Yes, it really is awesome - well worth the investment if you’re a serious player!
I’m a career musician - a guitar player and vocalist primarily - but I also get hired to do a lot of synth work for artists, both in the studio and on the road. In this context, the LinnStrument has been an absolute godsend; because although I often get hired to play keys, in truth I’m a bit of a hack on them (wink). The LinnStrument being laid-out like a fretboard means that, for all practical purposes anyway, I can now play “keys” (and other synth sounds) as proficiently as I can play the guitar. I’m always trying to spread the word about that, because I think that string players in general are the LinnStrument’s target audience; but too few people realize what the LinnStrument is all about, because it’s not necessarily obvious at a glance. Keyboard players, for instance, are more likely to gravitate to a Seaboard or a Continuun because of their resemblance to the piano. But for anyone adept at playing a stringed instrument, who otherwise aspires to play keys, the LinnStrument is a no brainer. Anyway…
The only heartache of it all is that there are so few MPE hardware synths on the market, and computer setups are just too flimsy (and often too buggy) for the rigors of the road. Hence why I’m here asking questions about the Digitone as a possible solution to my iPad woes. The latest firmware for the LinnStrument now allows “common” messages to also be sent on a per-channel basis if need be, so that effectively means that any multitimbral synth, despite its MIDI implementation, can now be used as a true MPE sound source. Don’t get me wrong, editting sounds separately for each voice sucks; but once the patches are finished, it’s all about playing expressively rather than tweaking the knobs.
Cheers!