Hey,
My first real synth ever was the JP8000, here's a picture of my baby:
http://www.leodaley.com/studio/synths.jpg
You can hear it ALL OVER my tracks:
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/3/vitaminmanmusic.htm
I love this synth to death, and I will never ever part with it, except for maybe getting the rack 8080 version. A lot of it has to do with nostalgia as I've had it for so long, but also because it did, in my opinion, a pretty good job of emulating some of the older analogue and hybrid synths that Roland made in the 80's. And, it has some other stuff that other synths don't have, like a feedback oscillator and 'super saw' oscillator.
It's just a synth, it wasn't designed to be used in hip hop or techno or country or whatever, it was designed to make sounds. People who are into techno music will gravitate towards it because they tend to like the kinds of sounds which is it capable of making; you can, though, make all sorts of neat sounds with it if you spend a little time with it, especially deep and thick basses. Most all the bass sounds on my tracks were made with the JP8000, and for the track 'Da Game' ALL the sounds came from it (except the pizzicatos and drums).
A friend of mine owns the MS2000r and he loves it to death because you can route sounds through its filters and vocoder. It's basically the same sort of synth as the JP8000, virtual analogue.
If you're going to get one of these, consider getting either the newer version of the MS2000, which just came out...or get the rack version of the JP8000 which is called the JP8080: the 8080 has 2 more voices, there are more waveforms to choose from on the second oscillator, and you can run sounds through its filters and effects. And it will take up less space in your studio.
But, the absolute best thing about both of these is that you have all those lovely knobs to help shape your sounds, you'll have a blast tweaking everything.
Take care,
Nick
