12. You dig Kellie Osbourne’s Moog-inspired synth tattoo. 

11. You read the Sound on Sound back-catalogue of hardware reviews almost obsessively, especially whenever a particularly sweet looking synth comes up on Ebay.   

10. The top favourites in your browser include VintageSynth, the Harmony Central user reviews, and the Musical Instruments > Professional Audio & DJ Gear > Synthesisers category on Ebay.

9. Instead of subscribing to Yahoo groups involving celebrity porn like the rest of humanity, your subsriptions include groups like “Synth Programming”, “Alpha Juno & MKS-80″ and “Polyphony for the Masses”

8. You get involved in passionate debates on the InTheMix forums about the relative merits of ‘true’ analogue vs VA hardware.

7. Not only can you wax eloquently about extended ADSR envelopes, aftertouch and oscillator pitch drift in said arguments, but you actually know what the terms you’re bandying about mean.

6. Although you live in a relatively small two bedroom apartment, and wouldn’t really know how to operate it properly, you occasionally have dreams about breaking into Jack Dangers’ house to steal his Synthi 100.  

5. You find yourself listening to early 80′s records by bands like Depeche Mode & Ultravox, and thinking “hmm yeah, I think that’s preset 32 on my Poly 800″ or “Oberheim OB-X solo - I like it !”.

4. Your partner complains that you sometimes wake her up, mumbling things in your sleep like “Yes, but the real question is – does it have any LFO’s ?”, and “If you sign it Mr.Moog, I promise I’ll blow you right here !”.

3. You abuse the arpeggiator on your synth to make ringtones for your mobile phone, having graduated from downloading the MP3 patch demos of obscure 80′s keyboards on Sealed’s page for said purpose.

2. When you take your fiance overseas to see your homeland for the first time, you take time out from visiting historic sites and family, to drag her around a bunch of dodgey musical instrument stores, trying to find the elusive “too good to be true, they’re Eastern European and too niave to realise what they’ve got” synth deal.

1. When you finally do get married, and score yourself some cash in the process, not only do you buy whitegoods for the both of you to use, you also blow a good chunk of it on a new synth, having compared potential purchase candidates for literally months on end beforehand :-)