Gear talk can get expensive fast, so here is the honest version: most of the records we love were made on modest setups by people who knew their tools very well.
Small, cheap instruments have a way of forcing decisions. With four knobs and eight steps you stop tweaking and start writing, and the limitations become a sound of their own.
Buy Less, Learn More
Headphones and monitoring matter more than any synth. If you cannot hear the low end clearly, no plugin will save the mix, and you will only find out when it plays on a real system.
- A controller with real knobs
- A drum machine with swing
- Decent cables, labelled
- A notebook for patches
The best synth is the one you can play with your eyes closed.
Buy used, learn deeply and sell what you do not touch for a month. That advice is free and will save you more than any sale.