My goodness the vintage Jomox SunSyn are selling now for crazy high prices! So, I am looking for a new synth that gets me there. Thoughts?
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i never understood the hype of the SunSyn. i’m sure it’s a dope synth but… they were always crazy high prices. i think last i looked they were anywhere between $4k-$7k.
there’s plenty of interesting hardware synths around these days… Waldorf Iridium/Quantum MK2/M… there’s more analog polysynths around than there has been in years… Moog, oberheim, Sequential, Arturia, Udo… all kinds of wavetable things around… ASM Hydrasynth etc…
do you live anywhere near a synth shop? if not, look at what’s new and available then start watching youtube videos.
it’s easier to do a process of elimination based on what is currently available imo… probably nothing is going to be a 1 to 1 likeness of a sunsyn but there’s plenty of awesome things available that are in no way hindered or limited.
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now they are selling for 20-30k which is pure madness! I think my Virus gets me most of what I need along with my Oberheim OB X8 for poly synth stuff anyways. I still want to try the new Jomox Alphabase MK2.
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They arent selling for that lol.
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people are listing them for that much but i doubt anyone is paying that for them. some jokers on reverb lost in a fantasy have them listed at really dumb prices… $22k and $34k. lols. so absurd.
https://reverb.com/marketplace?query=jomox%20sunsyn
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Yes idiots but i can see their madness. They are getting numerous offers and such a high asking price makes it easier to negotiate a final price.
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Damn what the heck? Honestly not that far off though, I was just looking at sold listings and several have sold for like 15k-20k. That seems insane to me, who would want this synth that badly?
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The figure you see sold on Reverb is not the final selling price. The Offer people make is hidden as its a private transaction.
I haven’t tried one in person but available demos on yt can easily showcase uniqueness of this synth and why people want to own one! Another example of its unique sound is the music of Mika Vainio who used it extensively. I don’t think this synth can easily be replaced with anything available on the market, maybe with Quantum due to its analog filters but im not sure it has the same quality of filter resonance that SunSyn is famous for. Polyevolver would be my closest pick but those are also selling for millions these days!
It’s been a long time since I looked at these, but I remember really liking the sounds from them. However, I also remember them being quite buggy, and people either loved them, or unloaded them.
If I remember correctly, it’s got numerically controlled oscillators (so digital or hybrid) and then also VCOs. Then analog signal path after that. I think it was multi-timbral, but not sure how many parts. Maybe all voices? Then morphable filter. I’m not sure which filter topology though. Would have to look it up.
Just based on that, and what’s available now with roughly similar features, I’d say start looking at UDO and Groove Synthesis synths. These will provide similar, more, and improved features to the Sunsyn.
At this point, I would say the Sunsyn is a collector’s synth, and probably not used heavily by many of its owners. I could be wrong, but that would be my guess. I haven’t known anyone that owns one for at least a decade. Not that that means a ton, but I always knew at least a person or two with one way back when. Now I don’t know anyone with one.
Personally, I’d rather have the Gemini or 3rd Wave, though if someone handed me a Sunsyn I’d gladly take it and use it for a while. 
I’d put it in a similar category to something like the OBMX. Designed by an eccentric genius, buggy-yet-cool, and becoming rare and obscure.
Edit:
I just looked it up. The filters are four-pole with mixable/adjustable taps. So similar to something like the Xpander/Matrix 12 filter style, but implemented a bit differently. So definitely a cool setup for the filters.
Maybe:
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I feel you could do something like this with the upcoming Caladan . I’m super excited about it because of the multitimbrality. You can pick and choose voice cards as well.
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People want what they want. Maybe they had one before, but had to sell, or maybe could never afford it when they were new. Their scarcity isn’t going to become any less, so they’ll probably be able to move them for the same if not more down the road too.
Even though there are synths that surpass much of what the Sunsyn can do now, it’s still quite unique overall. I don’t actually think there’s any current synth that has EVERY design choice that the Sunsyn had. How much one cares is up to them. The closest non-modern synth to it is probably the Oberheim Xpander which goes for between $6000 and $8000 now, and that one was mass-produced. There aren’t that many Sunsyns around. I wouldn’t pay $15-20K for it, but I could see someone that really wanted one (and had the means) paying the lower end of that for it.
Personally, I’d rather have some modular and a nice modern poly. (which I do) I think this is far more flexible overall, and still provides most of what the Sunsyn can do. (and then more in certain areas)
I still agree that those prices are pretty crazy, but they’re not out of the realm of what’s typical for something of that rarity, capability, origin, and even now, uniqueness.
Aside from my opinions on this, you can boil it all down to supply, demand, vintage appeal, and uniqueness if you want. There basically aren’t many available. There never were. There’s nothing exactly like it even now, and since day one it was quite sought after and appealing. Add 20-25 years to the equation, shrink the number available significantly, adjust for inflation and rarity, and it’s simply an expensive object that a small subset of people are really going to want to acquire and hold onto it. Think of it like a synthesizer version of a small production or hand-built line of vintage automobiles. Early hand-built Ferarri, Shelby, De Tomaso, etc. (I’m not really into those myself, but the people that are will pay just about anything for them.)
A real Moog Model 10 is $12000 and is a mono-synth. It’s an absolutely lovely and historic mono-synth, but it’s a mono-synth, and a lot of them have been made.
Check some of the more boutique vintage violin, grand piano, etc. prices. 
A highly regarded ANYTHING (in this case instrument) is going to cost some money generally. It’s not even snobbery most of the time either. Hand made instruments of any kind have a certain sound and feel and uniqueness to them, and there are those that very much appreciate that.
I would put that in the appreciation category more than the “cork sniffing boomer” category mentioned above. That’s coming from a Gen Xer 
This in no way means that YOU have to appreciate them the same way. You might not care, and there is absolutely nothing at all wrong with that. IMO there doesn’t need to be a class system of the people involved. I love fine cognacs, whiskeys, champagnes, but I will sit and have a blast with my friends that prefer a Coors Light. It’s ok to like what you like, be intrigued by a Sunsyn, or prefer to play a MicroFreak or something. It’s ok to be anywhere in between. It’s also ok for rare items to fetch whatever price they’re fetching while mass produced items appeal to broader spectra of people.
The fancier synth isn’t necessarily going to make you make better music either. Someone that can pick up and play anything is going to play just as well on a cheaper instrument to a more expensive one. I would say that in some cases it could facilitate someone with a great talent, but would not be a requirement. Maybe someone just prefers the overall feel of something a bit more high end, or maybe prefers to have a wider variety of smaller things at their disposal.
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it is a cool vintage synth and after listening to it below
However, my Virus TI2 gets me in the same ballpark and far less expensive than the vintage synth prices these days.
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I would say that the Virus (while a little less unique) will be able to do FAR more than what the Sunsyn can. If you’ll excuse the cliche, the Virus is a bit more Swiss Army
I’ve heard better demos of it in the past, but can’t for the life of me remember who made them. 
I’ll see if I can find some.
Also, when the Sunsyn came out there wasn’t really anything like it around. (of the same era, not including Xpander for example) It was the era of the VA. The closest thing would probably have been something like the Studio Electronics Omega 8, which while quite flexible itself, and having multiple filter options, etc. didn’t have quite the same flexibility as the Sunsyn. Both were similarly priced IIRC. So it was very unique for its time, and while it honestly does sound quite good, and can do lots of things that many synths still can’t do, there could also be just a touch of rose tinted collector vision with some people. I’m not at all saying it doesn’t earn its reputation, but for myself, I’d rather have my Gemini, or a 3rd Wave over the Sunsyn.
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Oh, another modern synth that might be a good replacement for the Sunsyn (though it’s a lot more digital) would be the Bowen Solaris. That is an exquisite synth that has a good chunk of unique character to it. I’d say that the interface may take some getting used to if you’re not familiar with that Matrix 12/Xpander/Hydra sort of thing though,
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Like others said, they aren’t actually selling for that much. Also what’s funny is that when it was new (I’m old enough to remember) it wasn’t a very in-demand item. It was too weird and most people didn’t care. It certainly didn’t have a “vintage” flavor. Its fame has come from rarity. Not saying it’s not a great synth, that’s just how I remembered it.
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This is a challenging question. Myself, i haven’t yet come up with an alternative that fits the requirements ( something close to the SunSyn in sound and internal functional design ).
Going back to basics, i think this page from JoMoX is a good place to begin.
I think you are referring to the RCOs ( what JoMoX calls Ramp Controlled Oscillators ).
As best as I can make out these are something like either sampled sounds, or loadable wave tables or something like that. As JoMoX says :
We provide an editor (PC/MAC) that can convert any WAV or AIFF files on the computer and transfer them to the SunSyn. Each RCO bank can be transferred separately.
So each of the eight voices has two RCOs, two analog VCOs, and a noise generator. This all can be run through a complex “programmable routing modulation system” that is set up with a table as follows :
These routings all run in the analog domain, though you could do this digitally.
You see some of the outputs from this go into the filters, which are special unto themselves.
Doing this all in a modular system in polyphony .would be a very large system. There are 4096 possible routings in this table, though of course in a practical sense you probably only need some subset for most typical patches.
…
Skipping ahead, this post is too long.
Another way to approach this in a practical sound oriented way is to look at one of the software emulations of this synth and use that for a digital or hybrid simplification of the system, that might be easier to recreate in hardware.
I have found a decent software emulation from UVI called SunBox.
Listening to some examples from this softsynth is a pleasurable listen. You could with work perhaps extract portions from this and recombine them into a polyphonic modular system. This would be a fair amount of work, but would probably be capable of making good sounding reproduction of some portion of the original SunSyn.
It would also be helpful in understanding the architecture of this soft-synth from UVI. I think i’d need to buy it to do that analysis properly.
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from my not so long experience with it, there is a reason why there are not many good Sunsyn demos and it’s called “J. Michaelis designed UI”
BTW there aren’t many ModFM demo videos, are there?
also Michaelis was really careless with my Sunsyn at the time. I shipped it to him, he was at home, knew DHL had it in the car, knew, they often do not find him but did not get outside the door to get the parcel. So it was sent back 600km to me. I think he is kinda genius but also kinda not so genius
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Yes, RCOs! Had forgotten. So there are a couple of ways to do that. The ramp could be a sawtooth analog waveform that goes into an ADC to address a table for wave shaping (like the Wiard MiniWave and Waveform City). Or it can be a digitally created ramp, doing basically the same thing, typically referred to as a phase accumulator oscillator, which is in things like the SID chip, Orgone Acumulator module, etc.
I would be curious to know which method is used for the RCOs in the Sunsyn. I’ll need to read more about it.
This behavior (either way) closely follows a wavetable oscillator, however depending on implementation may not step through a table of multiple wave shapes (like say a uWave, 3rd Wave, etc.) It’s just as likely that there is a table of waves, and the ramp only addresses one shape at a time. (like the SID chip).
Anyway, I’d love to know more about how they implemented the switchable filters too.
Definitely a cool synth.
I would say that there are some synths that do enough of what it does (even if not in the same ways) that you could get close enough for someone asking the question “Is there a modern synth that can approximate it?”
I don’t think there’s anything at all that’s exactly the same. You can definitely make many of the sounds that it would make on other synths, but the overall experience will be different. IMO at least.
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