Music Thing: How to buy a modular synth
posted March 18th 2005 4:03PM
Each week Tom Whitwell of Music Thing highlights the best of the new music gear that's coming out, as well as noteworthy vintage equipment:
Modular analog synthesizers are big, expensive, unreliable and immeasurably geeky. The were to the 1970s what the Fairlight CMI was to the 1980s. The huge cabinets contain individual modules - oscillators, filters, mixers, which could be linked together with patch cords to build a synth. By early 1990s it looked as if they were dead forever, rusting in garages, replaced by digital synths and samplers. But they came back from the dead, with dozens of small companies producing modules and complete synths, selling them on-line. Today it's easier and cheaper to buy a modular synth than it's ever been before.
The cheapest way to start is probably a Doepfer A-100, a rather
unappealing but well respected German system of mini-modules. Their Mini System - ten modules that will work together
as a synth - costs €900. Alternatively,
Synthesizers.com will sell you
a starter modular for $100 a month. After a year you’ll have a full synth in an MDF case, complete with 12 patch
cords.
Once you’re started, you can buy modules from dozens of companies, like Wiard, who
build beautiful, engraved blue modules in Wisconsin, and Metasonix, who sell
vacuum tube modules covered in fetish-porn drawings with controls labelled “pound”, “strangle” and “grind”. Individual
modules cost anything from $80 for a Synthesizers.com Envelope generator to $800
for a Modcan Frequency
Shifter.
The most glamorous modular available is the new
Buchla 200e, which has
digitally-controlled, MIDI compatible modules (one of which is called “source of uncertainty”) in a folding box made of
laser-cut birch and aluminium. The full works costs $20,000. At the other end of the scale, you can build an entire
system yourself, like J?n
Bergfors, whose beautiful brass-chassis modules are cooler than anything you can buy.
that's quite insane. didn't we invent digital-stuff for a reason?
Yes, we invented digital stuff because everyone was just fed up with equipment that sounded good and was easy to use.
Right, so we came up with stuff that sounded good and was easy to use and was cheaper and lift-able.
This is a great luxury if you've got the dough, of course.
Come on guys, the whole analogue-vs-digital debate has been done to death at least ten years ago... just let it go, it's apples and oranges.
In the 80s people would actually sell off entire collections of analogue loveliness for a single DX7 with its stellar price-tag. Life does move in circles, now it's the other way around!
I agree, the analogue vs digital debate is pointless, but the physical vs. virtual is a real issue. When your programming complex new sounds using a completely open architecture (i.e. modular) I find having a box with knobs in front of me to be much more intuitive than a monitor. That said, I'm a huge fan and avid user of softsynths. Bottomline, whatever makes a noise that causes involuntary grinning, USE IT!
I agree with Jacob... what ever works at the time. I have a few analogue synths left in my collection and often use them purely because of 1) the intuitive factor and 2) i'm not staring at a screen which i spend an awful lot of time doing... and I often work with soft synths and these old chaps simultaneously.
Not sure what's unappealing about the Doepfer A-100. Their modules are gutsy and sensitive if a little too expensive to purchase in Australia.
very intriguing but I will stick with my soft synths for now. If I had ample room in the future give it a try.