MS2000B - should I get one?

yummifruitbat · Joined: Dec 07, 2006 Posts: 2 Location: Wales, UK

Hi all, this is my first post here so go easy Wink

I'm a massive music enthusiast and love hands-on kit, stuff you can just pick up/switch on and have fun with, without set-up hassle or an intimate knowledge of the user manual.

I play guitar a bit (self taught, not very good but I enjoy it) and have been playing piano since I was 6 (that's coming up for 16 years Shocked

). Since I've been a poor student I've had a Yamaha PSR-2000 which keeps me happy on the 'real instruments' front, although I've found the sequencer a bit impenetrable and never really used it. My music taste is pretty eclectic; recently I've had Moby, the Stereophonics, Black Eyed Peas and The Eagles going round in my CD player. When I'm on my keyboard I mostly seem to churn out what you might call "film soundtrack" music - piano, strings, some soft brass, woodwind, a bit of everything really. But I also quite fancy doing a bit of dance/electronica and frankly the PSR is a bit naff at that.

I'm owed a 21st birthday present and as it's coming up to Christmas I've suggested to my parents that I combine the two and get something medium-expensive and musical. The other day I went into Sound Control and spent quite a while playing with their last ex-demo MS2000B, which was great fun. I liked the nobbiness, the ability to just bugger about with everything on the fly and the variety of sounds it's capable of. On the other hand, I keep hearing negative things about 4-note polyphony, thin sound, aliasing at the top end, arpeggiator unsynching and what someone described as 'digicrapness'.

Also, since last week they've got rid of the last ex-demo and they only have one brand new one left in the UK, for £485. That's about £100 more than I think I can get away with, but they do have the rack version (MS-2000BR) for £350 new. I can tag that onto a Korg K25 (£50) and I'm near enough back with the -B (except the vocoder mic, and I've got a mic already).

Should I go for it - and if not, what would be a better buy for £400 all-in brand-new without losing the knob-happiness?

Sorry for the huge post, hopefully someone knowledgeable will be bothered to read it for me Very Happy

Best, YFB

Mohoyoho · Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2006 11:08 pm Post subject:

It's a good synth, but that price seems a bit high to me. What's the Korg Radias going for in the UK? That's sort of an updated version of the MS2000. Here it is about $1100, so I'm estimating that to be about £550. The rack is £450. My friend has an MS2000 rack and really likes it. It sounds really good to my ears. I suppose it's not perfect, but for most applications it does a great job. They cost about $400-450 here. For a synth like that, a polyphony of 4 is not great but adequate. I suppose it all depends on what you want ot do with it. You might want to try hunting for a used Waldorf Micro Q or one of the Novation synths.

yummifruitbat · Joined: Dec 07, 2006 Posts: 2 Location: Wales, UK

I suspect that, as with most things, we suffer a 1:1 $-£ exchange rate on this sort of thing - the cheapest I can find the Radias here is about £700 for the rack only; that's why I was looking at the MS2000 in the first place.

I can get a Waldorf Micro Q (rack) for about £340 new, but it doesn't look as accessible as the Korg. I can get a Novation X-Station 25 for about £300 too - how does that compare?

Mohoyoho · Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 6:14 am Post subject:

I've not played the Novation X station. I'm familiar with the KS rack and KS 4, and love them. I am very familiar with the MicroQ. I own a Q rack, and think it's incredible, and my friend has the MicroQ. The MicroQ has a lot more menu hoops to jump through for creating and changing presents, but the sound is fantastic. Perhaps a controller with lots of knobs would make tweaking a Micro Q easier, but I'm not certain.