Just sold a bunch stuff and bought a Sequential Pro 3 SE:
and an ASM Hydrasynth:
Sorry about the huge pics. I used to resize and upload to Dropbox but they've made that really difficult now.
Pro 3 SE - I got lucky and found an SE on Muff's for only $100 more than the base model vs the normal $500 extra you'd pay for wood end cheeks and tiltable panel upgrade. I've owned a lot of synths and a quite a few different modular filters, but these (3 count 'em 3) filters sound fantastic, especially the OTA 4 pole. They've seriously dialed these in. Still haven't sussed the sequencer completely, but it's 16 x 4 and you can chain them for 64 steps and there are other seq lanes to program modulations and route them about anywhere. The sequencer is playable in real time is some cool ways I hope to figure out in the next few weeks. Two analog osc and one wavetable osc is a nice touch. It's a powerhouse mono synth to put it mildly, but it also can be paraphonic 3 note.
The Hydrasynth is a monster. It's a ton of synth for $1300 with ribbon controller and polyphonic aftertouch which I'm completely in love with, now that I've tried it. I had some Behringer semi-modulars (the CAT and the Neutron) which were cool, and I enjoy the zen of physically patching, but I can get lost in that and I really want to get tracks done to release electronic music I'm working on, so I returned those and bought this. The Hydrasynth is truly groundbreaking in it's approach, especially to all-important modulation routing, where it really shines. I's kind of modular in that it's easy to patch and you can pretty much route anything to anything. It's digital and sounds great, but I think it's probably individual taste as far as sound goes. I like digital if it sounds good and this thing definitely does. The interface on this thing is pure genius IMO, especially setting mod routings, which is usually a tedious mess. Much like Ableton being copied (ahem), other manufacturers will be glomming on to the Hydrasynth's interface in the coming years I predict. Five ADSR's and five LFO's! I liken Polyphonic aftertouch to a backup camera on a car- you don't know how much you'll dig it, until you have it. Pads are a blast with PAT! The company is adding new features (like a semitone stepped LFO with smoothing) and seems like they are 100% committed to future upgrades. I could go on and on about this baby...
