overall the MFB definitely has it's sweet spots but what it does well it does REALLY well. mixes nice with my ESQ-1 (fills out the bottom end and compliments it well).

like i said, with all three oscillators this thing is so damn thick and has all that oscillator phasing - so no need for outboard fx.

this thing is great. it barely takes up any space in my studio, it takes up space in my mixes in a good way, and it's a simple yet very effective synth.

The Synth Lite has two oscillators, a 24dB lowpass filter, ring modulation, pulsewidth modulation and a dedicated LFO. True, the analog oscillation is digitally controlled, the only time I notice this is when I use sawtooth/sine/square simultaneously on Oscillator 1 and I get an intermittent pulse. Otherwise you'd never notice it. I've also used the external input to filter drum tracks with great results.

My rig includes an E-Mu Vintage Keys module, a Red Sound Darkstar XP2, and an Alpha Juno 1. And I am constantly reaching over the other gear to use the Synth Lite. Once you are familiar with basic old-school synthesis it's easy to pull up the nasally Dr. Dre tones, squelchy Prodigy tones, and I often run the Synth Lite through chorus for a great Cars tone. Great for bass, leads, noise, atmospherics.

The best thing about the Synth Lite? I got mine brand new postpaid for $175. I couldn't touch any of the classic monophonic analogs and most virtual analogs for that, and it responds to MIDI. The downside? I wish the LFO could get really slow for the classic Moog autosweeps. To get those sounds I have to tweak the knobs. A small negative.

Bad- It's sound is a somewhat limited, as it is a VERY simple synth. You can't use decay and release at the same time; they share the same knob. There are a few other knobs that have shared functions. That's pretty much all the bad points I can think of.

Good- It's very inexpensive for what you get. It's sound, while not too varied, is very thick and powerful; it rips!! It's really small/compact. It has great midi implemetation. It's rare to get that kind of analog sound contollable with midi.

Overall I think it's a really good deal if you are looking for an analog monosynth. I don't know about those "synthlite" ones though; only go for true VCO analog! I think DCOs have less character, but then again, I've never heard the synthlite.