Yamaha DX21 — 1985 — Serial No. 8705 — Made in Japan

Listen. Everybody wants a DX7. Everybody wants the one they saw on MTV, the thing on every record in 1986, the thing that now costs what a decent used car did then. Fine. Go stand in that line with everyone else.

This is the DX21. Four operators instead of six. Cheaper, cruder, and somehow more honest. That grit, that slightly meaner digital snarl you can't fake, and you can't get it from the big brother. Some of the best things I've ever encountered were the version nobody was bragging about.

What you get: 61 keys, dual and split modes, an actual onboard chorus — which the DX27 and DX100 never got — those seafoam-green buttons that look like nothing else Yamaha ever made, and membrane-button programming that will teach you patience or break you entirely. The electric pianos shimmer. The basses hit. The pads sound like 3 AM in a city you've never been to.

Condition: honest. This thing is 40 years old and it's lived. Light scuffs, some dust in the keybed, the wear of an instrument that got played instead of sealed in a closet like a museum piece nobody's allowed to touch. but it powers on, plays well, and sounds exactly like it should, which is to say: like nothing made today.