for your controller, methinks you could well start off with a MIDIO128 V3 and upgrade to MIDIbox NG when its ready - btw the SEQ also integrates fine into a DAW environment, not trying to convince you or something ;-)
I have been playing around a bit now today with my piano (I have a digital piano in my studio) and I love good old piano with analog pads on the synth. I found out that I need a midi expression pedal to adjust cutoff on the filter. So that is definetly gonna be part of the next controller.