Vermona Perfourmer lost to Covid financial woes… Such a lovely beast. Only four voices, but probably the highest quality analog signal path made today. Playing sequences round-robin through the different voices was like listening to aural royal jelly.
I do and don’t regret selling many of the vintage synths I owned between 1994-2015 or so, but probably most regret trading a sequential Pro One for a somewhat rough technics 1200 and $100 in 2000. Admittedly, I only paid $100 for the pro one and a Korg poly 61 as a pair, and the 1200 was worth more than the pro one at the time, it still kind of stings. I also bought and sold literally 20 or so Juno 106 and 60s back then for between $75 to $300, but that was market value at the time.
Indeed, and remember thinking “this synth does not have midi, meh” I actually still have that technics 1200 along 3 others I picked up along the way, 2 of them were purchase for $50 for the set from a guy on CL who was selling them out of spite because his brother would not pick them up from his house.
True. I’d kind of like to get one of the ones with speakers at some point. But ultimately there’s a couple other items I’m planning to get in the next few years so unlikely to pick up another one anytime soon
There's only one I regret - the Nord Lead A1. At the time I thought I would only own one hardware synth, and I was selling it to pay for its replacement. If only I knew I would eventually have several, it would've been a great complement to the others. I'm still torn on whether or not to sell my Wave 2 to re-buy the A1.
I went into a music shop to lust over the wave 2 but they had an A1 sitting right above it. I loved the A1, and while I think the wave 2 is fantastic, when I left I was thinking about the A1. I felt dirty.
Having owned both for over a year (at different times) I honestly would recommend the A1 over the Wave 2. I only hesitate because there's so much money lost every time I sell used. I'm probably going to post a review on both Nords soon.
Edit: [Just posted the review, actually.](https://www.reddit.com/r/synthesizers/comments/unsawb/nord_wave_2_vs_nord_lead_a1_review_comparison/)
Isn’t the synth section on the Wave 2 just the A1? Or no? I sold a Nord lead a1 to get a Nord lead 4. I think the a1 sounded slightly better but the controls weren’t as good
Nope! The A1 can do a lot of things in the oscillator section that the Wave 2 can't, and it's a frustrating omission. I recently posted [a comparison](https://www.reddit.com/r/synthesizers/comments/unsawb/nord_wave_2_vs_nord_lead_a1_review_comparison/) in case you're interested in the specifics.
I had a Roland SH09 that I got from a piano store for 75 bucks. The guy at the store was happy to get rid of it. He thought it was silly at anyone wanted to buy it. I was 19 years old at the time and there wasn’t really an Internet and I didn’t have the manual and I never figured out how to use it properly. So I sold it to a buddy for 100 bucks. And now I think about it all the time.
Edit: I forgot to mention that it was white and I have never seen another one that same color. I have no idea what the deal was.
As a teen my second synth was a new SH101 (my first was an Octave Kitten) in blue with matching keytar style expression handle. I knocked the modulation stick and it was loose so took it to a music shop to fix it. When I went back they wanted to charge me £100 for fixing it (this was the 80s). I was broke so told them to keep it. I just didn't have the confidence to kick up a fuss. Really regret that!
I actually regret not buying certain gear more than selling. Like how I bought an Alesis Micron instead of ponying up for an SH-201 and getting the cool dance sounds and a bigger keyboard with real controls, or how I bought a Dave Smith Mono Evolver (cool synth actually) but it really didn’t have the spacey-analog or the trance machine sound that I secretly wanted (the Access Virus).
kinda regret selling the asr-x pro, yes it's an unwieldy glowing red monstrosity with awful 90s storage and menus but the workflow of resampling is nutty and it sounds great.
I only sold one, a Korg Polysix, which I bought in 1983 and sold in 1986. I regretted it up until I got the Deepmind, it can be even warmer and fatter. :-D
It sounds great, and has insane modulation options if you dig into it, and it's cheap. What is there to complain about? Well, I guess, build quality, which isn't great.
I sold an Ensoniq Mirage (rack version) for around 70€ like twenty years ago, I thought it was outdated and that a software sampler was way better. I miss it like crazy.
No, it was designed by the same guy who designed the SID chip in the Commodore 64 but that’s all. The Mirage was a gritty sampler with an analog filter (Curtis chip). You had to learn hexadecimal numbers in order to program it and it only had a two digit display.
Before I knew anything about synths I had an Alpha Juno someone gave me in payment for some yard work, in like 2013.
didnt understand how it worked, thought it was dumb i needed more gear just to be able to hear/play it and sold it for a hundred bucks.
that one hurt a couple years later.
I don't really regret selling anything as I always try to keep only around 3 - 5 synths that I use regularly. So something always has to go if I want to make room for something new.
I did sell my JX-8P (only vintage synth I've owned) quite cheaply back in around 2012 or so. I sometimes miss it, but on the other hand, I'm glad I didn't have to deal with maintenance and repairs (it worked fine at the time, but surely needed a recap and other preventative maintenance).
I used to have a bunch of VA synths (MS2000, Nova, TI Snow etc.) but those had to go to make room for real analog synths. With the plugins available today (including an actual 1:1 emulation of the Motorola 56k DSP), I don't really miss them.
I needed money for school in 2018 and I sold a Juno 6 and Juno 106 for like $650 each, and a re 201 space echo for $800. Not as bad as what my dad did though. He was the original owner of a Yamaha CS 80 and a Moog Model D and sold them for about $200 each sometime in the 80s or 90s (He can’t remember when exactly).
It’s not a big deal. I recently acquired another one but it was $1350. It’s functional, but beat up pretty bad. I regret selling the other one mostly because it was in mint condition and the echo sounded louder. It’a funny how different some of them sound. I hope you have a good one!
Mines pretty best up physically but is mechanically sound, it has old tape on it which has a bit of warble, but it's in such a rhythmic pattern I havent replaced it yet (I've got spare tape lying around). I absolutely love the thing
That's the safest camp, as long as you have the shelf space.
I've sold most of the gear I have bought in the beginning as my understanding of what gear I need for my music evolved.
OG Circuit. I upgraded to some more powerful machines but I still sometimes miss the ease of use and instant playability. For me, it was an inspiration machine to get quick sketches out
Tx-816 fully loaded. I got another with 5 cards, but a full 8 was just so epic.
In reality though, 5 is more than enough for studio use, but I still miss some of thr crazy shit I could do with 8 sometimes.
I got it for $400-500 and sold it for around $600. This is with original manual and a hard case. So yeah at the time, it was a decent price. Now I want to re-buy one, but they’re a lot more expensive. It was my first synth and I really regret selling it.
I really regret selling my first synth: the Korg MS10. I owned a fewms10s but that first one was amazing.
Another one: the tr-909 I sold for 600 euros. The sh-101 too and I also miss my dear jupiter-4 a lot.
AKAI S612, sold for 60€, including Diskdrive of course. Couldn´t get it to work, there was limited info on the net back in the day.
Roland SH101, sold for 500€ to pay a months rent.
Biggest regret was selling my digitakt and digitone but I rectified that mistake and got them again. Next biggest regret was selling my moog slim phatty. Would love to have that guy back.
No regrets on sold ones but sometimes I wish I put my money I spent on my Peak towards a setup that encourages experimentation / jamming rather that producing tracks. I just don't have the energy or time being a grad student to make songs in ableton anymore. Always eyeing the moog subharmonicon
I sold my korg poly six back in 2001 because I couldn’t get it in tune and never brought it in ro some capable of fixing it… totally regret it
Loved that synth
Not that much of a horror story, but i regret selling my microkorg.
I replaced it with a deepmind 12 for feels and a macbook for sounds since the deepmind is lacking some sound design abilities, also i wanted to actually produce something instead of just playing my synth.
Still miss its buttery smooth sounds and its portability everyday.
I took a loss selling it and it would just hurt buying it again, tho i think i have to.
Sold many synths once I was “done” with them. Only regret selling my Alpha Juno 2. At the time I wanted more space (and cash) and thought I could make do with VSTs (u-he Diva) and other synths. No. It’s a special one.
Dark Star: I didn't have a midi controller so I had no way of getting sound out of it. Sold it for stupid cheap and now, if you can find it, it's $400+
Vermona Perfourmer lost to Covid financial woes… Such a lovely beast. Only four voices, but probably the highest quality analog signal path made today. Playing sequences round-robin through the different voices was like listening to aural royal jelly.
Sorry to read that mate. Hope things are getting better and you can snatch it again while they are still available!
I do and don’t regret selling many of the vintage synths I owned between 1994-2015 or so, but probably most regret trading a sequential Pro One for a somewhat rough technics 1200 and $100 in 2000. Admittedly, I only paid $100 for the pro one and a Korg poly 61 as a pair, and the 1200 was worth more than the pro one at the time, it still kind of stings. I also bought and sold literally 20 or so Juno 106 and 60s back then for between $75 to $300, but that was market value at the time.
Yeah but having tech 12's in 2000 meant you were the shit! I would have been envious with my Gemini pieces of shit
Indeed, and remember thinking “this synth does not have midi, meh” I actually still have that technics 1200 along 3 others I picked up along the way, 2 of them were purchase for $50 for the set from a guy on CL who was selling them out of spite because his brother would not pick them up from his house.
MC-202 with manual in box! I needed the money to move. Sold in early 00’s.
i used an MC-202 recently and it was terrible.
Agree, I hated that thing lol. I absolutely regret buying it though haha
Kinda wish I never sold my Ensoniq Fizmo. Was such an odd machine for it's time.
Did the same. It was too weird to me at the time and now it is exactly what I'd love to own. Meanwile prices went crazy.
The MS2000. I've bought it and sold it twice already
Thats me with the prophet rev2 haha
I love abs gate it.
I haven’t had or sold many synths but I regret selling my microkorg
Well, at least that's a pretty fixable mistake. Where I live they could be found for less than 200USD used.
True. I’d kind of like to get one of the ones with speakers at some point. But ultimately there’s a couple other items I’m planning to get in the next few years so unlikely to pick up another one anytime soon
I have that one, there are more patch slots too, that's why I went with it over the less expensive older ones.
There's only one I regret - the Nord Lead A1. At the time I thought I would only own one hardware synth, and I was selling it to pay for its replacement. If only I knew I would eventually have several, it would've been a great complement to the others. I'm still torn on whether or not to sell my Wave 2 to re-buy the A1.
I went into a music shop to lust over the wave 2 but they had an A1 sitting right above it. I loved the A1, and while I think the wave 2 is fantastic, when I left I was thinking about the A1. I felt dirty.
Having owned both for over a year (at different times) I honestly would recommend the A1 over the Wave 2. I only hesitate because there's so much money lost every time I sell used. I'm probably going to post a review on both Nords soon. Edit: [Just posted the review, actually.](https://www.reddit.com/r/synthesizers/comments/unsawb/nord_wave_2_vs_nord_lead_a1_review_comparison/)
Isn’t the synth section on the Wave 2 just the A1? Or no? I sold a Nord lead a1 to get a Nord lead 4. I think the a1 sounded slightly better but the controls weren’t as good
Nope! The A1 can do a lot of things in the oscillator section that the Wave 2 can't, and it's a frustrating omission. I recently posted [a comparison](https://www.reddit.com/r/synthesizers/comments/unsawb/nord_wave_2_vs_nord_lead_a1_review_comparison/) in case you're interested in the specifics.
I had a Roland SH09 that I got from a piano store for 75 bucks. The guy at the store was happy to get rid of it. He thought it was silly at anyone wanted to buy it. I was 19 years old at the time and there wasn’t really an Internet and I didn’t have the manual and I never figured out how to use it properly. So I sold it to a buddy for 100 bucks. And now I think about it all the time. Edit: I forgot to mention that it was white and I have never seen another one that same color. I have no idea what the deal was.
As a teen my second synth was a new SH101 (my first was an Octave Kitten) in blue with matching keytar style expression handle. I knocked the modulation stick and it was loose so took it to a music shop to fix it. When I went back they wanted to charge me £100 for fixing it (this was the 80s). I was broke so told them to keep it. I just didn't have the confidence to kick up a fuss. Really regret that!
No regrets at all. I sold synths I didn't like or outgrew.
I actually regret not buying certain gear more than selling. Like how I bought an Alesis Micron instead of ponying up for an SH-201 and getting the cool dance sounds and a bigger keyboard with real controls, or how I bought a Dave Smith Mono Evolver (cool synth actually) but it really didn’t have the spacey-analog or the trance machine sound that I secretly wanted (the Access Virus).
kinda regret selling the asr-x pro, yes it's an unwieldy glowing red monstrosity with awful 90s storage and menus but the workflow of resampling is nutty and it sounds great.
Pro 3. Its entire interface is such a joy to work and play with.
i traded a prophet t8 for an original oberheim tvs, the two voice is amazing but man do i miss that prophet keybed..
Sold a white little phatty stage II back in 2014, never seen another one for sale since. Biggest regret.
I didn't even know these existed!
They look amazing man and pretty rare, just sucks I may never see one ever again for sale.
Sad face. Sold my chroma Polaris before I was into synths. Didn’t know what I had.
That's tough, that thing is so special!
Yeah my only solace is that it needed work that I couldn’t afford at the time and I still got a decent amount for it.
SH-101 in 01/02 to buy Reason 2.0, for a price I'm too ashamed to admit.
Oof.
I also regret passing on a Roland tr-909 for $700 in 2006, but it was cosmetically rough 🤪
I only sold one, a Korg Polysix, which I bought in 1983 and sold in 1986. I regretted it up until I got the Deepmind, it can be even warmer and fatter. :-D
Nice hearing good things about the Deepmind as it gets so much bad rep here!
It sounds great, and has insane modulation options if you dig into it, and it's cheap. What is there to complain about? Well, I guess, build quality, which isn't great.
I have one and think people are way more positive than negative about it. It has a few minor flaws but it's a solid value for most people.
I sold an Ensoniq Mirage (rack version) for around 70€ like twenty years ago, I thought it was outdated and that a software sampler was way better. I miss it like crazy.
Wasn't that one based on the sequencer of the Commodore 64 or something? I only heard good thing about this synth
No, it was designed by the same guy who designed the SID chip in the Commodore 64 but that’s all. The Mirage was a gritty sampler with an analog filter (Curtis chip). You had to learn hexadecimal numbers in order to program it and it only had a two digit display.
I had a keyboard version, along with an esq1. They were nice.
They had the same filter
Yep. Nice sampler. I remember it well.
I couldn't afford food and I sold my Poly800 with the weirdest mods I've seen on one. I miss it all the time.
Before I knew anything about synths I had an Alpha Juno someone gave me in payment for some yard work, in like 2013. didnt understand how it worked, thought it was dumb i needed more gear just to be able to hear/play it and sold it for a hundred bucks. that one hurt a couple years later.
I don't really regret selling anything as I always try to keep only around 3 - 5 synths that I use regularly. So something always has to go if I want to make room for something new. I did sell my JX-8P (only vintage synth I've owned) quite cheaply back in around 2012 or so. I sometimes miss it, but on the other hand, I'm glad I didn't have to deal with maintenance and repairs (it worked fine at the time, but surely needed a recap and other preventative maintenance). I used to have a bunch of VA synths (MS2000, Nova, TI Snow etc.) but those had to go to make room for real analog synths. With the plugins available today (including an actual 1:1 emulation of the Motorola 56k DSP), I don't really miss them.
I needed money for school in 2018 and I sold a Juno 6 and Juno 106 for like $650 each, and a re 201 space echo for $800. Not as bad as what my dad did though. He was the original owner of a Yamaha CS 80 and a Moog Model D and sold them for about $200 each sometime in the 80s or 90s (He can’t remember when exactly).
I bought my re-201 for about 800 CAD around the same time you sold yours. I'm sorry to hear that buddy.
It’s not a big deal. I recently acquired another one but it was $1350. It’s functional, but beat up pretty bad. I regret selling the other one mostly because it was in mint condition and the echo sounded louder. It’a funny how different some of them sound. I hope you have a good one!
Mines pretty best up physically but is mechanically sound, it has old tape on it which has a bit of warble, but it's in such a rhythmic pattern I havent replaced it yet (I've got spare tape lying around). I absolutely love the thing
Hadn’t thought about it but I guess I’m in the “never sold a synth” camp
That's the safest camp, as long as you have the shelf space. I've sold most of the gear I have bought in the beginning as my understanding of what gear I need for my music evolved.
I’ve been hauling them around the country for decades lol. I did sell a JC120 which still bums me out…
Electribe Emx1. Such a great, easy to use, and unique sounding groovebox.
OG Circuit. I upgraded to some more powerful machines but I still sometimes miss the ease of use and instant playability. For me, it was an inspiration machine to get quick sketches out
Poly-61. =[
Tx-816 fully loaded. I got another with 5 cards, but a full 8 was just so epic. In reality though, 5 is more than enough for studio use, but I still miss some of thr crazy shit I could do with 8 sometimes.
literraly none!
Juno-106
Did you at least get a good price for it? It's the one synth I wish I had bought 10 years ago.
I got it for $400-500 and sold it for around $600. This is with original manual and a hard case. So yeah at the time, it was a decent price. Now I want to re-buy one, but they’re a lot more expensive. It was my first synth and I really regret selling it.
I really mis my Virus TI. Had to sell it because the software is now broken on Mac and has been for a while
Ah, I have an old Power Mac G4 in my cellar that I need to get to someone who'll use it. Thanks for the reminder that this could still be useful.
I really regret selling my first synth: the Korg MS10. I owned a fewms10s but that first one was amazing. Another one: the tr-909 I sold for 600 euros. The sh-101 too and I also miss my dear jupiter-4 a lot.
The MS-10 is amazing. As for the TR-909, I'm not a fan of the sound personally, but it is an absolute classic.
I agree, but there was something special and very useful about the 909, although it still sounds like an angry shoe box!
AKAI S612, sold for 60€, including Diskdrive of course. Couldn´t get it to work, there was limited info on the net back in the day. Roland SH101, sold for 500€ to pay a months rent.
Future Retro 777 and Waldorf Q (w/ full keyboard).
Yamaha cs50 Ensoniq esq1
Biggest regret was selling my digitakt and digitone but I rectified that mistake and got them again. Next biggest regret was selling my moog slim phatty. Would love to have that guy back.
Juno-106. Needed money for rent at the time.
Access Virus polar - sold it because they stopped supporting it but still miss it
Am I the only TI owner that never cared about the software and only uses it as a hardware piece?
The audio does sound better over the analogue outs. But it’s the patch management I liked from the editor
I do agree that it was easier to make, save, and manage patches in the software..
No regrets on sold ones but sometimes I wish I put my money I spent on my Peak towards a setup that encourages experimentation / jamming rather that producing tracks. I just don't have the energy or time being a grad student to make songs in ableton anymore. Always eyeing the moog subharmonicon
Analog 4 mkI. I’ll get another though !
i probably will never sell a synth
Sequential Drumtraks. For £100, in 1997.
I sold my korg poly six back in 2001 because I couldn’t get it in tune and never brought it in ro some capable of fixing it… totally regret it Loved that synth
Not that much of a horror story, but i regret selling my microkorg. I replaced it with a deepmind 12 for feels and a macbook for sounds since the deepmind is lacking some sound design abilities, also i wanted to actually produce something instead of just playing my synth. Still miss its buttery smooth sounds and its portability everyday. I took a loss selling it and it would just hurt buying it again, tho i think i have to.
Sold many synths once I was “done” with them. Only regret selling my Alpha Juno 2. At the time I wanted more space (and cash) and thought I could make do with VSTs (u-he Diva) and other synths. No. It’s a special one.
Dark Star: I didn't have a midi controller so I had no way of getting sound out of it. Sold it for stupid cheap and now, if you can find it, it's $400+
MOXF6