The £200 Vintage Synth Challenge!

I've been getting the same challenge put to me frequently; can you show us what you could do with some cheap vintage gear.

I've been on the lookout for suitable contenders and I snagged a Korg SuperDrums (DDM-110) a while back and a Korg DW-6000 recently.

I set the max budget for this to £200 and these pair cost a total of £190, so I thought that matched the criteria in a world where vintage synths can cost thousands or tens of thousands!

0:00 Intro Jam & Setup
1:22 Processing the Super Drums
5:07 Working with the DW-6000
8:31 End result / Mini Song
9:56 Summary of thoughts

More details for the nerds:

That's £9,500 in today's money, and so the £229 (£780 today) DDM-110 was obviously going to have to be heavily compromised.

With 9 uneditable samples (8 bit / 15.625kHz*) and with only din sync and no mixer or individual outs, this unit is a challenge to say the least.

The Korg DW-6000 is a hybrid, six-voice polysynth from 1985. The oscillators are digital samples of additive waves that emulated the spectra of various acoustic instruments. With two oscillators and 8 waves there are 44 unique combinations (if my maths is correct) and so that's surprisingly flexible. There's also a noise generator to boot.

Each voice then runs through an analogue voltage controlled low-pass resonant filter and an analogue voltage controlled amplifier. The VCF and VCA are a combined proprietary chip Korg made called the NJM2069.

There are two ADBSSR envelopes, (VCF / VCA), which are like an ADSR with an additional level and decay in the middle (break point / slope). The filter EG polarity can also be reversed.

There's a basic LFO ("modulation generator") with delay that can modulate the oscillators and filters, but that only has one fixed waveform (presumably sine or triangle).

There's a stereo chorus at the end of the chain to widen the sound considerably.

There's also portamento, a performance joystick and poly 1, poly 2 and unison modes, 64 memory slots, midi and some footswitch inputs.

The DW-6000 was £1,099 in 1985, about £3,500 now, so it was relatively affordable for the time, but not a toy.

[AlexBallMusic]

BUT YOU USED OTHER

With the benefit of hindsight I should have elaborated exactly what I meant. The gear did indeed cost less than £200 and so it was a "£200 vintage synth challenge".

Unfortunately, snappy video titles are a necessity for YouTube and whilst that title wasn't untrue, I appreciate it could be misunderstood without further elaboration.

So...

1) I didn't mean (or say) that I wouldn't use the rest of my studio.
2) I use the same gear to process synths worth ten or twenty times what these cost, so it's a level playing field.
3) The sounds all still came exclusively from these two instruments.
4) Everything I did could be done in the DAW with free plugins, but that makes for a boring video with a mouse wiggling around.
5) The only member of ZZ Top without a huge beard is the drummer - Frank Beard.
6) I think Norwich might escape relegation this year. They seem to be turning it around.

[kevinsturges]

The real difference in your material isn’t so much the equipment, it’s your raw talent. It’s your songs and arrangements.

[Scottzilla]

The front panel on that Korg always reminds me of a stitch pattern guide on a sewing machine

[dankro]

Well done, sneaking in that old, lesser-known Beatles song "Back in the A.D.B.S.S.R" into your video!!

[Hainbach]

I love the phasing introduced by the EQ on the Snare. So dreamy. And I love the sequencer trigger idea, supercool.

[Ishkur]

It's not what you have, it's what you do with it.

Good music is good music, irrespective of how it's made.

[punk]

Often the big difference between the cheap and expensive ones is the cheaper ones need more FX, layering and EQ. Sometimes there are engine differences that one will do than another won't (oscillator sync, ring mod, PWM and so on). But you can make a turd of a synth sound reasonable if you're prepared to put the effort in.

[thehorriblebright]

I had a dw6000 back in the 90s. I was severely envious of my buddy who had the dw8000 that had an arpeggiator. He also had the superdrums, wasn't envious of that.

[jamesm]

Alex: "Let's make a little mini-song"

Proceeds to play the dopest banger of 2022.

[bitspacemusic]

I noticed quite quickly that micro managing songs together in Ableton never gave any results and I wasn't having fun. As soon as I pick simpler things or limit myself into a more confined workflow, things get fun and I get nice surprises. This usually involves hardware for me. These limitations are fun and very rewarding, instead of being stuck in mouse-driven DAW projects.

[dreadful_name]

These will probably be all valued twice as much now thanks to Alex’s sick jam!

[SamLowryDZ-]

I started out in the 80s with just a Pro-One, a DR 110, a mono cassette radio and the living room hi-fi that had L-R inputs to the tape deck. Bouncing down and adding a layer each time quickly teaches you how to plan ahead and avoid mistakes.

[artisan]

Your take on melody is so unique. Seriously. It's kind of aggravating, simply because the majority of it is stuff I wouldn't have ever thought of. (Of course, I'm also just flatly terrible at lyrics)

[jakehendriksen]

Using the sequencer to rapidly switch patches in-time is next-level. Brilliant!

[alexrusso]

So I kinda love the DW-6000 now. I want to try picking one of those up.

[EannaButler]

Super vid as ever. But man sequencing the program change is class! Amazing it reconfigured the voice quickly enough to make the sound work! Excellent 👍

[DestroyER]

Played on friends DW-6000. It actually does sound pretty awesome, chorus circuit uses same components as Roland stuff from that era (Juno's / JX's) and linked with ctrl controller you then have very decent allround polysynth good for all various kinds of music (especially synthwave, chill, various lo-fi retro or soundtracks). Awesome demonstration.

[imlxh]

Damn...I know the DW-6000 waveforms are built into the microkorg, but the DW's filter sounds SO much more juicy 😳

[billyruss]

Starting out with limited gear back in the 80s, I became adept at "thinking about every single part... and eking the most out of it" - a useful experience for when I got better gear.

[jakelawson]

Love it. Great work. The DW8K has been a mainstay for me for decades. Not the most flexible, but it does sound awfully nice. Really nice filters.