The DX7 might be the best selling synth of all time. There's a lot of them out there.

Trent Reznor famously destroyed dozens, if not hundreds of them while on tour.

They were so commonplace people were donating theirs to NIN so he could smash them during the show. It was a whole thing.

I don’t think it really moved the needle on the number out there, but it does show how ubiquitous they were.

They are still excellent midi keyboards, in addition to an iconic synth engine. So I suspect DX7s are more widely applicable, and thus are much sought after, which keeps the prices not very low.

The keyboard may have one of the best synth actions ever made - smooth but fast, mid-weighted, not at all spongy.

I read sometwhere that the DX7IID had corrected the original DX7's whimpy full velocity numbers delivery but found that not to tbe the case. I felt I had to use an Anatek POCKET CURVE with its dedicated DX7 compensation curve and beyond when using my IID to program the TX802 and 81Z.

> The DX7 might be the best selling synth of all time

They were, for a long time, but the figure I've seen is something like 100k for the original model. The market is so much bigger now I don't really believe it's true anymore.

The number I'm seeing is closer to 200k in the first 3 years. It was on the market for 6 years so maybe a little more than that.

>There's a lot of them out there.

True, but everyone seems to want $500 for barely working ones and significantly more for decent ones.

I think the cheapest you could reasonably expect to get a useable synth with a decent keyboard is $300, independent of age and coolness. That's where you'll find a Microkorg or a Mininova or something.

Of course you can get romplers and keyboards with preprogrammed sounds much cheaper. And you can probably do something quite nice with a Behringer JT-4000M (once it hits the shops) and a cheap MIDI keyboard.

Depends on your definition of 'useable' but you'd certainly get an early VA board 2nd hand for $300-400 like the Yamaha CS1X.

For monophonic new you have options like the

Korg Minilogue Behringer MS-1 IK Multimedia UNO Synth Pro Novation Bass Station II Yamaha Reface series

Yamaha reface dx goes for 250 on the used market. It’s totally worth the money if you understand its limitations.

oh cool, i've looked at the reface line but didn't realize they go down to that cheap.

Plenty of people hoard classic synths like trophy pieces and never use them. Which sucks for people interested in making music or starting a new hobby with some old gear.

It’s probably one of the most popular things to do in the music scene.

God bless our lord and saviour Uli Behringer for delivering us from the dark ages of Virtual Analog c.1995-2012.

It's not so bad as long as the gears are taken good care of, if this isn't a thing we'll find them defunct in a dumpster yard. There are still positives about having a vintage collector scene, like USB floppy emulator kits, LCD kits, new mods, hacks, sharing old drivers etc.

Hundreds of dollars for an antique long out of production seems extremely reasonable to me. I'm not sure what you were expecting, $10?

It's also a pretty substantial object. They have a metal case! It's quite a large and heavy thing to ship and store.

>Hundreds of dollars for an antique long out of production seems extremely reasonable to me. I'm not sure what you were expecting, $10?

No, it's just that the supply of old synths in general appears to exceed the demand, but because there is this idea that old synths are valuable, people are willing to sit on them with high listing prices instead of adjusting their prices to move them. It's not really an efficient market and it's frustrating.