I've got the very bestest of Virus TI stories. It's more like a fairy tale that came true!
I always wanted a Virus. I had a handful of hardware synths but none of them cost more than $1,000. At the time, I never thought any digital synth was really worth $2,000+ dollars anyway and I was happy enough with my E-MU XL-7.
One day I noticed Nova Musik was giving away a free Virus TI. All you had to do was enter your email address and they would draw one randomly from the thousands of entries they received. I thought "what the hell, I'll enter". I also made a point of
making my girlfriend enter the contest to increase the chances of winning.
So I kind of forgot about it and a couple months pass. We're out having dinner at TGIF's when my girlfriend gets a call on her cell phone from Tony Gral, the owner of Nova Musik. He was calling to tell her she was the winner of the giveaway contest and that he would be shipping out the Virus ASAP!
I told her she could put it on ebay and sell it if she wanted to. She insisted I keep it and use it! Crazy, huh?
Once it showed up and I plugged it in, scrolled through a couple of presets.... I knew exactly why they cost so much goddamn money! Amazing sound. Probably the most expressive and inspiring instrument I've ever played.