After much dithering and much watching/listening to youtube videos, I bought a Trigon-6 desktop module. And, wow wow wow, I love it! GEOSynth's review and patch demos played an important part in my decision. I think they are a fantastic representation of what this synth can do. I bought the Paradox patch set just now. It will probably be at least a couple of weeks before I start playing with them, but there are several patches (from the demo) I know already that will be wonderful. It's going to take a while before I get through the presets and then work on creating my own patches from scratch.
The dithering part of the decision was mostly about whether to get a Prophet 10. Sometime in late 2016, I purchased a Prophet 6. And it has been an important part of my musical life ever since. When the P5/10 rev 4 was announced, I was all in and fully intended to purchase one (and still might at some point in the future). The history, the legend, the raw power, the mystique, etc. of the Prophet 5 has drawn me in. However, I have never encountered a Prophet 5 in real life, so I have not been able to experience that "certain something", that "raw tone", that "power" ... etc. that everyone talks about when reviewing that synth. Every sound that I like that I have heard from the P5 (on youtube and other digital mediums mind you), I can repro on my P6 just fine. I assume, based on what everyone constantly says, that playing a P5 in real life would be a mind-blowing experience. But I suppose that has to wait.
A few months ago, I ran across a video by Alex Ball showing how to re-create patches for three different songs (by Radiohead, Aphex Twin, and Japan). I followed along on my P6 and made what seemed like equivalent patches. And, the one from the Aphex Twin example has become (with some tweaks to my taste) my power-on patch ever since and provided the core sound on my most recent song. I think it is pretty great. So all of that combined to reinforce the fact that I do not want to replace my P6. I don't have room for both a P6 and a P5(10) keyboard. And I'm definitely not getting a P5/10 desktop module (yeah, no explanation other than it feels like that would be a silly choice to get a desktop module of that iconic synth). And some of that need for big knob gratification and raw power has possibly been satisfied by the Minimoog Model D I acquired.
As a result of the "yeah, maybe not a P5 in my life right now" decision, I spent a lot of time looking/listening to other options and landed on the Trigon-6. I'm only a week in, but I am truly enamored of it. It is quite a nice problem to have to try to decide which synth is going to make my next song sound better. And I sure miss Dave Smith. Such a genius. I kind of wonder if the Trigon-6 is going to end up in the highly sought after category of classic Dave Smith synths. In some ways, I of course hope it does, but also, selfishly, I hope not because I currently can make sounds that (to my ear) are different and still very musical.
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