This is just a bit of "What if". Please treat it as a thought experiment.
I love my Matrix-1000. I love 8-bit machinery. And I love modding things, finding simple hacks that make things better without taking large chunks of your lifetime.
Good starting point: I'll have to take apart my Obie anyway; the battery will have to be replaced sometime, and there's the v1.13 bugfix firmware update by Fetz.
But why stop there
I think there may be a couple of things you could do to enhance the M1000's scope, following these simple rule:
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Tradition: Any modification has to be downward compatible to existing Matrix sounds.
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Simplicity: It has to be simple.
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Aesthetics: It has to fit the original housing.
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Incrementalism: Even if it's something big, you'd start small and move on step by step.
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Pragmatism: If it already exists, don't bother building it, buy it.
The reason for the last rule is time - there's never enough of it, at least with me. So to keep moving, it is vital to be able to stop at any point and still have a working unit.
So these are the things I could come up with that might be done.:
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A per-voice ring modulator. Switched on by an unused bit in, say, the Unison parameter.
- Switching the filter from 4-pole to 2-pole.
- Making the M1000 respond in real-time.
OK, Number 3 seems to violate my rules of simplicity and incrementalism - this is a HUGE project, or so it seems. The M1000 is an old beast with a tired heart - the 6809 processor won't be able to respond any faster. But maybe you can use 21st century technology to assist it - use a modern single-chip system, maybe even something like a Raspberry Pi, and have it run the original firmware, based on the technology behind the MAME game machine emulator. Then go ahead and replace the time-consuming modulation calculation routines by native code. Tweak, repeat.
The result wouldn't be a different synth. Anybody who wants to build a totally different synth may go and buy his or her fucking Eurorack system. But it would be a better synth. An object of desire.
So what would you dream up for the Überheim Matrix-1000