No Problem
I know what you mean... familiarity etc... but I can tell you from experience that MIDI Amsterdam, The Music House (Utrecht) and ModularSynthesizers.nl are all great to buy from both online and in the case of the first 2 in store - not sure about the music house, as they were threatening to get out of modular (check their website)... but they were great... having spent thousands between them...
the only issue I have with modularsynthesizers.nl (den hague) is that they want you to make an appointment, so I never went there...
If I'm not mistaken then a MiniMoog has sort of the same filter but it appears to, partly, thank it's wonderful sound due to a slightly overdriven input from the oscillator.
something like that - the architecture of a minimoog is iirc: 1-3 vcos -> a cp3 mixer (which has some gain) -> filter -> vca
if you want to get a cp3 like mixer then the AISynthesis Harmonic Mixer is the one I'd go for...
I'll do some research on buying second hand in Holland.
I'd extend to EU in general... on here we have a good marketplace & good and bad transactions threads on the forum (so you can to some extent verify sellers) and on modwiggler you have to have at least 100 posts to create a for sale thread - as I said use PayPal (but not friends and family) and you are insured anyway! but there should also be a local facebook buy/sell group (and if not a EU one) etc
Unfortunatly all physical music stores in the part of Holand where I lve have closed. And when they were still open I wasn't impressed by the people working there in the end. So listening to the mudule in question is almost out of the question.
if it was Key Music - I understand completely!!
"some of the best base-level info to remember can be found in Jim's sigfile" @Lugia
Utility modules are the dull polish that makes the shiny modules actually shine!!!
sound sources < sound modifiers < modulation sources < utilities