and I probably would take it with me a lot.
Also, sounds incredible. Just the quality of the sound itself. Also, the sequencer/arp and it's simple but effective generative random functionality is great. And price seems great for what it offers. And it's simple for me to comprehend I do wonder if I might end up in a cul de sac where the results all start sounding similar and not getting enough variety due to it's small set of parameters.

Advantage of the Minilogue is the probably never-ending variety that would be possible and the thrid party importable oscillators and effects plugins will probably insure it stay fresh well into the future. I think I could comprehend it as opposed to the Wavestate. Only downside I see is price, being doulbe that of the Pest.

So hard to decide.

I really appreciate all the input. I ended up considering nearly every suggestion

they are two very different ends of the scale, the west pest does indeed sound awesome, of those two, for me, its two west pests.

however, i get the impressions you want something a bit more "all round"?
the minilogue will give you far more than double the price worth in that respect.
its a full on "synthesiser" as many expect them, lots of range, can be played alone, with its built in fx for pads/bass/leads...

the west pest is a single oscillator mono synth, which will have a much more limited (although still fairly wide) range of sounds, although the extra lfo for audio rate fm, will add a fair bit of texture, it wont be the same as those fully programmable oscillators in the logue. what it will do however, is kick the logues ass within that range

if i was you, ie not adding the pest to a big system, id get the logue for now.
the pest is cheap enough, that maybe some point in the future, you could add it, and between the two, spend relatively little, but have a decent little powerhouse

great advice and info! Thanks, I may do just this!

I seem to be adding the microfreak and 0-Coast back into the mix. Any thoughts on those as well?

I’ve owned both and sold both. They both sound great, but with the MicroFreak, I kept butting up against it’s limited modulation sources and awkward to use modulation matrix. The 0-Coast also sounded great, but lack of patch memory made me avoid using it. I just realized that I’m not a patch-cables guy, at least not the physical kind. That’s me, though. I highly recommend both of them. They’re great values.

[killmaster]

I’ve owned both and sold both. They both sound great, but with the MicroFreak, I kept butting up against it’s limited modulation sources and awkward to use modulation matrix. The 0-Coast also sounded great, but lack of patch memory made me avoid using it. I just realized that I’m not a patch-cables guy, at least not the physical kind. That’s me, though. I highly recommend both of them. They’re great values.

I ended up getting the 0-Coast and so far I love it a lot. I can't stop messing with it and somehow it seems to fit me really well. I stopped thinking about other possibilities except the 0-CRTL and Rumble of Ancient Times. I would be thinking about the Lyra-8 too, but that's for another time.

[vurt]

I’ve owned both and sold both. They both sound great, but with the MicroFreak, I kept butting up against it’s limited modulation sources and awkward to use modulation matrix. The 0-Coast also sounded great, but lack of patch memory made me avoid using it. I just realized that I’m not a patch-cables guy, at least not the physical kind. That’s me, though. I highly recommend both of them. They’re great values.

I ended up getting the 0-Coast and so far I love it a lot. I can't stop messing with it and somehow it seems to fit me really well. I stopped thinking about other possibilities except the 0-CRTL and Rumble of Ancient Times. I would be thinking about the Lyra-8 too, but that's for another time.

cool
did you go to make noise to test or just jump in?

glad to hear "modular" fits, as zero says, its not for everybody, but if you're of a particular mindset, it can be wonderful and inspiring!

[killmaster]

I ended up getting the 0-Coast and so far I love it a lot. I can't stop messing with it and somehow it seems to fit me really well. I stopped thinking about other possibilities except the 0-CRTL and Rumble of Ancient Times. I would be thinking about the Lyra-8 too, but that's for another time.

cool
did you go to make noise to test or just jump in?

glad to hear "modular" fits, as zero says, its not for everybody, but if you're of a particular mindset, it can be wonderful and inspiring!

Make noise is no longer open to the public for drop ins. I met someone locally here selling one second hand though.

Thanks for this! Yeh, Kinda surprised I'm so into it since I had zero interest in modular per se. I think I like that it's a fairly limited set of parameters and seemingly endless ways to use them. It's like a little waveform chemistry kit with lots of unexpected chemical reactions. And it really has already helped me understand technical synth things on a deeper level so will help me with my other digital software synths. First time I'm reading and enjoying every word of a manual!

[vurt]

well that is just awesome to read

yeah it's limited, but as you say, it can do far more than you expect when you get patching!

[zerocrossing]

I’ve owned both and sold both. They both sound great, but with the MicroFreak, I kept butting up against it’s limited modulation sources and awkward to use modulation matrix. The 0-Coast also sounded great, but lack of patch memory made me avoid using it. I just realized that I’m not a patch-cables guy, at least not the physical kind. That’s me, though. I highly recommend both of them. They’re great values.

I ended up getting the 0-Coast and so far I love it a lot. I can't stop messing with it and somehow it seems to fit me really well. I stopped thinking about other possibilities except the 0-CRTL and Rumble of Ancient Times. I would be thinking about the Lyra-8 too, but that's for another time.

Nice. There are a lot of really cool little semi modulars around. Pittsburgh Modular Microvolt 3900 Is another one I had. I had them all connected up to each other and a Pro 2.

[Uncle E]

Nice. There are a lot of really cool little semi modulars around.

What's the best sounding of them? I've heard great sounds out of the Werkstatt.

[zerocrossing]

Nice. There are a lot of really cool little semi modulars around.

What's the best sounding of them? I've heard great sounds out of the Werkstatt.

Oh, you should know better than to ask a question like that. I never had a Werkstatt, but I did have a trio of Mother 32s and they sounded glorious. Really beautiful. I imagine it was sort of a Matriarch prototype.

[pdxindy]

Nice. There are a lot of really cool little semi modulars around. Pittsburgh Modular Microvolt 3900 Is another one I had. I had them all connected up to each other and a Pro 2.

I have the Voltage Research Lab... so many lovely sonic possibilities! That is one to turn on recording and spend an hour or two making cool sounds.

[killmaster]

Nice. There are a lot of really cool little semi modulars around.

What's the best sounding of them? I've heard great sounds out of the Werkstatt.

The ones I've heard that sounded best to me (for a variety of reasons):

Ciat-Lonbarde Shbobo Shnth but the programming interface scared me:
https://www.analoguehaven.com/ciat-lonbarde/shnth/

And the Lyra-8, but the price scared me

And to me the Rumble of Ancient Times sounds fantastic. Some people say it's limited cause of the 4 notes but I love the quality of the sound, even though it's dirty and it seems really musical nonetheless. It's available now. I'll be curious how it fares in time. https://www.detroitmodular.com/soma-rum ... times.html

The West Pest seems super fun and sounds amazing but after getting the 0-Coast, it doesn't seem quite as capable in ways that are important to me. Does seem like 0-Coast hit a good balance by including East and West stuff together. But definitely a great value at half the cost.

I honestly think the 0-Coast sounds just as good as any of them in terms of high quality circuits and sound blending variety and uniqueness but it is on the expensive side.

Mavis sounds really great too and seems like a very good value. I visited the Mood store before deciding but just wasn't drawn in in the same way as Make Noise's stuff.

[Uncle E]

Thanks, guys. West Pest and 0-Coast seem much more capable than the Mavis. Definitely heard some cool things out of the 0-Coast. They don't sound like an Easel, I guess that's not possible at 1/6 the price.

Looking up the Mother-32 led me to the DFAM. It's funny, that one didn't impress me when it came out but the Loopop video makes it sound amazing. Maybe I'm finally opening up to bleep-bloop sounds.