[Rochus]

> but I'm glad they exist for professional musicians to use

The irony is that a professional musician in most cases has less budget to buy those expensive things than someone working e.g. as a teacher or clerc.

[brudgers]

Musicians who landed a successful sync licensing deal, have that kind of money. Likewise producers who got points on something that took off.

Anyway, $11,000 for a musical instrument is not that much for a musical instrument even when it is a lot of hamburgers for a given musician.

[hexo]

what is "sync licensing deal"?

[gizajob]

Music you made which is now used for adverts or tv or films

[brudgers]

Or video games.

[Lio]

Very true especially in this day and age. I think by “professional” I mean someone already successful rather than an up and comer.

[Rochus]

Yes. If we assume only 5-10% of musicians with a decent, self-supporting living from composing/playing/performing alone (most others work somewhere in the “music-sector”, e.g. as teacher or as clerc of a record label or collecting society), only 0.5–2.5% have a stable middle-class income from artistic music alone, and roughly 0.01–0.3% have a upper-class income from artistic music alone and can afford to spend 11k£ for such a synthesizer.

[Lio]

In someways this isn’t that unlike the past.

I saw that Pete Townsend has donated his synths to a school in West London.

That includes a Yamaha GX-1 and an EMS modular. That’s some of the rarest (and largest) synths ever made and would have cost the equivalent of hundreds of thousands at that time.

Not too many muscle in the 1970s would have been able to buy a GX-1.

[Lio]

FYI the current run of Korg PS-3300 sold out in minutes even at £11,000.

[Rochus]

Unbelievable. I guess because of a lot of bored software people rather than trained musicians.

[blt]

Probably some of both, but 11k is extremely reasonable for this. If I understand correctly, it has 3x complete subtractive synths per key (not just 3 oscillators into 1 filter) x 49 keys. A typical analog polyphonic synth has maybe 8 voices.

The comparison is more like bulldozer vs. car than BMW vs. Toyota - entirely new capabilities are unlocked

[curioussam]

The 'current'? They sell out since Korg started this convoluted order "process", wbich isn't even one, since you hear conflicting things in different countries from the 'distributors".

[ssl-3]

The price of a new Yamaha GX-1 in 1975 was around $60,000, or about $385,000 in today's money.