Welcome to the forum!

Some of the forum regulars have extensive experience with all of the instruments you mentioned so you should be able to get any questions addressed.

I have yet to pull the trigger on anything but will be posting some questions here to assist in making a purchase decision.

One thing that will make it easiser to help is if you can bring us up to speed about:

1. Why are you buying an instrument? 

2. How do you plan to use it? Home studio? Local gigs? Gigs requiring travel? 

3. What type of music do you play? Are you a one-man band that will play bass, harmony, melody and various drum/horn/string/piano/organ sounds? Or do you want an 'arranger' that can provide a lot of auto-accompaniment to your playing?

4. Are you a 'player' or a 'sound designer'? A synth (Modx, Montage) can have a steep learning curve if you want to get into the internals of creating or modifying sounds. An arranger/workstation doesn't necessarily require as much of that.

Just as an FYI but having been a regular on the Motifator forums you likely don't already know this but:

1. Many people that visit the forums ONLY read the thread title and only open the thread if the title suggests it might be of interest to them. So the more specific the title/question the more interest it will generate. Just contrast 'problem with my Modx' with 'how do I make a control assignment'. The first doesn't really say anything about what the real issue is.

2. The more detailed, and specific, the info you provide in the body of a thread the easier it will be for someone to try to reproduce your issue. Readers have no way of knowing just a) WHAT you are doing, b) HOW you are doing it or c) WHAT performance/part/element/etc you are doing it to.

3. Readers won't know what your experience level is or whether you have already downloaded, and checked, copies of the documentation. I, and others, typically post links to docs we think may be relevant. That is just as an FYI to let people know where they can find the docs IF they don't already know. It should NOT be taken as the dreaded RTFM which can be misunderstood to imply that you could have found the answer yourself if you had just RTFM! LOL!

4. If you don't know something the smart thing to do is ASK! Why beat your head against the wall? 

Posted by: Toby

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1. Why are you buying an instrument?

I went 100% “in the box” with Logic in 2018 after selling my Motif XF. The reason I didn't bother getting a Montage or MODX back then was because they gutted the Motif sequencer. It’s been partially restored in OS updates, enough to be usable as long as I can do final sequence tweaks (detailed MIDI editing) in Logic. I have never been able to get Logic to start up projects as fast as the Motif sequencer did, creating patterns then chaining them to create songs. I’d like to get that sequencing flow back.

2. How do you plan to use it? Home studio? Local gigs? Gigs requiring travel?

Home studio only. The USB interfacing for audio and MIDI over one cable is critical. I used Firewire connecting the XF to a Mac but I could see Yamaha shifting to USB instead, first in the MOX and MX, then in the Montage. I foresaw Firewire driver support going away (it did) and more recently Apple dropped Firewire support in Mac OS altogether.

3. What type of music do you play? Are you a one-man band that will play bass, harmony, melody and various drum/horn/string/piano/organ sounds? Or do you want an 'arranger' that can provide a lot of auto-accompaniment to your playing?

One man band, for fun. I have on occasion asked friends to come by and play on a track here and there. I was recordin at home as early as 1977 with a Teac 4-track deck. I started using workstations back in 1988 after seeing a demo of the Ensonig ESQ-1 and realized what it could do…perform parts on instruments I either didn't have or couldn’t play well enough in real time. My real instrument is the bass guitar and string bass, with less facility on guitar and less than that on keyboards. I play what's sometimes called “songwriter’s piano” which means I can navigate a keyboard well enough to peck out melodies and chords. 

4. Are you a 'player' or a 'sound designer'? A synth (Modx, Montage) can have a steep learning curve if you want to get into the internals of creating or modifying sounds. An arranger/workstation doesn't necessarily require as much of that.

Player, but I need the capabilities of an advanced synth engine. Having both subtractive and FM in one instrument is tempting. I use two “supersynth” plugins today, Absynth and Alchemy (which is native to Logic). The Motif and Montage architectures are similar in the use of multiple elements and arpeggiators.  I spent twelve years tweaking Motif presets and also did my time in the modular synth rathole for over a decade where I had to do everything from scratch.

MODX or MODX+ is going to be similar to the Motifs you had before except the sequencer is dumbed down a bit in MODX and no on-board sampling features anymore.  There's a few other things functionality-wise removed from the MODX (ignoring the simplification of modes -- but just in terms of what you can do no matter how you do it).   I think MODX would be most familiar as being cut from the Motif cloth.

Although the keybed of MODX is "lower end" similar to the MO6/8 line during Motif ES days and MOXF line during the Motif XF days.  

The MO line never had a "7" until MODX - so it's good you can a 70-some-odd key keyboard in the cost-reduced level of MODX where you couldn't do that before.

Thx for the answers, but I’ve been lurking for quite a while (had numerous hassles with being able to actually log in) and following the return of the pattern sequencer closely.

Hi there from a fellow newbie 😀