what synth for old school pad sounds

[studiophile]

can anyone suggest a good synth for creating 70's/80's style pads. It's hard to explain but i'm looking for something warm, fat and a little dirty, not clean, clear and crisp like the FM8 (which I have and absolutely love!).

Not fussed if it's a plugin or hardware (but I usually prefer working with hardware).

Any thoughts would be helpful

Cheers

[shadowfac]

Some "economic" choices: Ensoniq ESQ-1, Roland Juno 60/106, J3Xp, Alpha Junos, Oberheim Matrix 6/6R/1000.

If you have more $$$, the Prophet 08 ain't bad.

[Derp]

Originally Posted by studiophile

can anyone suggest a good synth for creating 70's/80's style pads.

This description just screams Prophet 5 or CS-80 to me.

[studiophile]

nice! I'll check them out

[Farshad]

Roland JD990. The pad synth!

[Jetty]

As shadowfac already said, Alpha Juno/MKS50 is really cheap and will get you very far in this department. It actually sounds very 70s with a a lot of dirt to boot. Like every other synth ever mentioned, this is the most underrated synth ever!

[living sounds]

The JD990, while sounding great for digital evolving pads doesn't sound very 70-ish. The Alpha Juno/MMKS50 hasn't got the oscillators or the filter for great pad sounds. The Matrix6/1000 sounds way to midrangy for anything big and warm, although it can sound very haunting with enough reverb/delay.

The Juno60 is perfect for this kind of pads, the MKS70 works great, too. Bigger polysynths are even better, but Synthex/Jupiter8/CS80 etc. cost serious money.

[Jetty]

First of all, while the Alpha isn't very warm or dynamic in any way, it beats the crap out of many contemporaries and is fully capable of providing desired pad sounds cheaply. No, they don't sound like monster polys but, if you want that buy a monster poly

The MKS70 (which I also have) mostly sounds so laid back and clean. I would say the way cheaper Alpha sounds much more aggressive (which I believe is what was desired here). I'd say disqualified on the same basis as the JD990.

Juno60 is for sure. And this is a great synth anyway. On the other hand, you'll get an Alpha and a decent chorus for less money.

Matrix 6/1000 is pretty non-warm, I agree. Again, a great synth for other purposes too..

[El-Burrito]

Juno's are good pad machines. VST U-NO-60 is pretty good clone of Juno-60 and it's free. Check their Chorus-60 too. Korg Poly-Six is good one too.

From the new ones, Prophet 08 is probably very good.

[living sounds]

BTW, my main synth for pads (apart from the JD990) is the Chroma Polaris, it's got fat VCOs, a great filter and a kind of shimmering gritty warmth. But if I had the space here I'd add a Juno-60 for the really deep analog pads.