the only machine I'm hot on at the moment, is a Yamaha TX-802 for getting some serious FM going in my arsenal, and with more than 15.000 free sounds, it would fit my criteria well...
TX-802 was one of the first synths I ever used; my college had a TX-802 and an M1. The TX-802 is great. 8-part multi-timbral (configurable in groups of two voices, if I remember right), very clean.
When it comes to that last mono-slot... well... not many options if you want polyphony or full MIDI specs... it has to be MOOG I guess... Maybe an Ambika (or Tubika as they're called now)... Maybe it will even be something modular... Don't know yet.
I wasn't going to mention modular, as I know of your strong preference for tons of MIDI control. If you're willing to give up some of that, it can be very rewarding. A lot of unexpected things happen.
Yeah... I had the 802 a loooong time ago... also had the TX7 and DX7 make II... 802 is basicaly a DX7 mkII in rack format, and the difference and reason it sounds so clean is that it use 16 bit converters, instead of 12bit as the DX/TX7 does... it's a nice box, but the free patches is where it really shines because FM synthesis is a pain to program... even with editors. I'll see what will end up on that last stereo slot in my mixer... will probably want to wait for something completely different and new from DSI, as my Nord Modular is more than capable of doing serious sounding FM sounds.
About the modular thing... I actualy do not care for the MIDI specs missing, if it's just ONE synth we're talking about... the problem is if ALL synths had no memories and MIDI specs because then I'd have to meticulously edit every darn sound from scratch every time, which is too counter intuitive for my liking... I love to sit and tweak a non-midi analog synth to begin with in a project, but when I have dialed something nice up, I want to be able to quickly add other sounds to this, and then having to dial in a new analog would make me crazy
So a single modular would not be bad, or just another single-analog-synth maybe... but I would never end up with a wall of modular gear... don't have the money, don't have the space, don't have the patience for huge loads of wire spaghetti either
I actualy just decided to not get a looper anyway as I talked about earlier... I think I've found what I'm looking for, for sample manipulation: Roland VP-9000 .. .basicaly the sample part of the V-synth I'd say, without all the unnecessary VA synthesis and other gimmicks... will be perfect for loading in strange voices, acoustic sounds sources, rain, thunder and other nature FX... drones etc... now I just have to find one