I thought I would start a thread on pawn shops picks because there are a lot of older boards and racks that are great sounding and can do as much performance wise as todays instruments case and point
the roland mks-20 still a very valid board although the pianos dont sound like real pianos and the EPs may not sound like real rhodes but the chorus is so warm and the pianos are so expressive they sound awesome and are still used today by top producers
price about 350-450 the fact that this board is twenty years old and still cost this much shows it is special

jv880 I paid 40.00 can be found for about 100.00-129.00


same basic sound engine though
this board is very warm and can be expanded with one srjv80
sound cards these sounds are still very relavent very very warm and lush

kurzweil micropiano
small half rack price about 200.00 pianos are ery expressive and nice
do they sound like todays latest piaon beast no but are they extremely playable in live setting?

newer stuff

the xr rack by roland is really the fantom and can accept up to 6 srx boards this rack can be had for about 600 the keyboard can be found for 800-1000

roland 5080
really just the xr rack only bigger


this is all have
but as a post script
boards I would look and racks I would consider are
any roland rack and any yamaha rack
but there are other companies out there like EMU Kawai
alesis nord

guitar center has a good used selection
and your local pawn shops should always be considered.



price

Some of the Pawn shop bargains I've picked up in the past year or so....
Roland JP-8080 $320
Roland XV-5080 $150 with 5 cards installed !
Roland JV-2080 $120
Roland JX-3P $180
Roland TR-909 $200 !
Roland Sh-101 $150 !
Roland 501 space echo $100 (mega bargain)
Heaps of JV and SRX cards for about $20 each
Yamaha DX7 Mk II $220
Korg PolySix $230

There are great bargains around if you know where to look ...

Occasionally you can really strike gold like I did in Calgary Canada last year ....
A Roland Jupiter 6 for $400

Wow some phenomenal deals
good point is where to look'
you need that combination of shop that is in an area that they can get gear like this and yet alse not be able to move it. at the right price

but by nature of the beast pawn shops will always have the gear cheaper than a used music store

for stuff like rack units definitely

but i dont know how you scored those sr and srx cards

Whaaat?!

What a deal. Does it still work?

It's been in the shop for a while getting a few things but it will work fine when finished ...

Oh yes! The most expressive and dynamic piano out there. EP2 is just the greatest.

Anyway, your post got me very interested at first but then I saw how you were spelling "pawn" and I admit just a little bit of my interest ebbed away. But you are absolutely right about MKS-20. Mine is broken despite having been "fixed" recently - the muting circuit on one channel keeps going down. But I still have the RD-1000.

are you making jokes? took me a minute to get it
I am about to buy a mks and that is my fear that the box being so old will give me problems but I suppose this is just par for the course

you say the EP2 is the best that is probably why this sound is imitated in the roland soundsets and by patch designers such as kd nepro he has a patch called mks 20 and it is a copy of the ep2

Everyone needs to own a MKS-80 .... it is without doubt the greatest rackmount synth ever made ....

I had a MKS-20 I bought about 9 years ago which I sold last year on Ebay. Even though I loved it, especially the Rhodes and the panning, I needed to fund a GAS purchase. I played a gig opening for Marcia Ball who uses them and collects them as that is her main sound source for an AP sound live. They are becoming hard to find, but I couldn't sell it to her in the condition it was in, the unit needed some work. There were crackles and pops of all sorts being 80's tech and it's age though all functions worked fine, even had the old memory card. We talked and exchanged contacts but I never called her to sell it to her.

I brought the unit to a repuitable electronics repair shop here in LI, NY, a authorized Roland repair shop. They told me they went over the circuit boards and resoldered some of the loose connections and it really never sounded that noise free before I took it there. It really cleaned it up.

I sold it on Ebay the next month, sold very quickly and the guy thanked me up and down for selling it to him! $300 . . .

Yes, I was making a little joke. This gear is old stuff but a competent "in the know" kind of tech person can usually bring this stuff back to life. If you can find the MKS-20 at good money they are well worth buying because the sounds are unique and so expressive.

I had someone come by today with an Mks 20 but it didnt really want to work at all I got a chance to hear it a for a few chords then it would die out.
probably needs to have the circuit boards resoldered like the other poster remarked had happened to him'
I decided to pass better to get one from a actual shop.