Hi, everyone! It's been a while since I've been around, and I've been getting some paying jobs lately, so I suppose with a little budget, maybe $150 with will to expand, (of course AFTER I get my audio interface) it'd serve me well to supply myself with some more functionality, being a synth-heavy user.
I've been looking around a bit recently, and some things have caught my eye, but what I'm really looking for is:

• GOTTA have minimum eight velocity-sense pads
• 8 knobs preferably, but sliders will do
• Mod wheel, no spring-loaded
• transport controls
• preferably full-size keys...

Overall, the number (or possession) of keys doesn't matter much, since I have a good 76-keyboard. I'm just looking for a good sub $200 midi controller that gives me tons of control. Thanks, guys!

I just picked up a novation impulse - 25 keys - and it is nice.  Good keybed, if you like fatar.  Knobs.  I picked it up (box open) at GC for $150.  be sure and check the keybed.  A lot of the cheap controllers feel just that - cheap.  It is not like I'm a pianist, but I do like a solid feel.
 
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I've never take a detailed look at the Impulse series, seen them around but they always seem outside of my price range (and tbh I'm not quite sure how the silver-red will look).
Definitely a good point to bring up the quality of the keybed, I am a keyboardist and that would play into many options, esp. since most low-end ones will feel cheap (but as noted above, I have a decent keyboard that will sit beneath my controller, so it's not locked).

CME has some low cost controllers. I had one and loved it. They even have one with motorized faders. I would't be very confident of the usb drivers though. If your interface has a midi port and the controller has a midi port then you don't need a driver. Maybe CME cleared things up but at one time the drivers didn't drive very far.

Although it has a joystick and therefore is spring-loaded for modulation, the sheer quality of the Roland A800 (which has everything else on your list) is worth checking out although it is definitely somewhat outside the budget limit you mentioned. However, having owned a cheaper controller - whose keyboard velocity response I could *never* get to work quite right - and which eventually just started flashing up random stuff on its LCD display - I would say that the A800 is a purchase I definitely will never regret. Since it has aftertouch you can also map this to modulation and I personally far prefer a joystick since you can bend and add modulation or another effect with one hand, something that is awkward at best with separate pitch and mod wheels.
 
Since you said a lot of keys isn't important you could of course then go for the smaller and cheaper A500 which only differs in key count. However the advantage of a 61 key controller is that it is big enough to play anything except classical music
 
You get a full set of transport controls, 9 knobs, 9 faders and 8 velocity sensitive pads. Admittedly Roland aren't the best at intuitive software design but once you've gone through the one-time pain of getting it set up, that's not a problem for operational use. In fact, having dedicated split,dual, upper and lower buttons makes it very handy because you can map these to different split points and midi channels and easily split and layer sounds in performance. And - as I said - the quality is superb, all the buttons, faders, keyboard etc are not built down to a price. It looks like something that will last many many years.