Perhaps to redefine the thrust of the thread..."Essential for your own personal sound signature at time present". That's how I read it.

Picasso had his blue period after all.

 

I read it as " what 3 synths do you think you would cover the most ground with", since you can only have 3. To me, that is an analog for bass and other sounds you want from an analog. A big workstation for all the bread and butter stuff and 88 keys, and a VA for more character specific digital leads and so on.

You are working around a set amount of space and money with hardware. For software, to get down to only three, most users would have to remove stuff from the DAW they use.

 

My wife went through a blue period for a while. Note: Don't drink food dye.
I have over 12 hardware Synths in my studio from my first mid 70's Minimoog which is currently doing nothing. Alongside many others. Why? Because syncing them all up to any DAW eliminates spontenaity. Of course you are free to find inspiration in hardware Synths if that offers something that plugins don't,but having begun my trip in early 1990, external hardware makes you feel good (and it's great to jam) but ITB makes your ideas flow music faster.
If I said a Minimoog and a Jupiter 8 and an early model Emulator were essential, do you think there's going to be a discernible difference from the dozens of plugins on the market? You're chasing a dream that will cost you a fortune and while you will love turning the knobs and sliders, nobody else will hear the difference nor will they care.

 

Those are workstations, not synths.

 

That's a relative no brainer for me, but for many "only 3" would cause a major headache (I include myself in the bunch).

It's a relative no brainer because you're going to want to cover your hardware analog bases and those are:

• A Moog
• A Sequential
• An Oberheim

Some people might decry the lack of a Roland classic (or two) and I would join them in said decrying, but the prices...

Some might bemoan the omission of an FM or Wavetable synthesizer - not me. Plenty of VSTis can cover those bases now, as well if not better than the originals, but nothing beats a Moog, a Sequential, an Oberheim, or (I'll say it) an 1980s Roland hardware synthesizer.

 

You're sure about that 5-6K, mate?

• Try $30K.

 

While there are lots of plugin clones of analog hardware, no one has managed to build a K2000 or ASR10 plugin yet.

Just saying…

 

My most used are

Hardware:

juno 106. Actually its an HS-60, but thats lesser known so i just say 106, as the 60 is a 106 with built in speakers.
circuit bent casio sk-1
circuit bent casio sa-2

VST:

Serum 2
Pigments
Falcon

There are plenty of other worthy contenders. Prophet 5, many of the new Behringer rip-offs, hydrasynth, andromeda, some moog stuff, and of course 8 billion vst's. Mainly U-HE and G-force stuff, but many others worth having.

 

The Blue Man Group still does quite well after many years by not choosing the red dye, let not your wife squander the opportunity. Joni Mitchell also found Blue to be a veritable cash cow.

I don't synch my hardware to my DAW but rather play the parts in my songs, damn the torpedoes. The hardware, the few times that I've done it this way, is synched to each other for my "experimental" stuff. I can record the midi output of the Polybrute and tweak later on if a song has a defined tempo or not. My guitars, percussion, harrmonicas and vocals are never of course and only synched to my brain's inner tempo control (or click/reference track) as well as everything else that is microphone captured. Software synths including soft drums and effects which are usually in my personal workflow for certain songs are most definitely in clock and are followed by my non-synched playing. The human feel is what I have strived for.

They haven't yet given me a number and taken 'way my name.