THE MONSTER HAS ARRIVED

No, I don't mean Scott Brown, the "unknown" Republican who was elected Senator in Massachusetts Tuesday. (THAT is a whole notha topic...)

The Monster is my new (used, actually) synthesizer.
I am in the process of selling my two other toys and combining the best features of both of them in one instrument.
I have been wanting to do this for a couple of years but did not have the opportunity.

I wanted a machine that had an 88 key, piano-weighted keyboard, and a sequencer (a type of digital recorder).
A couple of years ago, an instrument with both of these features cost over $2,000.00.
I was not going to spend that much.
It was cheaper to buy two instruments, each having the feature I wanted.
Which I did.
So I had a 88 key, piano-weighted keyboard with no sequencer, and a 61 key non-weighted keyboard with a sequencer.
By plugging them together, I had basically what I wanted.
But it was not an ideal set up and it took up a lot of room.
That was three or four years ago, or so.

Then things changed.
Yamaha came out with new models with more features and priced them higher ($3,000+).
In addition to the new models, they reconfigured a couple of older models (taking out a few features) and lowered their prices.
One of the reconfigured models was/is renamed the MO-8.
It is basically the same as the "old" Motif 8 (minus the ability to add sampled sounds - which I did/do not care about).
The old Motif 8 cost $3,200.00 back in 2002.

The "new" MO-8 has an "official" list price of about $2,000.00 but almost everyone sells it for $1,600.00 or so.
That is almost half the price of the original Motif 8.
Getting close...
That was still a bit steep for me, but I found a used one at a music store for less.
I took the chance and bought it.
The beast arrived yesterday.
It is huge!



After checking out the keyboard to see if all the keys work (they did) I played it a little before going to church.
SWEET!



I spent about three hours this morning going through all the 500+ sounds to see what it could do.
As I expected, there is a lot in it.
Hopefully this one will last me the rest of my life.



Now all I have to do is modify my cabinet to accommodate my new, simpler setup.

In God we trust.
.