SiteTip: RetroSynthAds is Back

Retro Synth Ads is Back!

Just a quick post to share something nice I noticed — the blog Retro Synth Ads has (also) started posting again after being quiet for almost four years!

If you grew up loving synthesizers, you might remember how exciting it was to see new gear in magazines like Future Music, SOS... MIDI Magazine, Interface and even before that Keyboard Magazine or Electronic Musician. 

Back then, those ads were one of the only ways to find out what was new. There were no YouTube videos or websites to check every day. Just printed pages, full of dream machines.

The person behind Retro Synth Ads, based in Canada, clearly loved those ads too. He started blogging at https://retrosynthads.blogspot.com/ in 2019, sharing a lot of cool old synth brochures, advertisements and background stories. His posts are always a fun mix of history and nostalgia.

If you like classic synths or just want to remember the good old days of music gear ads, his blog is definitely worth checking out.

I have spent many hours on this site in the past and will definitely keep an eye on this again.

The archive is impressive, and easy to search through... 

Once more: https://retrosynthads.blogspot.com/

Welcome back, Retro Synth Ads!

You can always find a link to the most recent post in the right sidebar of the web-version of my own blog.... together with my other favorite blogs

Patch into more interesting SiteTips from the PatchPierre ARCHIVE

BookTip: Vintage Guides from FutureMusic

'50 Great Second-hand Buys' and '30 Vintage Buys' by FutureMusic

I have been buying/collecting Future Music Magazine almost since the beginning, i believe it was in 1993 when i first discovered the magazine and bought issue #5 in a Dutch bookshop.

Back then it was a great magazine, i remember that it was around the top of the big retro-hype that was going on in the mid-nineties.

One of the main advantages of that was that every month it was filled with lots of reviews of interesting hardware, in contrast to what i see lately whenever i pick one up in the local bookstore.

50 Great Second-Hand Buys
Free with Future Music #18
April 1994

About half a year after I bought my first FM  issue I got myself a subscription, and I have enjoyed the magazine for almost a decade.

I even had a year subscription to the Dutch version of the magazine.

Not only did the Future Music come with a free demo-CD with every issue, sometimes the came with other extras, like these two little books for example.

The '50 Great Second-Hand Buys' booklet (64 pages) came with the April issue of 1994 and featured descriptions and (basic) technical specifications of 50 of the best second-hand music-buys around.
It also gave advice on what to look for and what your rights were when you were looking into buying second-hand gear.
It's weird to see how dated the info in the book now looks with the AtariST and Amiga hardware and software-tips...

30 Vintage Buys
Free with Future Music #37
November 1995

The other booklet (32 pages) '30 Vintage Buys' appeared 1 ½ year later.
It had quite some overlap with the other book, but was also very interesting for people who wanted to buy second-hand classic gear.
This one included 30 retro gear reviews (including 13(!) Roland products), buying advice, pros and cons of the equipment and a short fact file section for each item.

If you are interested in vintage gear, these two books together are nice collector's items, but the info in it was rather limited and at some points very dated.
If you need more details on older equipment i suggest you read other books like the 'Keyfax Omnibus Edition' by Julian Colbeck or Peter Forrest's 'The A-Z of Analogue Synthesizers' (out of print) for example.
These books offer much more in-depth info, and cover much more instruments.

Also check out my other BookTips