Vintage Gear Auctions, Getting Reacquainted with Gear You Sold and a Pet Shop Boys Teapot: Synth Journal
Also, Synthesizers.com gear in VCV Rack and Underworld's new long player
4,9 / 5,0 | 
In this week’s Synth Journal, we look at one of the biggest online auctions of vintage gear and I fall back in love with a Yamaha CS1x!
Synth Journal
VEMIA Auction – Vintage Gear and More
As the year begins its final home-straight towards 2025, stopping at Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve on the way, the next VEMIA auction is about to kick off over at SphereMusic! Widely regarded as the biggest and most trusted online auction of vintage gear, this end-of-year blowout has some humdingers inside!
Run by Peter Forrest, author of those venerable tomes ‘The A-Z of Analogue Synthesizers’, the VEMIA auction has facilitated vintage gear auctions for 27 years and is a great place to pick up some bargains, rare synths and classic vintage gear. The best thing about VEMIA auctions is that it is enthusiasts, musicians and collectors selling to each other. You can pretty much buy with complete confidence.
This time, there’s some amazing vintage gear to be had, as well as a few bargains and there are far too many for me to mention here, but here are a few highlights…
- Oberheim 8 Voice (not a 4VS plus Expander, but a true 8VS!)
- Roland System 700 modular system – Complete
- Steiner Parker Synthasystem Modular
- Elka Synthex Mk.III with Factory-fitted MIDI
- Yamaha DX1
- Linn LinnDrum (owned by Paddy Kingsland)
The items above are some of the more premium lots, all with fairly hefty starting bids, but do take time to browse the auction catalogue as there is some bargain vintage gear to be had and some very useful spares, ephemera and ‘first-aid kits’ for some old machines.
The November 2024 VEMIA Auction runs from 14:00 GMT on November 2nd through till November 9th, where lots will close sequentially from 14:00 GMT on that day.
Dreaming of the Queen, It’s Teatime with the Pet Shop Boys!
Quintessentially British synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys are celebrating 40 years since their first release, and today, they announced the first item celebrating the occasion in a way only the Pet Shop Boys can. The campaign, entitled ‘Pet Shop Boys since 1984’, promises a range of PSB-related products to commemorate this momentous anniversary.
In conjunction with Farrow, the design house responsible for most Pet Shop Boys visuals, and Duchess China, Neil and Chris have revealed a fine bone china tea set, emblazoned with an exclusive design and gold-edging. The items are available in different size sets, ranging from £200 to £600.
Each piece is decorated by hand by Duchess China, a 136-year-old company regarded as one of the finest bone china makers in the country. I honestly can’t think of a more Pet Shop Boys way of celebrating their significant anniversary, but I do hope there are some more affordable trinkets available later on.
So if you’re dreaming of the Queen, visiting for tea with you, and I and Lady Di, this is an absolute must and you can place your orders here.
Me and My Yamaha CS1x
Some time around 2010, I made a decision to buy a new e-Drum kit. To do this, I needed to sell some gear, something I rarely, if ever, do. I looked at my racks and decided to part ways with stuff that either wasn’t getting used, or that I could do better elsewhere.
I’d gone all in on the mid-90s Yamaha dance music trend and decided that my CS1x, RM1x and SU-10 were surplus to requirements and promptly sold them all, along with some other bits. I almost instantly regretted it but put that down to simply going against my hoarder instinct.
Over time, I told myself that if the opportunity arose where I could buy some or all of this back, I would and just last week, an absolute mint CS1x showed up on eBay just 50 miles from where I live. The temptation was too strong and I grabbed it as fast as I could.
As soon as I got it back home, it was like getting reacquainted with an old friend. Scrolling through the presets, I could hear the patches before I’d even played them! But what also struck me was how much more I appreciated its capabilities nearly 15 years since last playing one.
The CS1x is actually still a cracking little synth by today’s standards. Some people might be put off by the fact it is based on Yamaha’s AWM2 GM/XG sound set. Also, its all-digital architecture means that it’s not as refined as a proper virtual analogue or even an actual analogue. But with its 32-note polyphony, 16-part multi-timbrality and pretty useful 4-layer Performance patches, it can hold its own.
The best bit is that these can be picked up for around the £150-£200 mark. In the intervening years, I bought an AN1x, which is a stupendously great synth, but I’m over the moon that I got this one back, and I am actively looking for a nice RM1x at a decent price! Did you ever regret selling a piece of old gear, and to what lengths did you go to get it back? Let me know in the comments!
Synthesizers.com Now Available For Free in VCV Rack
Anyone that knows me knows that I am the least enthusiastic guy when it comes to modular synths, especially Eurorack! I appreciate the concept and marvel at what some people can do with them, but they do absolutely nothing for me. All those wires, zero patch recall, the spiralling costs… nope, not for me. At. All.
However, I am happy to indulge a little bit, if only for research purposes, in software modular synthesis, such as Cherry Audio’s Voltage Modular or VCV Rack. The latter is now firmly established as a great way to teach, learn and experience modular synthesis without the excessive financial outlay or clearing considerable space in one’s studio.
And now, esteemed modular manufacturer Synthesizers.com, is represented in the VCV Rack library, courtesy of Vult DSP. The team over at DotCom asked Vult to create a selection of their modules so that people could really get a feel for what their equipment can offer and they certainly do that!
I think this is a great way for people to dip their toes into the modular world without going all in, only to discover that it isn’t for them. It’s also a great way to advertise hardware and try different manufacturer’s gear together.
Vult DSP’s models of Synthesizers.com modules are available in the VCV Rack library now, for both free and paid-for versions.
Someone’s Cloned an Oberheim Matrix-1000!
The Oberheim Matrix-1000 was, to all intents and purposes, a Matrix 6 preset machine. Housed in a slender 1U rack unit, there’s no way you can cater for all of the complex programming a full-size Matrix 6 has to offer. But released in an era of ever-decreasing user interfaces, the Matrix-1000 found a lot of love from those wanting that Matrix 6 sound but not its price tag.
Now it seems that someone has managed to design a clone that can easily be built by anyone brave enough to take on the task. I say easily, by which I mean for those with more than a modicum of soldering skills and basic electronic engineering.
Ensure Sound recently posted on their Facebook page that they have successfully completed the design of a supposedly precise clone of the Matrix-1000 that will not only run the original firmware but also 3rd party revisions such as that made by Tauntek! The post was accompanied by a number of 3D renders of the main PCB.
Ensure Sound have promised further updates soon showing us the hardware, as well as demo audio and video soon. Exciting stuff!
‘Strawberry Hotel’ by Underworld
And finally, I wanted to draw your attention to the spectacular new album from the legendary Underworld. Entitled ‘Strawberry Hotel’, it is up there with their finest works and Sees Karl and Rick still throwing out absolute bangers after all these years.
Highlights for me are ‘denver luna’, ‘Techno Shinkansen’ and ‘Lewis in Pomona’, but to be fair, you should be listening to this as an entire album, the way it was intended. This is electronic music at its finest. Beautiful chords and melodies, thumping beats and Karl riffing over the top, taking you to a higher plane.
Buy this album now. Your ears will love you for it.
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