2025 Gear Purchase: Hits & Misses

The Lounge General Discussion
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Starting one as I did not see one for this year yet. My experiences

Hits

Erica Synths Hexdrums
It is really fun, immediate, easy to use and sounds amazing! I love the knob per function and workflow. It looks and feels great to use. Having two types of bass kick drums in one machine is great and machine a cool analog synth voice. Winner. Hits hard and massive.

Jomox Alphabase MK2
another fabulous drum machine but geared more for house, basic techno, and trance styles. Workflow is great and sound fantastic. Only downside is lack of customer support from Jurgen.

Eventide H90- incredible lush and wide sound palette. Still trying to get ipad app bluetooth to work with it. Lot of menu diving but effects to die for.

Sherman Filterbank 2- quirky and wild. Expensive but well made. Big and heavy tank like construction. Still learning it.

Misses

Yamaha Seqtrak- felt cheap and defective
PWM Malevolent- had issues with it.

Undecided
Perkons- bought one as last purchase for the year on sale. Will see how it bangs on when it arrives.

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Hit
XONE 4:3 , sounds super, has insert, bought used at a fair price.

Uhe Zebra, sounds top for a software modular synth. (also used license)

Miss: none

Sofar relativly cheap year. Maybe i try bitwig with BF.

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Hits:

  • Tonverk
  • Digitone 2
  • Hydrasynth Explorer
  • MicroFreak Stellar

I didnā€™t really buy anything else.

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Hit:
-Digitone II. Too cool! Iā€™ve created something like 80+ songs with it. Ultra productive and a great way to control my other synths. I keep my midi keyboard and Launch Control 3 hooked to it.
-Blofeld. Sick sound, bought used and cheap, came with 1000 presets. Very deep to program with tons of modulation possibilities (also, you know, menu diving).
-TD-3-MO. Acid.
-Cobalt8M. Lovely VA. Sounds cool, plenty of algorithms and filters, nice modulation possibilities and a clever UI. Programming it is ok, better than Blofeld worse than DN. The encoders feel weird, but I have grown used to them. Joystick! 3 FX slots that sound good and are fun to tweak live. I feel that Modal are somehow underrated. Maybe itā€™s because they are not the cheapest for proudly digital synths.
-Couple of basses. Long (sire v7) and short scale (hb mv-4msb). Love playing the short scale. Easy on my injured shoulders.
-Keystep. For my DAW setup in front of the screen.
-Jaspers stand. To house my synths.
-Second Neutron. This thing kicks high.

Miss:
-Pro-800. I donā€™t like preset synths without endless encoders. I also did not really find the sound very interesting after the initial love phase.
-Kobol expander. I already get similar functionality from Neutron and more. No release on envelopes. Sound-wise it was very cool though. Very velvety, 3D sounding for a mono.
-Cat. Too much FM modulation. Drives me nuts having to check the pitch every time I turn a knob. It was pretty noisy, but not in a bad way.

And, they all had only one LFO per synth. Iā€™ve learned that I prefer more, like 3 or even more. With many destinations. More is more!

Neutral:
Digital grand. Not that it was expensive or bad, I just donā€™t use it enough to justify the size.
System 1m. Should not have sold it. Or well, I traded it for the Jaspers stand and it was a great trade.
Launch Control XL3. It is cool to have but I am not really using it.

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oh man I so want some Waldorf synths. Blofeld and M on my wishlist along with a Prophet 10. Maybe in few years. I spent too much this year on gear lol.

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Hits:

  • Wee Noise Makers PGB-1, because I could write alternative firmware on it, which I should consider if the current limitations really get to me.
  • Korg NTS-1 MkII, because of custom oscillators. A careful selection of oscillators and patch settings, combined with a careful tweaking of effects, makes the thing sound like itā€™s worth at least 5x more than it actually is.
  • Elektron Digitone II: only reason I had to sell it was to get money back. It was a nice little groovebox (sans sampling) while I had it. Only my creative blocks proved to be an obstacle.

Misses:

  • Volca Sample MkII: pitched samples were most convenient and only possible with custom MIDI CC controls on a separate controller (tweakable with knobs but most likely gonna drive some people insane).
  • 1010Music nanobox tangerine: I felt too limited by the current firmware there. At least compared to the previous sampler it was capable of a more elegant implementation of playing pitched samples.
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Went a little crazy this year due to sales:

Hits:

  • OP-XY
  • CM-15 microphone
  • EP-1320 Medieval :european_castle:
  • EP-40 Riddim :desert_island:
  • Ting Microphone
  • EP Decksavers

Misses:

  • 1/4" instrument cable whose tip broke off inside my interface :rage:
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A few major hits for me this year:

Grandmother
Tonverk
Slate VSX
And a small collection of pedals for my bass guitar.

No misses really, only sold things to fund other things.

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Hits:

Digitone 2: Purchased late 2024 but didnā€™t really dig into it until 2025. I spent a lot of the year digging into what kind of sound design I could do with it, and itā€™s really phenomenal. Itā€™s my current favorite device.

Spectravox: My one big purchase this year, and it rounds out my semi-modular setup, beautiful filtering and drive, phasing poly synth sounds, outside sound input, envelope followers and s&hā€™s., dfamā€™s best friend. Havenā€™t had time to dig deep and sample a bunch of sounds yet, but thatā€™s the plan.

Portastudio 424 mk2: I had one collecting dust in my parentsā€™ home for decades. After cleaning the contacts, itā€™s ready for rock n roll. I had some fun making tape loops and 4-tracked a set of ambient tune from DN 2, played it with Fx like a performance mixer, great fun. Planning on doing more with loops and putting more of my music on tape.

No misses, and Iā€™ve run out of space so will be 1-in-1-out for machines going forwardā€¦

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The yearā€™s not over, but Iā€™m (probably) unlikely to buy anything else. For me, a couple of my biggest ever hits have happened in 2025, with only a couple of (not really, but kind of) misses.

Hits:
Moog Polymoog
What an adventure that was - a white-knuckled drive to San Diego and back over four days to pick up the notorious 203a Polymoog from SynthChaser. It was loads of fun and the Polymoog is as cantankerous as its legend suggest, but it sounds delightful.

Vintage R. A. Moog modular system
What can I say? A lifelong dream of owning a vintage moog modular has been fulfilled by my tech, who sold me his personal system, complete with a load of his own custom modules to complement the 50+ year-old Moog modules. He didnā€™t have the time to put into it, and did me the honor of selling it to me. Itā€™s been lots of fun exploring it, cleaning it, and making minor repairs. It sounds lovely.

Akai MPC Live III
Iā€™ve had MPC Ones and Lives I and II, and I liked them but didnā€™t love them. However, Akai hit the ball out of the park with the Live III. A fantastic device thatā€™s as inspirational as it is versatile.

Yamaha TX802
My favorite FM synth and I lamented no longer having one. thanks to @DonovanDwyer, I have addressed that sad state of affairs.

Vintage Musser Vibraphone
How could I forget this one? A lovely instrument, and one Iā€™ve long desired, but holy moly, are they expensive! My dear wife scored this one for me for a paltry two hundred buck from the college where sheā€™s employed.

Misses (kind of):
Digitakt II
I know, I know. But I bought it (twice!) because I missed the speedy and fulfilling workflow I had with the original Digitakt. Alas, for me, the current iteration was maybe too much of a good thing, and though I thought the new features were excellent, I no longer felt the connection to the workflow that I once did. I have no doubt that Iā€™ll be up for another look, though.

Akai MPCLive II
I already had an MPC One, but I wanted something I could move around the studio with me and the 3.xx firmware tempted me into the Live II. Again. However, at the time, the firmware was lacking many of the things that I needed (not least odd time signatures), and I had bugs with importing my own samples. A roll back to 2.xx seemed a poor solution, and I sent it back. A couple of months later, the Live III was released and as evidenced above, it was, for me, a winner.

Both (and neither):
E-Mu e64000 (x2)
I got a pair of these classic 90s samplers in lovely condition. I swapped out the fans and replaced the floppy drives with USB/SD card readers. I bought them after my (albeit mild) frustrations with the Live II and Digitakt, primarily because I missed old timey mega-layered multisampling. I love their power and sound. However, though theyā€™re still here in a rack, Iā€™ve scarcely touched them since getting the MPC Live III. They do things the MPC canā€™t, but they are not fast to program. Small(ish) displays and hunching over a rack seems a lot less fun than it did when I was young.

We shall see:
Moog Messenger
Ordered today. I couldnā€™t resist the Black Friday price. I have wanted to try one since it was released, feeling that its small and light-weight build would make it an ideal instrument to occupy some of the vast empty real estate of the Polymoogā€™s top panel. I like that itā€™s trying to be something other than a retro Moog. Do I need it? No. But the sequencer/arpeggiator look like a good match with my Moog modular stuff.

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These hits and misses threads each year are a good catalyst for self-examination. For instance, why is a Pulsar-23 a miss in 2021 but a hit in 2025? Or, why was a Polyend Tracker a miss in 2022 and 2023, but a miss yet again in 2025? Is there any rhyme or reason to any of this? There are countless threads about GAS and our relationships to physical objects and how we hate youtubers and AI, and love seeing guitars in the recent purchases thread thread, and lose our collective minds about Max Marco being back (itā€™s weird btw), and hate tariffs and Behringer, and miss Ricky Tinez and Cenk and the original TanzbƤr but not the second one, and love Baseck and 240zā€™s, and think Vlad Kreimerā€™s full of shit, but is there ever any real behavioral change?

HITS
Modor DR-2
As previously seen on the HIT list in 2022, the DR-2 is a criminally underrated drum machine. Marcel has made countless improvements to it and continues to do so. I repurchased this since he added the tone machines and they are excellent, especially the FM.

Moog DFAM
To stay with the theme, this was a hit in 2021, 22, 23, 24 and 2025 consecutively and iā€™ll continue to sell it and buy it again until iā€™m dead because iā€™m an idiot. This time around Iā€™m enjoying it more as a synth than a drum machine. I hope to keep it at least until the end of this year.

Soma Laboratory Pulsar-23 RUUUUSSST Edition
Iā€™m completely new to the Pulsar-23 except for the previous one I owned and sold. The thing about this one though is itā€™s rusty. In all seriousness, I fricken LOVE this thing. Crazy amazing beautiful beats and sounds and rhythms pour out of it effortlessly (aside from dealing with crocodile clips).

MISSES
Arturia Keylab Essential 49 MKII
It was just too long. Nothing should be that long, I donā€™t care how many keys it has.

Polyend Tracker+
I thought the + would make me like it more but it didnā€™t. I do applaud Polyend for their factory content, though. It is always top notch.

AIAIAI TMA-2 Studio Wireless+ Headphones
God damned Ricky Tinez recommended these headphones, and I fell for it because Iā€™m a boob. They just werenā€™t comfortable and I couldnā€™t get used to them. Ricky is such a sweet guy though, I donā€™t blame him.

ON THE FENCE
Elektron Tonverk
The Tonverk has has more potential than it does problems. I trust Elektron to get it right. They will.

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Cycled a lot of gear this year for a variety of reasons, going from just having S1 and minibrute and microfreak to a more serious electronic music rig due to guitar bands not being my main thing anymore and wanting to dive into learning production and sound design music tech more deeply. Couldnā€™t easily demo or borrow a lot of stuff because of life things so mostly I did a lot of used gear flipping for ā€œrentalsā€ or keepers and I have a pretty big gear swap list from guitar gear also so it was easy to quickly move through things as I found my flows.

Only listing misses where I really felt kind of bummed at how little I enjoyed using the synths. Had a bunch of other gear this year that is pretty good but not comfortably a definite keeper yet, so the hits are the ones that I feel strongly are just really damned good and likely to remain a part of my music for a long time or which contributed substantially to my learning or writing processes.

Hits: peak, tonverk, syntakt, digitone ii, Oxi one mk2, lofi 12xt, Typhon, SE02.

Misses: Minifreak, micromonsta2, dreadbox hades

Not really a miss but probably not so much for me in the long run despite the enjoyment: cydrums, bento, elz_1 play, digitakt, SH4D. All sold or will be sold/traded when the right opp comes across.

Jury is out but I like them enough to give it some time: multi/poly, Artemis, 3rd wave 8m. Ultimately I donā€™t need or want so many big polysynths but I can afford to audition a bunch of very good ones on the way to settling into my favorites for deeper mastery. Right now leaning towards moving the Artemis and multipoly but not feeling any real pressure since having so many objectively great synths has led to an interesting total lack of GAS this Black Friday season that Iā€™m happy with and it remains surprisingly clear to me which of these synths I should use for specific sounds since they all have somewhat different strong points. I think ultimately I want to end up with my list of hits plus one really baller VCO character poly and Iā€™m interested in the polyvox 8 next year as a candidate for that.

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I havenā€™t delved too deep into my Pro-800 since the factory presets sounded a bit old-timey to me (in a somewhat charming & humorous way perhaps) but did find that layering it with another synth using a simple patch at a low volume can really beef up the other synthā€™s patch. Try it with your Cobalt8M.

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Hits:
Pro Co BP-5 Excellines Balanced l 1/4-inch TRS Male to 1/4-inch TRS Male Patch Cable (5 foot)ā€” Good cable. Of correct length. Replacement for previous 5ā€™ patch cable which shorted.

Elektron ECC-3 backpack ā€” Bought from a fellow elektronaut. Fits a SP404ii with enough room for a battery and mic but not quite enough room to also fit headphones.

Misses:
Arteza Retractible Gel Pen (set of 20) ā€” Ink is runny and takes too long to dry. Way too messy for writing in tight spaces. Pens dry out extremely quickly.

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Hit:

OP-XY
TX-6
Tyler Acoustic T1ā€™s
Fastset DJ table

Miss:

OP-XY
Barefoot Footprint 01ā€™s

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Hits:

  • Sequential Rev2
  • Behringer Model 15
  • Nanobox Tangeringe
  • Yamaha Seqtrak
  • Zoom LiveTrak 6
  • Retrokits RK-008 (Using it as a quick MIDI channel switcher. Thereā€™s a few other effects that go beyond just being a MIDI ā€œlooperā€. Still learning.)

Misses:

  • Should not have sold my yellow TD-3. Sold it because of lack of space and because I had a black TD-3-MO that I occasionally used to add a little background bass. They are not the same. My TD-3 could make a womp-womp sound like a tuba which I would struggle to do with the TD-3-MO. Also, the color makes it hard to see what the knobs are so I had to memorize. I think going forward itā€™s ok to put some synths on rotation
  • Bought my OXI One shortly before they came out with the MKII lol

TBD:

Still working on learning the Digitone II.

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The big hit was to buy almost nothing ā€¦ which is the way I want to be going, the phase of weekend musicianing Iā€™m in. It was instructive but indebting to buy and use all different gear, now that will be more rare. Bought some cables and a stand this year, which were needed.

Now to start selling in ā€˜26 ā€¦

Did get a Microkorg 2, a hit in general. Digital-pretending-to-be-analog has gotten better, the minikeys feel good, interface and color screen work great, FM and other sound design extras are much appreciated. Only downside is that to my ear, some effects can introduce a slight lag in response, even if set all the way to dry. But itā€™s a really nice instrument, wish Iā€™d had it when I was starting out.

Oh, and I got a pair of nice caxixi (Brazilian woven rattles, traditionally used with berimbau), paying with GC bonus points; they were great fodder for the roland p6:

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Agree with this. Even though I had a maximalist year buying vs usual my normal approach is to find the gear I like well and use it for decades, but this was really the first year I got into more serious production and synthesis/sampling/sequencing as the primary composition and I needed to try and learn a bunch of stuff. Hoping to settle into a nice a stable that I can do real damage with and stop looking at shiny new.

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Hit-
Soma Ornament 8.

Im using it with my Lyra.

Completely transforms the sounds you can get from Lyra. Mind expanding stuff. Ive had my Lyra a long time, bought it when they first came out. It goes through long periods of not being used.

Not any more.

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Hell yeah.

Hits:
OP-XY. I have gushed about this a lot elsewhere so I will try to be brief. I have never used an electronic music device that feels as much like a cohesive instrument as this thing. Itā€™s almost effortless to create and iterate on an idea. It sounds good. The keys feel great. It fits in a small bag, hell it could probably fit in a coat pocket. The battery lasts for fucking ever. It has quirks and limitations that sometimes annoy me and eight tracks isnā€™t always enough, but teenage engineering has pulled off a real magic trick. I canā€™t emphasize enough how much this instrument has supercharged my desire to make music and my productivity. Iā€™ve currently got an entire album worth of material that I consider high-quality enough to actually finish out of it, and Iā€™ve only had the thing for a few months. Itā€™s going to take a serious change in life circumstances for me to ever think about parting with the OP-XY.

Hapax
It sequences things, I can see what Iā€™m doing thanks to the piano roll style display, and chances are if I think I can do something via a certain button or button combination that thing almost always happens intuitively.

Syntakt
Continues to be my old reliable, never sell device. I adore this thing.

S-1
Had it for a while but havenā€™t used it a whole lot. At one point I only had access to this and the OPXY. It turns out the two make an incredible combination and the S-1 makes really good sample fodder.

Selling a bunch of things I donā€™t need/use
Not going to bother listing all the things Iā€™ve gotten rid of this year as the specifics arenā€™t really important. What is important is that I freed up physical and mental space and cash.

Not Buying Much
Honestly I didnā€™t buy very much music gear this year. It was a year of downsizing, cross country move, and streamlining. That combination of things - particularly of the focus that has come with only having access to a couple of instruments - has been energizing in a way that I canā€™t really explain

Juryā€™s Still Out
MPC Live 3. Just arrived yesterday (or the day before? Time is a blur), so I donā€™t have any substantial thoughts yet but in the five hours Iā€™ve messed with it Iā€™ve gotten two song embryos that are both well on their way to becoming full-fledged tracks. It may not be as fast as the OPXY, but it seriously has me questioning whether I need most of my other hardware.

If they were any misses this year, I truly donā€™t remember what they were.

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