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Adorama has the Behringer Crave for $ 164. It’s essentially a rearranged knob MOOG Mother-32 synthesizer. It has a built in sequencer, so it can be played as a standalone intrument, and the patch bay is generous enough to trigger it with a sequencer or to integrate it with modular synths. The tuning is known to not be quite as stable as the MOOG, but the tone it nearly identical. Unlike the Mother-32 is doesn’t fit into a modular rack, but MOOG Mother-32 units, even currently on sale, are $ 599.
This is not a super deep discount, but it’s lower than it cost to buy a used unit shipped from Reverb or eBay, so you won’t lose much if you play it 3 years and sell it. MOOG is now effectively out of business as the conglomerate that bought them out laid off almost all of the R&D staff, so there isn’t as much ethical issue about the IP theft. The biggest competitor to the Crave is still Behringer with the much more feature rich Neutron. You could play this for a couple years, sell it for a $ 20-30 loss, and then hopefully get a deal on a Neutron when they do a future blowout.
