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ARP ODYSSEY [2004 – ]

Now we’re talking Synth History. I grew up listening to this machine, without even knowing it, as it was used by all those bands that shaped my taste in music. Playing around with this for the first time was an almost religious experience. In my Quest for Simplicity, this one takes the cake so far. What you see is what you get, plain and simple. Nothing is hidden, so just go for it. In that sense, this would have been the perfect first synth, but I don’t mind getting it now. This particular unit is one of the original Odyssey’s with a black face and the 24 dB filters. Or so I was told, I have yet to verify it. I would have to open it up, remove all the slider caps and dissassemble it in order to get a peek at the filter chip, and I just can’t be bothered now. It’s a great machine for weird metallic sounds. 

The duophonice feature is quite interesting; when holding a key and pressing another, the other key “borrows” the second oscillator, and you can get quite nice effects that way. Also, getting it to Finland was an adventure in itself. An official Thanks to m@ & Gert who made it possible

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KORG MS-20 [2004 – ]

I saw one for sale in my own home town. I haven’t previously even seen one for sale in my home country, so I thought this would be a great chance to get a real classic analog synth and actually get to test it before buying, instead of having to wait for the postman for two weeks while wondering what he actually might be bringing. Of course, when I contacted the seller, it was already sold. I happened to chek out the German eBay, only to notice there were a bunch of these up for grabs. The one I gave the winning bid on (and which was located in Switzerland) was almost 300 euro cheaper than the one for sale locally, plus I got a friend of mine to bring it to me along with the rest of his stuff when he moved back to Finland. 

It’s a “half-modular” synth, meaning that there’s the standard hardwired signal path, which you control with knobs, and then there are patch points in the signal path where you can insert physical cords to redirect the signal, just like in a modular system. This makes it really versatile and a fun sound creating tool. The patch points obviously allow you to patch in signals from other sound sources as well. This one appears to be a real screamer. I expect to have a lot of fun with it. Haha.

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