John Bowen Synth Design

Plug... howdy! Yeah, Greg be the wizard. :-) Of course, with the CS-80 filters, a lot of people don't "get" that with the CODE, you have to really program something which uses half the voices on one layer, half on another to better simulate the CS-80's "two keyboards in one box" effect. And then run the thing through a bucket brigade chorus, etc. Just like the modular synths with a CS80 filter .. one voice out a filter, will NOT sound like a CS80, but more like a CS50 (40?).

House thing. Yeah... trying to do the 20% down. Hence the selling of gear. Trying to sell mixer first (if possible), then go from there. Goal was to get 20% down, then have $10K float for "unexpected repairs" out of paranoia. But my toys... I want my toys!!!! ;-)

I was on the same situation. Sold some gear to get extra cash for the house. I only regret not taking a picture of the all gear in the home studio, oh well. I live fairly close to you actually, border line Hawthorne - Inglewood. As for the CS-80 filters, I had planned to take it to Greg (a 5 min drive) to get it done, but as it turns I had house problems. Had to repair the main sewage line. My advice would be that if you can't get 20% down to avoid PMI, etc. just give 3.5 down and keep your cash on hand, specially during this economy. A house will come with it's surprises and you are likely to do unexpected repairs. Not to mention furniture, garden tools, and any other kind of house project the lady of the house takes on. If you have not done it yet, get your loan approval, start using redfin and check homes daily. It took me a few months to find mine.Good luck!!!. Changing topic, I'm in search of a SunSyn. If you do decide to sell it, please let me know. I love my Q+, but i found using the rack more often since I have it connected to an ebbe und flut. Brutal, I know :)

All of the StudioElectronics CS-80 filter demos just didn't sound much like a CS-80 to me- I didn't get that "Vangelis" feeling from them. I did hear a pretty amazing demo of the Jomox Sunsyn, where the they went more for smooth/warm pads instead of harsher sounds- I didin;t know the Sunsyn was capable of that. That one will be pretty hard to replace, they are like hen's teeth. But I agree with your buddies, a house is now a great investment- prices have hit bottom and are starting to rise, interest rates are near all-time lows, and you do need a place to put your gear! I recently re-fi'd my house, and my payments are now [i]less[/i] than what I paid in rent in Chicago 15 years ago, seriously.

Howdy plug... let me know how you like the CS80 filters. Are you installing them yourself? Some say not too hard, some say send it back to Analogia (almost down the street, well 30 minutes, with traffic, from me) to add the filter blocks. Curious how that goes with you. I was going to send the SunSyn back to Jurgen to do the "version 2" retrofit, including switch to the black case... but then started down this road of looking to buy a house locally (like, pricing has dropped $200K in my neighborhood where I've been renting for 10 years post divorce, going back to being self-employed, yada yada). With the mix of house prices and interest rates in So. Calif., those of us who blew their money on vintage synths instead of buying homes are in a unique position to sell gear, buy house, since not underwater from buying a home during the peak (e.g., $799K vs $599K ... HUGE difference). Feel bad for folks losing their homes, literally, but .... you can't lease 2 Mercedes, buy a huge home, and not put anything away, etc. - some folks had poor financial planning. In any case ... right NOW, I am trying to decide WHAT to sell ... since I just had to pay $15K in income tax (under estimated my estimated tax; made same gross as last year, but cut expenses, so made a little more money, didn't do as much estimated, hit with tax bill ... doh!). I *MAY* be selling my SunSyn, Waldorf Q Rack, Waldorf Q+ w/analog filters, SE1-X OD, FS1R, Fizmo, Nord Lead 3, AND the SOLARIS here momentarily to make the down payment. It hurts, man, even thinking about doing this. My Yamaha mixer and console are on eBay right now, and it hurts to do THAT. But, as my buddies (married, with homes; single with homes, etc.) ... say, get the house, then worry about the gear, as you'll have some place to put the gear. Right now the house I'm renting is literally falling apart (I have to use Furman voltage regulators everywhere anything important is plugged in, roof has couple of spots need repaired, plumbing is not great, termite damage, etc. ... great area, but I'm living on the dumpy house on the street with all the renovated homes. The "trust" who owns this place is either going to let it fall apart, sell the land, or eventually when the lady who owns it passes, sell it for whatever. Upshot ... days are numbered. Renting another place is tricky being self employed since downtime costs me money, and so forth. ............ didn't mean to start an epic poem (too late!) .... BUT ... any serious offers on the gear mentioned above, would be considered with local pickup preferred for any of the keyboards (rack stuff travels well, keyboards not as well). Have orig manuals, custom dust covers, and even boxes for some stuff (some I killed the boxes in favor of cheap ATA cases - you know those $100 ones from NY that wouldn't survive falling off a bus, but are better for storing something in the garage than a cardboard box!). ANYWAY.... happy trails to all ... I am supposed to be working on my website right now, updating services/pricing and really do not want to do that .... hence the distraction here ...... well, back to the salt mine! :-)
Eventually stuff will start to appear on my ebay page, but I'm dealing with their stupid new "dollar limit" and that means I can't put more than $10K of stuff up there at once until middle of May. But again, pardon the epic poem if you got this far ... http://stores.ebay.com/neotropeinc .

Hello all, I will be a happy solaris owner soon (sn 69). I saw one of you is considering selling a sunsyn. I'm interested. Next month i'm getting 4 cs-80 for my omega, I'll upload some samples for everyone to hear. The Arturia Origen synth takes some time to get used to but it can sound great. The stock sounds don't really do justice, but I like the semi modular approach on it, unfortunately the gain stage on the synth is flawed. A nice pre-amp takes care of it, but the issue affects the sound quality. I had a memory moog but had to sell it since it would not tune properly, I now miss it. I would love to get the Chroma (there is one on e-bay right now), but between that or the sunsyn, I pick the little guy simply because I don't have more room!

A funny story, when I picked up my Waldorf Q+ the seller told me he had used it while making music for Tron. I said: "Tron, as in the original movie???" he said: "yup, I made it" :)

Cheers!

Jimmy,
Yes, by today’s standards the original movie is very slow paced....but when I saw it in 1976, it really hit me hard, as I was just getting over a major relationship loss, and I really understood the main character’s emotions about wanting to have it back, no matter if it was real or not. So the effect of the movie has always stayed with me....

I fell asleep everytime I tried to watch that, even the george Clooney version, but Solaris' is a hypnotic beast and you surely won't fall asleep.
I get tired of standing for hours though and flop down for 20 minute breaks. I don;t work until Tuesday so I am quite feverish...

John is speaking about Andreï Tarkovsky, the movie maker, who made " Solaris " from the same name novel from Stanislas Lem.

Солярис

Are you talking about the Soviet sleeper agent named Nicoli Tarkovshy in the movie Salt with Angelina Jolie...??

Cant believe I dont have jet lag, so I am going to the Palms tonight to see my favorite live " real " forn band.
I'll get really buzzed and then come home and say I'm exhausted.
The real wolrd will be waking up in the morning when what should be a reality show, begins...

I'd love to go to Music China.....and to Moscow. Auricle lives there I believe, and I know he likes Solarry....

Actually, there is a Chinese NAMM Show - it's called 'Music China', and it’s usually in October (for 2012 it's October 11-14). There’s also the debut of a NAMM show in Moscow coming in May (16-19). I’ve had quite some interest from Russia for the Solaris (maybe the Tarkovsky connection? His movie [i]was[/i] the source of inspiration for the name), but at this point, I just can’t spend the money needed to attend these shows.

Maybe someday....

Just punished the local Chinese keyboarists in Macau recently, and JB could sell a ton of those over here if they had a Chinese NAMM like they do CeBit.
CME Controllers and racks of Romplers, same old story, no iPad geeks with really cool sounds, etc.
But I had 2 guys on stage every break and I let them wear my headphones and though my Cantonese and Mandarin are limited, and more orientated ( no pun intended ) for scoring babes, I didn't know what they were saying, but they were feverish.
It's embarrassing travelling to Europe or Asia as most people speak 2 or 3 languauges, and here in the States we are Pendajos limited to Espanol and English.
I have owned All of the Oberheim family, the CS-80, and a 2600, still have an EML-101 and Solaris can emulate any of these synths just because the Filters are incredibly versatile.
Sure the SSM, CEM, Moog and Obie stuff is cool but Multi-Mode Oscillators and FIlters are just incredible.
Nobody here will be speaking much about other synths once they get this beast.
Ya'll must hate the German holidays by now.
I might move there, shit........... 3 and 4 day a week jobs everywhere.... :roll:

Yep - we both have a lot of gear!!! But from what I can see, nowadays, I think your sell decisions are good except for the MidiBoard ... I think that is still a superb keyboard unless you have the VAX77. The Fizmo, K5000 and Polyevolver (much as I like DSI) can go. I would recommend the Kyma (if you code --- if you don't code, then you might find it too heavy but it is a great system for sound design). I have an Andy A6 and I would not recommend you sell that --- keep it. THe Waldorf Microwave-1 is worth keeping (if you have on e I did not see on the list - I sold one one but I had two and am keeping one), all the rest you can get in software that sounds the same or better (so, yeah, toss the Q). I would keep the Roland V-Synth unless you have a GT (I have both) since you can do really, really cool sampling for vocal-based sounds and sound effects --- this is a secret weapon for a lot of FX and vocal producers even with the Eventide H8000 (which I have A/B from my rack against the Roland and I would say that the Roland is better on vocal-harmonies where insert-layering of vocals is needed if you do the sampling right). THe XV5050 is okay but can go. Motif can be replaced with software. Jomox is a great machine I would think you could keep that.

Tha AKA MPC stuff can all be done by Native Instruments (I have A/B'd them both and NI kicks serious butt).

I recommend the home over the gear - I mean, you can always get more gear later ...

The SOLARIS can go very far and it is a rare instrument - I am looking forward to mine when I get it and am envious of all those who have theirs.

Also - if you get your movie off the ground let me know ...

[quote="Neotrope"]On Poly-AT, the downside to the Ensoniq keyboards is they are not great quality, and you might get one that fails, or lasts forever. The Midiboard you really had to hammer the thing (pun!) to get the poly-AT on a lot of stuff, and I got tired of sticky buttons, and a somewhat "dead" feel in hitting bottom with that action, vs my Yamaha piano with escapement. If Rhodes ever comes through with their new MIDI controller, "supposedly" "possibly" going to have the same action from their MIDI/PolyAT piano, sans piano, that would be the cat's meow, only because you'd have a better engineered (my opinion only) action, and 88 keys vs 77. But... obviously poly-AT is really only of interest to those of us who play vs poke on the keys (you know you who are ... if KARMA on the Korg synths excites you, then you don't need poly-AT). ;-)[/quote]
Yeah, I have heard there are plenty of quality issues with regard to the Ensoniq keyboards, but they really are a nice entry point into PolyAT and can be found pretty cheaply. The Kurzweil MIDIBoard is excellent, but you need to find one of the later ones (>1988) which has the improved "Suzuki" keybed- it solved all of the problems you mentioned. My MIDIBoard was an excellent example, but it was starting to get old and I am otherwise very pleased with the VAX77- smaller, lighter, nice keys, modern MIDI and USB implementation, and it looks cool. If I gigged, the fold-up aspect would be just killer! I am one of those people who [i]must[/i] have PolyAT while playing, it is part of my nature- once you get used to it, you don't ever want to go back. I did play the Rhodes piano with MIDI/PolyAT, it had a great action [i]for a Rhodes[/i], but personally I prefer the VAX77 action. As far as a Rhodes controller, it looks like Rhodes has ceased operations, so it may be a moot point.

Ha! Funny, I had the same thought to move this to new thread since the eventual laundry list kind of thing wasn't really part of the show-off of Solaris landing.

I could as likely have added that I sold most of my rack FX in favor of the UAD-2 in my Mac Pro Tower (Nahelem 8 core, 48GB RAM, blah blah). Still have the Avalon direct boxes, Big Ben clock, and some various pedals and whatnot. Some nice mics, but pretty much couple of RODE items, etc. Nothing crazy.

I am pondering the son of 4 voice in place of my CODE 8 OD, also. I think if they had gone a little further in a "little bit more" with the CODE, it would be more of a classic - he did a one-off "knob controller" for it, and I asked about making another, and it was like a "no amount of money could make me do another one." Which is too bad, a keyboard with lots of knobs and the CODE cards, would be impressive, add some patch points, poly-AT, etc. It's in many ways the only modern equiv. to something like a Memorymoog, or a non modular poly Oberheim. Actually, the Solaris CEM (ahem) sounds BETTER on headphones than the CODE, at least so far (and can I say again WOW on that, having owned almost every Oberheim product at some point except the later Italian stuff).

Some software is really amazing, certainly Camel Alchemy makes things like the Kawai K5000s less necessary (hence 5 of them on eBay right now) and now the new additive thing from Rob Papen. Some of the U-He stuff is quite good and that demo controller from NAMM was quite nice if it ever happens. I am actually liking the Arturia Origin KB now, which I stayed away from for quite some time. It does some very nice things if you have an ability to "think modular" and the emulations of classic filters are no less accurate than the boutique analog builders doing "similar design to MS-20 but doesn't have the Korg chips," obviously isn't a real MS-20 filter either. I stilll think the Novation Supernova II sounds amazing with their "chaos filters" ... rather than just introducing static, random noise, like some software folks do, the Supernova II really does sound more analog than the Nord Lead, or really the Access Virus TI (although with their next update, adding bucket brigade chorus, etc., it's still an amazing thing to use as a plugin in Logic). But, how much gear does anybody really NEED?

On Poly-AT, the downside to the Ensoniq keyboards is they are not great quality, and you might get one that fails, or lasts forever. The Midiboard you really had to hammer the thing (pun!) to get the poly-AT on a lot of stuff, and I got tired of sticky buttons, and a somewhat "dead" feel in hitting bottom with that action, vs my Yamaha piano with escapement. If Rhodes ever comes through with their new MIDI controller, "supposedly" "possibly" going to have the same action from their MIDI/PolyAT piano, sans piano, that would be the cat's meow, only because you'd have a better engineered (my opinion only) action, and 88 keys vs 77. But... obviously poly-AT is really only of interest to those of us who play vs poke on the keys (you know you who are ... if KARMA on the Korg synths excites you, then you don't need poly-AT). ;-)

Am I putting off doing my taxes this weekend, or WHAT? Anyway.. some random ramblings for bunny day weekend. Or, "zombie jesus day" as my brother likes to day.

Chris