First things first, I hope this isn’t abusing the new “Ramblings” section.
Now on to the good stuff.
I have a tendency to find some good deals on gear, but recently I found what I would consider an “astounding” deal. I was in a region of the US not known for cheap synth prices, however I saw a store that I had not been to before. So I stopped in to see if they had anything decent. They did not. They did have a hilariously overpriced piece of gear they overpaid for years ago. Sunk cost fallacy and all.
After seeing this, I decided to go to a store that I have never seen a good deal at. Ever. Mostly to gawk and guffaw at the overpriced gear destined to set on their shelves for eternity. Needless to say, they didn’t disappoint. There was a late 2000’s toy keyboard labeled for 80$. 80 whole dollars for a flimsy toy with no midi, no nothing.
However, there was a Juno 106 sitting on the shelf without a price. I asked how much the Juno was. I could not believe the price. 100$
100$ for a Juno 106. It does need a battery replacement, but it does work 100%! That is an astounding deal in a very unlikely place. Needless to say, I would never buy a Juno for the current asking prices. I can’t pass up a good synth for that price though.
What is the most astounding or unlikely gear deal you have ever gotten?
Hi
in quebec city around 20 years ago:
Polysix for 200$ CAD
Matrix 6R for the same ( I very like that one)
TB 303 for 90$ !
Yamaha SY2 for 125$
A friend bought an Acxel 1 for only 2200$ I think. It didn’t work but we found Pierre Guillemet the inventor of that resynth and he repaired that. It still work today.
and 15 years ago another friend as found an announce (adds?)for minimoog at 350$
I bought it for him at 300$ .
And now I do some DIY with M.I. and I,m happy with that
This may be the most useful one I found. It was 5,00 D-Marks and still with the original Foot-Switch:
Have been using it a lot lately to clock my turing machine - working just fine. But now that I have a Pamela for clock and trigger outs, I thought of modding the Boss for trigger-ins to use it as a drum-module for the eurorack. Should be done easy, but I sometimes still feel uncomfortable to hack a perfectly working vintage machine. Would you do so?
Roland MKS-50 and Korg Wavestation A/D for $30. MKS-50 was up and running after recapping PSU and replacing the battery, A/D had to have PSU restored, firmware EPROMs and LCD replaced.
Yamaha DX7s- $94 a hobby shop thought it was dead, just needed the watch battery replaced
Lexicon MPX500- $0 traded knowledge for it
Pioneer DJM800- $0 A gift of thanks for showing my friend hardware synths
You’ll hate me less @t2k when I tell you that I sold all but the MC-202, granted for more than I paid for them, but still FAR less than they’re all worth today…
@janniz: That isn’t a bad idea, but you can spend some cash on one of those new Eurorack sampling modules and load the drum sounds into it. No mods required.
@dnigrin: It seems most people who get good deals like this do end up selling them. I do avoid that as I hate inflating the prices.
@kvitekp: A 30$ Wavestation is cool. It is good that you got it when you did. I don’t know if you can get EEPROMS for it anymore. You can probably still write a blank EEPROM with the ROM should it be available.
I will admit that I have given the Kiwi upgrade for the 106 some thought. If it did 6 parts multitimbrality and could handle 6 separate outs with a mix out too, it would be a no-brainer. Really, it would be like having 6 SH-101s. If I were going to simply flip it, I would install the upgrade and charge around 3500$ for it, haha. However, that would mean that I wouldn’t have it. ;(
While I’m at it, I have gotten an SK-5 for 5$ and a Korg DSS-1 for 30$. Not under a tenth of the price considering the floppy needed some work and there was a loose wire, but the discs it came with were worth more. I look at it as free that way.
@audiohoarder: I definitely didn’t flip 'em, that’s for sure - I used all of those pieces for quite some time, released music with them, and only sold them when I either needed the cash or needed to thin the herd. As I said, at the time, they were not nearly considered the “deals” that we now know they were. Hindsight is 20/20…
)
