Spectrasonics

Have you checked out Stylus RMX and Omnisphere? Great snakes these are cool programs made even cooler when they work in tandem. I think reason is pretty fun, but stylus dances circles around any other rex kinda sliced up sample loop thing I've ever seen, that's fer sure. And then being able to quantize Omnispheres arpeggiator to those slice with one drag and drop - amazing. And speaking of Omnisphere, what an incredible sound engine - definitely robust production on the myriad of sounds in the patch library, but a great sonic lab to start from scratch from as well. Eric Pershing is awesome, support Spectrasonics!

Germanium

Working with my buddy on a project where we're going to use a Chandler Germanium on his guitars - we just got the unit yesterday (woohoo!) and I've been playing with it. My goodness! This thing tends to rock and make things sound Big. Getting it to work without blowing out the digi 002 has taken (and will take more) experimenting. For now I'm putting it into channel 4 with an xlr cable, and I need to have the gain knob all the way down on the digi, as well as engage the pad on the preamp to really be able to push it. Just plugging the bass in direct gets in awesome sound, and the feedback knob and 'Thck' button make for a very versatile and killer sounding pre.
Also got an Electro-Harmonix 2880 Super Multi-track Looper
thing and the Foot Controllerwhich is fun. Basically it's a stereo looping box with 4 channels (and a mixdown channel) with faders and panning. Also it does reverse which is neato as well as having an octave dunction where you can kick it up (or down if you start with it engaged). Best of all it send or receives midi clock, so if I get something going I like I can hook a drum machine up to it and immediately be locked up. The stereo part is fun too, I'll send guitars through one side and run it into the palomino amp, and then stick bass on it's own channel and pan to the otherside and put it through the mark bass amp, and then have the drum machine sync'd up and playing through the monitors. Lots of possibilities here - still need to see how nicely the kaoss pads can play withall all this for some cool timed effects and other types of madness.