The Roland MKS-50 responds to realtime sysex and the Cheetah MS6 will do it from CCs if you install the firmware upgrade available from http://www.maad.net/ms6/

It's nice to see quite a lot of gear I've owned popping up on this list - Yamaha CX5, Red Sound Darkstar, Casio VZ8 etc. Truth is however I quite liked all of them - I didn't have much else at the time I owned each of them which I think encouraged me to actually use them and get the best out of them...

Cheetah MS6 and Waldorf Microwave for pads, Doepfer A100 for everything else

Well everyone has their preferred way of working but I love hardware sequencers. The Akai MPCs are great (I've owned a 2000, 1000 and now have a 2000xl) for just getting things down quickly - turn it on, press record and away you go. It's quick and you don't have all faffing around you get on a PC. ...

If you know which way round to hold a soldering iron you can buy a cloned PCB. They're very simple to put together - I've done two DS7s and two DS8s which I trigger from my Regelwerk for a rather cool percussion set up.

I've not had a lot of experience with Korg gear, though I have to say I really liked my Electribe EA1. Maybe not the most versatile soundwise, but a very inspiring instrument in the way that simple devices often can be. I'm going to nominate the Korg DSM1 which is a sampler rather than a synth, but ...

Actually, that reminds me of a school trip I went on when I was about 10 to see a lecture on 'Science and Sound'. Can't remember anything about it other than the chap having this keyboard with non-moving keys (I suspect it was a Wasp or something) and that I was raving about it afterwards. That migh...

I had a Casio CZ230S, which probably doesn't count as it was largely a preset device (I think it had 4 memory slots you could program via sysex) and then a Yamaha CX5, which probably doesn't really count either as it it was an unfortunate car crash between an MSX computer and a DX9 so probably the f...

Kraftwerk. And not so much the music but because of something I read in some kids magazine ("Look In" or something similar I think) at the time "The Model" was released which said something along the lines of "Most bands complain that they can't get their studio sound on stage - this isn't a problem...

Get a Roland CMU-800, that's got 8 channels of CV/Gate that can be driven directly from your computer. The slight downside is that your computer has to be an Apple II, but you can't have everything.

Well hey, the biggest misconception about a synth would be that it isn't muscially viable. This thread has just been a massive "bad workman blaming their tools" exercise - have a look at Sealed's Deep Synthesis site for instance, he gets some fantastic sounds out of the sort of synths many people wo...

If I had any sort of musical credibility whatsoever I'd like to lose it right now by stating that I love the synth parts in "Garden Party" by Marillion. Yes, Marillion.

I've owned quite a few synths that seem to be falling into the "didn't like" category here - Korg Electribes, Redsound Darkstar (a massively underrated synth in my opinion, I regret selling my Darkstar XP), Roland MC-303, Casio VZ-8, Yamaha CX-5 and to be honest I've liked them all in one way or ano...

Tricky question and while my Doepfer A100 puts up a pretty good argument I think I'd probably go for my Waldorf microQ keyboard which not only sounds fantastic but also looks pretty cute as well. If we're talking love though it'd have to be a menage a trois with me, the micro Q and a Sequentix P3.

Hardware for me - a Sequentix P3 and a Doepfer Regelwerk.