Hmmm, I would hope the box had some condoms in it.

I nominate Casio for their CZ series of synthesizers. I really wish Casio would make another synthesizer, they certainly have the know-how and the capital to pull it off. Another screwball to me was the Yamaha TX16W. Weird little sampler, it's amazing how many things they got right, yet they made su...

The DSS-1 is a monster. I never could understand why they go for so little money when they outclass a lot of analog poly-synthesizers. Two oscillators per voice, awesome filters, quite a bit of modulation abilities, and a really nice digital delay effects unit to boot. Editing is fairly easy as well...

Oh, and for the record, the Roland S-550 does have a microphone preamp. I've never used it though, I just sample line level sources. The machines are great by the way, I especially like the filters. It has a lot of great features that are fairly easy to use if you take the time to read the manual. T...

Just make your own patches. You'll learn a lot more by messing around with this machine than you ever will by loading in the factory presets. Sadly, the Source offers the least user friendly interface of all the Moog synthesizers. However, it has the sound to live up to the name, and the interface i...

Parts Express has really good service and a good range of parts. Here is their page on 2" horn drivers: http://www.partsexpress.com/webpage.cfm?WebPage_ID=3&Cat_ID=49&ObjectGroup_ID=836&sm=1&so=1 Replacing the blown driver should be as easy as opening the cabinet, taking off the wires, replacing the...

Who cares? What difference does it make how reliable a synthesizer is and how would you rate it even if it was important? It just seems like a really open-ended and pointless question with no clear answer.

In buyer's guide synthesizer purchase you! All kidding aside, it's good to see this section back online. You all know Tallow has been having a heavy flow month, and this should make his life a bit easier. Let's hope this works the way it's supposed to. All advice no attitude.

Simple, just take the fuse out of the back of their amplifier and replace it with another one of about half the current rating. That way when they play loud for long periods of time. Pop goes the amplifier. Either that or pass the guy running your front-of-house a twenty to screw up their solos. I h...

I agree that the s domain is crazy, but I'm not in charge of what the engineering profession decides is the right method to use. I just have to learn enough of it to get my degree and get out of college. One more year...

That sounds right - pole from complex analysis - not that I know a whole lot about filter implementation, but if you write the transfer function of a filter down, it's of the form p(z)/q(z), (p,q polynomials taking complex arguments z) and the 'poles' are the zeros of the q function - the higher or...

My vote for the worst Korg synthesizer is the Polysix. Don't get me wrong, they sound great, and they have a lot of good features. The problem is that the stupid batteries have a tendency to leak all over the motherboard and jam up the works. It's a real mess figuring out which traces are shot, and ...

The synthesizer bug bit me when I was rummaging through my mom's box of old LPs and happened to find Emerson Lake and Palmer (their first album) and Pictures at an Exhibition. I spun up the former, not expecting very much, and was pleasantly shocked by how much this album rocked. Then when they fina...

I picked up an Ensoniq ESQ-1 with some birthday and Christmas money three years ago. I still have it and use it daily, although it has a lot more competition now than it used to. Looking back, I think that purchase was the first step into utter madness.

I shouldn't think it would cause any problems because the operating frequencies are so different. Even with 192 kHz recording, most wireless cards work at 2.4 GHz or a similarly high frequency and they should not interfere with each other. Cell phones work on around 900 MHz, and those haven't caused...