I, myself, have a Casio CZ-101 synth, which I have had since the late 1980's. I got it in order to add another 4 channels to the 4 built-in to the Amiga for a grand total of 8 channels.
Nice
The CZ's good stuff, although it didn't really suit me personally.
Truly grateful my friend I will get there in the end and will certainly have a go at what you suggest ,and I am going to have a quick look at some synths very best wishes Brian.
Heh
I don't know a whole lot about what the market's like over in the UK, but you can generally get mid-'80s to mid-'90s synths pretty inexpensively (that covers late-period analog to the early days of multitimbral digital "workstation" stuff.) Your CTK will already cover most "workstation" bases fairly well (and your Amiga naturally fills the grittier "early sampler" role,) so I'd look at some full-fledged
synthesizer gear (i.e. pieces that allow you to create your own sounds.) Here's my opinions on some gear I've used:
The Yamaha DX7 can be had pretty inexpensively ($200-400, depending on whether you get it locally or on eBay) on account of being such a huge seller in its day; the DX7-II has a bit different sound (less gritty, more clear - both are good, it just depends on what you want,) more patch memory, and better performance features. It's best-known for doing
excellent metallic/percussive sounds (like the famous '80s pop-ballad electric-piano sound,) but if you take the time to really learn your way around FM synthesis it's capable of an
extremely wide variety of sounds. You can also get module versions of both (generally cheaper, and good if you're short on space.) The TX7 is a Mk.1 DX7 in a desktop form factor and stores all the performance settings with each voice (something the original DX7 needs an upgrade to do,) while the TX802 is a rack DX7-II that's eight-part multitimbral.
Yamaha made a bunch of other FM synths as well, mostly based on simpler 4-operator chips. The FB-01 half-rack module is basically the same voice architecture as the Sega Genesis/Megadrive. It's a lot more limited than the DX7s, but also a good bit simpler, and it goes
dirt-cheap ($50 range.) The TX81Z is a slightly pricier ($80-120) full-rack module that extends the FB-01's voice architecture with some of the features it was missing from the DX7, as well as multiple operator waveforms (which greatly extends
its range of sounds.) Both have eight voices and are eight-part multitimbral; the multitimbral mode in these is a bit primitive and awkward, but for a studio setting it's perfectly usable.
Roland's D-50 was the other big-name early digital synth; it's capable of
some glorious sounds and it's worth owning even just for some of the presets ("Fantasia" is still amazing despite being one of the most overused sounds ever.) It goes for more than the DX7, usually ($400-500-ish,) but it's worth every penny. If you want a lower-quality but cheaper version of the basic sound,
the famous MT-32 module ($50-100) uses the same basic architecture (and is multitimbral, to boot.)
Transitioning between digital and analog, the Korg DW-8000 is a neat hybrid synthesizer - it generates single-cycle digital waveforms from ROM and runs them through analog filters and amplifiers, with the final stage being a digital delay that can be modulated for chorus-type effects. It goes for around DX7 prices ($200-300) and can produce
some of the DX7's famous digital bell/piano sounds, but can also do some lovely analog-style pads and some neat spacey sounds that fall in between. There's also a rack version, the EX-8000, though it doesn't generally go any cheaper.
On the subject of analog synthesizers, you won't get the famous "big names" cheap unless you make an extraordinarily lucky find in someone's basement or something, but a lot of perfectly decent non-famous keyboards can be had fairly inexpensively. The Oberheim Matrix-6, for example, goes for $400-700 and has an extremely flexible voice architecture that can create some quite complex sounds; the sound isn't legendary, but it's plenty good. The only downside is that, like many later analogs, the voice parameters are all hidden behind a single set of data-entry controls (in this case, a set of membrane buttons.) Ugh...but on the other hand, it's that that allows the complex 90+ parameter voice architecture to begin with. There's a rack version, the Matrix-6R, that goes cheaper, and another rack version, the Matrix-1000, that has no onboard voice editing (you have to use a computer editor) but comes with a huge number of voices pre-loaded and twice the user-editable patch memory.
The Roland JX-10 is just a
gorgeous instrument; it's like the analog synthesizer equivalent of a concert grand in that it just
sounds ultra-classy no matter what. It goes for $500-700, and if you want to avoid editing voices with the craptastic "alpha dial" the PG-800 programmer goes for another couple hundred (unless you get a good deal on the pair, as I did,) but it's just an ultra-lush, warm analog sound. Its little brother the JX-8P can be had cheaper, but the JX-10 is basically two 8Ps in a single keyboard, which can be layered or split for some wonderfully complex sounds. There's a rack version of the JX-10, the MKS-70, which has the advantage of a much better MIDI implementation, which allows the use of free computer voice editors in place of the PG-800.
The Korg MS-20 Mini ($600) is a modern reproduction of one of Korg's old analog monosynths; its monophonic nature limits its versatility for live performance, but of course in a studio situation you can stack as many tracks as you want - you can even make
whole songs with it. It's got a great grungy, organic sound, and its semi-modular nature and direct panel control of every parameter means that it's great for learning how analog synthesis works. Good stuff
