I recently sold my Oberheim Xpander after a love affair of 33 years; it was getting old, and while still in perfect working order, there was always the chance that something critical would break and I’d be forced to go through the agony of finding a reliable repairperson before I could sell it. It was my baby for many, many years, but after three decades, someone finally released stuff that could outdo it.
Between 1985 and now, that Xpander was the one constant in a constantly changling studio that probably had 60 polysynths pass through it, from the brilliant to the horrific, from the stupid-cheap to the stupid-expensive. Looking back, which ones would I have kept if I had infinite space to keep them and infinite money to keep them working?
Xpander, of course, plus my Prophet T8, Prophet VS, and Yamaha SY35, all keyboard versions. Maybe the Yamaha V2 (DX11 in the USA).
These days I’ve shifted over almost entirely to software for my polyphonic needs. The only polysynths that I still own are the Roland U-50 and Novation X-Station, both of which are currently being used as controllers because I’m so comfortable playing them (and because they’re worthless on the used market). I always loved the X as a controller but the onboard sounds did nothing for me, and the U-50 and I have a love/hate affair going back to like 1991 or something. Nothing sounds quite like it, and there’s something endearing about a digital synthesizer whose CPU is so woefully underpowered that as you play more and more notes at once, you can actually hear the LFOs slowing down…
