Mention of the Blofeld brings up another topic; Do we really have to spend a ton of money in order to make good synthesizer music? With instruments like the Schmidt, the Solaris, and the Modal Electronics poly's, everybody's assumption seems to be in the affirmative. I think this is a bit of materialism and advertising getting the best of us. I'd say one could make superb synthesizer music with only a modest amount of disposable income. Hence, even though I like large instruments with long keyboards, I'm not at all drawn in by the appeal of super expensive wonder-synthesizers. Which is say that something like a Blofeld or a Sledge is still a very attractive option, and neither should be eliminated from consideration merely because it's relatively inexpensive.
True. One could basically make good music and recordings with any gear, be it synths like the Volcas or a DAW like GarageBand. What remains important, though, is that one likes the sound of the instrument(s) on decides for.
There are still two separate discussions I'd say, which I bring up because you mentioned the Schmidt. One is about what gear one really needs (or whether one really needs the most expensive stuff), one is about uncompromising instruments or uncompromising manufacturers.
The Schmidt for example is totally uneconomic from a mainstream POV. It was developed because Schmidt wanted to, not because he was looking at a particular market. It's insanely expensive and he knew that it would be in the end and accordingly only sell to very few people. It's a synth idealist's project regardless of prospective profits. I played it once, didn't really like it I have to admit, but I'm still glad that it exists or that Schmidt could do what he wanted to do.
The stuff by Modal Electronics is of course placed in a different manner on the market. Still, they made clear from the get-go that they would only build instruments for the pro league or people that are paid accordingly. In terms of hardware, they were also not willing to make any compromises, which defined their niche as well and is perfectly legitimate - at least as long as they succeed with their goals. All that made it of course even more surprising when they would eventually announce the CRAFT synth(s).
All these latter and more recent pricy synths don't typically fall into the category of fetishized objects, at least not to the same degree as certain vintage units like a Jupiter-8, a Prophet-10, or a Moog modular system for example. Sure, there were quite a few people lusting for a Schmidt, but 99% also knew from the beginning that they could never afford one. Most did just appreciate the effort as such. In the same way the 002, 008, or the Solaris are not really treated like mythologized items. They just belong to the upper end market and I've never seen someone making a comment about them that says: "You definitely need those to get
that proper sound." The latter mostly happens with reference to anything vintage, be it vintage analog or vintage digital, the stuff that sells from $4,000 to $10,000 on Ebay.
And to return to the beginning: Of course one doesn't need any particular instrument because others say so. One should mainly focus on the sound and have an understanding of one's musical goals. Because what do you wanna do with the most amazing and feature rich instrument if you don't like its sonic character? And what do you wanna do if you have the nicest sounding instrument that has too many limitations for what you'd like to achieve? Both aspects are of course tied to subjective preferences and make it perfectly legitimate to either prefer a Minimoog over any other mono synth or a System-8 over any true analog synth, and so on. Whatever works for one person - and that may be subject to change over time and with growing experience - is valid. But the criteria vary in each case.
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