maybe i misunderstood something, and $800/mo refers to your “disposable” income (a deeply privileged concept), and not things like rent/food. that would kind of explain some oddities.
there are some things about your stated goals and attitude that strike me as very strange. i don’t mean to pick on you, but these are symptomatic of stuff that bothers me about discourse around music production tools.
you say you have a classical music education. so do i, and many (or even most) others here. in my case, i started piano at 2 or 3, violin at 5, continued through post-graduate conservatory, and have never stopped playing music. this doesn’t make me special, it’s actually quite typical for the users (and founders) of this forum. (in general, i try to remember to assume people are more knowledgable than me, not less.)
to me, your query reads analogously to a question like, “i know nothing about music theory or performance technique, i can’t recognize any orchestral instruments on sight, but i am interested in creating music similar to bach’s ‘partita in d minor for solo violin,’ debussy’s ‘syrinx’ for solo flute, and zorn’s ‘carny’ for solo piano. to this end i am going to purchase a cello, rhodes 88, tympani set, marimba and bass clarinet. what else should i buy?”
the answer is obvious. you need to self-educate on fundamentals, you need to get one instrument and practice with it.
it’s amazing to me that you say you are going to purchase ableton and max 7 before trying one of the many free tools that we’ve mentioned. for example, puredata is similar to max, and there are a wealth of pedagogical resources surrounding it. for example, here are tom erbe’s notes and PD patches for his music 172 classes at UCSD. Csound is another extremely sophisticated piece of software with decades of pedagogical resources built around it. there is a steep learning curve to be sure, but many others have climbed it before.
anyways. sorry to rant again. i promise i won’t do it anymore and hope that you can see how this line of questioning might be frustrating for people who have put in the hours and years to become familiar with this stuff. there is no magic bullet piece of gear, or paragraph of text, that will help if you can’t even be bothered to google first.
ok, all that said… in the spirit of the original question, i’d recommend not discounting keyboard-based, self-contained electronic instruments, before diving into modular.
these two instruments are affordable, road-worthy, performance ready, surprisingly flexible, and give you deep access to the underlying signal paths:
analog: korg ms-20 mini
digital: alesis micron
but, if you already have a white whale, then you presumably have a grid device and a eurorack case/power. if that’s the case, i guess you might as well invest another $400-600 on at least an oscillator, filter, VCA, and output module, so that you can actually use your WW to make sound. (i picked those particular modules and vendors kind of at random. there are literally hundreds of different euro manufacturers now, and minimal differences between many of their designs, so i honestly don’t think it matters much when you are just getting started.)
if you don’t have a grid and euro case yet, then i’d honestly just sell the WW and get more comfortable with synthesis technique in general before you go down the modular rabbit hole.
i also recommend reading a book or two. something not too technical to begin with like, i dunno, charles dodge or [allen strange] (https://www.amazon.com/Electronic-Music-Systems-Techniques-Controls/dp/0697036022). (many of the book recommendations you will find elsewhere on this forum are for learning how to develop DSP software or build hardware, not about learning the fundamentals of electronic music technique.)
