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Comment by squigg | Hacker News Reader

CZ-101 owner here. After the TB-303, I'm not sure there are many other small form-factor synths that have had such an outside impact on electronic music From early Chicago House using the "HiString" preset here, and used all OVER loads of electro https://youtu.be/m78Nx3de6wg?si=1Ya5Q3I967xOGUuu Two Bad Mice "Bomb Scare" with the CZ organ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQVv40_9NSo then the "Reese Bass" that powered much of jungle and drum and bass after Kevin "Reese" Saunderson, one of the Detroit Pioneers who came up with it for a techno track https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjduK8Ip0Ls&t=55s

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I see your "HiString" and raise you a "Lately Bass": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXBssta3eD4

I submit for consideration the Korg M1 "Organ 2"

https://youtu.be/Ps2Jc28tQrw?is=tXq9sAaeK_OurFqR

That's a strong contender.

Yes, good point- I also have a TX81Z, which as well as lately does a mean techno string as well!

For sure. I got a lot of mileage out of my TX81Z back in the day.

> TB-303

I know Behringer has a bad reputation for a couple of reasons, but I wanted a TB-303 type hardware machine without shelling out the money I don’t have for an original TB-303 and ended up buying the Behringer TD-3-MO second hand for a hundred dollars. I sort of wanted the yellow case version (TD-3-MO-AM; “Amber”) the most, but my country is pretty small so I took the one I could find. In the end the color of the case doesn’t matter that much, and I can always pick up a yellow one later if I come across it second hand and sell the one I bought to someone else, while having time to do what actually matters in the meantime which is to learn how to use this thing and make some music with it :D

Every genuine fan of synthesizers should be beating a path to Uli Behringer’s door in order to prostrate themselves in admiration. It’s only trainspotters who don’t respect what he’s managed to do.

Yeah when I started out dreaming of machines I had to build my own 303 clone…

He had the option to just build synths that were inspired by the originals, but he copied literally everything, circuits, trade dress, name. Behringer is a parasite company, once you do anything innovative they come and copy it cheaper and people buy it for that single reason.

It’s cool we have cheap synths, when they actually do something original I’m all for it, but trademarking the Oberheim name and mocking journalists is distasteful. I know a lot of small makers and I cannot name a single person respecting Uli.

Roland, Korg & Yamaha had the ball in their court for years. Uli saw an opportunity and took it.

Korg has also been re-releasing old designs, notably the ARP 2600 & Odyssey.

When I built my xoxbox the demand for 303s was insanely high and Roland could have done what behringer did.

I’ve always had to pin this on a cultural blind spot in the Japanese psyche, where it comes to new and novel improving technologies. Having actually understood there was a demand for the 303, Roland then spent 30 years re-implementing it using all manner of digital techniques and improved bells and whistles (and LEDs) while managing to miss the target every single time in capturing what made the 303 unique and special, which was the quirks and response of its transistorised circuitry and brain-damaged sequencer. 40+ years later they still can’t seem to understand which is why it had to finally be re-implemented by all the XoXbox cloners and Uli.

The original 303 & 606 are pretty crappy plastic machines. The 606 didn’t explode in value in the same way.

Ok well I respect him for his no-f*ks-given approach to putting the instruments into the hands of musicians.

Like when Mono/Poly owners were crying that he’d cloned the Mono/Poly and made it cost £400 not £4000 - this should be a cause for buying two more, not a cause for complaining. That synth is absolutely genius and it’s a similarly genius move to pump out countless more of them at a price people can afford, which all the original makers seem unable or unwilling to do. There’s innovation all over Behringer’s synths if you go looking for it, just of a different type to the innovation found in designing the originals.

Teenage Engineerings OP-1 is a newish small form synth, expensive but regularly seems to appear on Craigslist at a reasonable price.

It’s a popular synth, but I wouldn’t say it had much of an impact of electronic music.

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