About this store

This is the synthesizer shop of allbutnew. We cover 36 vintage synths and drum machines from Roland, Moog, Korg, Oberheim, Sequential and Yamaha, one page per model. Each page tells you what the instrument is, what tends to go wrong after forty-odd years, and what to check in a listing before you pay.

Old synths are a good buy when you know what you’re looking at. They were built to be serviced, the parts that fail are well known, and a working one still sounds the way it did on the records. The risk is in the listing. “Powers on” isn’t the same as every voice working, so our checklists tell you what to ask for.

Where we’ve been through a model’s eBay listings, the page shows a dated snapshot and the listings we’d buy. Where we haven’t, it links to a plain eBay search. We don’t guess prices.

No affiliate links. We earn nothing. See the methodology for how we check facts and pick listings, and the disclosure for the details.