2021 Gear Purchase: Hits & Misses

Since my last post in this thread I’ve ended up with a couple more pieces of gear:
Moog Grandmother was given to me as a Christmas gift: it is very much a hit! It is probably the closest I’ll ever come to owning a vintage analog synth. There are SO many things I want to do with it. Right now I’m running/patching it with my Koma Field Kits and running it through Live 11. I also want to sample it with mpc 1000 and Polyend Tracker and…well, everything. I used to own a Sub Phatty and I’m glad I have a Moog again. Best present ever. Speaking of Ableton, I finally upgraded to Live 11 and I must say, another hit. Was very tempted to get a Push again but, it’s time to start saving money instead of spending it so I’m going to be an adult and exercise some self control for once. Lastly, I sold a guitar and picked up a Moog Sub 25. Another hit. Totally different from GM and I feel like I have the analog synth thing covered for a while. It’s cute and small enough to gig with. Also perfect sample fodder for OT, mpc1000, and PT. Tonight, it was GM into OP-1 tape tracks for some minimal off the grid meditative stuff. It’s been a good Christmas. I really want to make that record now…

8 Likes

Hits:

AR mk1
Dreadbox Typhoon
Soma Cosmos
AH mk2
BD dt 1770 pro

No misses :slight_smile:

3 Likes

Pace yourself my man.

1 Like

Isla 2400- super fun so far! Can’t wait to dive in more!

Roland jx08 - an incredible step up from the first gen boutiques. Love it, super fun and sounds amazing. Powerful too! They packed a ton of great stuff in here.

Korg Arp Odyssey module- too confusing for me!

Deluxe Memory Man Delay - expensive and I get why. Really is the best in many ways, and I’ve owned them all!

Mellotron Micro- I love it. I understand all the criticisms, but it does feel magical to have and there’s something to be said for interface and simplicity. Sounds so good!

I sold the Medusa.

4 Likes

Hits:

  • MPC One - Best music purchase I’ve ever made. I’ve made more music on this thing than all other hardware or DAWs combined.

  • Korg Minilogue XD Module - Sounds amazing! Wish it were a bit smaller and had more polyphony though.

  • Keystep 37 - It’s a fantastic keyboard for its size.

  • The Elektronauts community - I’m glad I found this forum as it’s by far the most friendly and helpful I’ve come across, for so much more than just Elektron hardware.

Maybe:

  • Zoom H1 - Bought it to record some samples but still haven’t used it.

Miss:

  • Digitone - While it was a wonderful gateway drug into the Elektron (sequencer) workflow and the machine that ultimately reignited my passion for making music, it’s made for live performances and not suitable for my workflow and preference for finishing complete songs.

  • Digitakt - Same reason as above: amazing machine with lovely, surprising results, but not something that lets me finish songs.

  • Pocket Operator PO-133 - This thing had a broken knob on arrival, which influenced my first impression, but it also is completely mono and sounds pretty bad. Not for me.

On my wishlist for 2022:

  • A more portable synth for sound design and arp/sequencer noodling on the go. This is an important part of how my songs come to be by just playing some chords or notes with an inspiring sound. Not interested in Teenage Engineering stuff due to the poor quality-to-price ratio and because I don’t need to write complete songs outside of my MPC One. I’m interested in the Roland JD-08 or JX-08 though.

  • A portable sampler. Still looking at the Roland SP-404 MKII but think it’s a bit too big and bulky for my taste.

6 Likes

Three hits in 2021:

Prophet 12 module - owned one for a very short time years back but didn’t get the sound at all and returned it. Now I am older and wiser and an Evolver have taught me to love the Dave Smith way. So I wanted change and sold my Peak to get the P12 instead as my main poly. Funny enough it feels less menu-divey than the Peak (even though Peak has like a million knobs to turn) due to the absolutely genius design. It takes a bit more work to make something nice, and might be a bit colder overall in it’s sound, but takes me strange and lovely places. And the random patch generating on the Oracle-app is brilliant.

Monomachine MK2 - another one that got away finally back again. Originally sold it years ago to get the P12, but have been looking for that very special raw digital timbre ever since. A mint one showed up for an relatively acceptable price, so I finally caved and bought it. It’s like coming home!

Pulsar-23 - A wild new adventure. Didn’t plan to buy it, but after my friend got one, and we had a few jam sessions, I was sold. Demanding and exciting! Forces me to rethink how to approach a beat, not to mention the distinction between rhytm, melody and texture. And sound utterly gorgeous no matter how I patch it.

5 Likes

Okay, so I guess it’s a good time to complete my list of reflections on this year’s purchases. Pretty happy with what I got! A small handful of small things, but they were important tweaks, all hits.

Eventide Micropitch is a hit, still have it. Just recently began sequencing it via MIDI, makes the effect come much more alive in a musical context. I wish the delay time parameters were somehow scaled differently, having finer control over short delay times to tune the comb filtering would’ve been sweet! Pretty nicely bendable one-trick pony I guess?

Doepfer MCV4 turned out to be quite essential. To let a Digitakt sequence a row of modular. It’s super fun to have lots of freerunning CVs in the modular, but yeah, already the simplest bridge between the different devices is very good for groove too!

And finally I got the two Xaoc modules Tallin and Kamieniec, for spicy mixing and utility. Both great sound quality, haven’t had them for long, they won’t be leaving the rack soon.
The Kamieniec is cool for its individual 4-/6-stage outputs, wonky stereo image! Feedback distorts nicely too, good on percussion. Extra LFO out is the cherry on top.
And the Tallin sure is great as well! Does that harmonic-content texture colouring thing very well. It replaces another distortion module I had, but I seem to better understand (?) the way the colour of Tallin behaves. Having lots of fun by distorting a feedback loop with the Eventide Micropitch.

Hard to keep it short, always gets so wordy when reviewing gear :crazy_face:
It’s a good read though, this thread!

3 Likes

Copy and Paste. I was hoping for a new FX board :frowning:

Tried the Koala app? I’m not usually into phone/tablet apps, but Koala is ridiculously good. :christmas_tree:

5 Likes

1010 Music Blackbox, too

2 Likes

Thanks, yes I have tried it but on my Android phone, the latency is ruining the experience. If it had a step sequencer, it would be perfekt! I wish Elektron would build a Digitakt app. They never would, of course, but that would be so cool.

All hits, no misses for me this year:

Novation Circuit Rhythm
Novation Circuit Tracks
Korg Volca Nubass
Maschine MK3
Elektron Analog Rytm MK2

8 Likes

It has a step sequencer. I don’t remember if you need the full 10 dollar version or not but it’s in there. You’re right. It would be almost unusable without it.

Thats why you got bored mate. Nothing to do with octatrack.

2 Likes

I know. The OT is a beast and my time with it wasn’t a success music production wise. Although i did get to know roughly how to use it which was fun.

It has a sequencer, not a step sequencer. Unless the version I evaluated was very old, but a quick search for “koala step sequencer” suggests it still lacks it.

It’s in the the Samurai version. Behold

12 Likes

Hits:
Universal Audio UAFX Golden Reverberator :grin:
Universal Audio UAFX Starlight Echo Station :grin:
Erica Synths Bassline DB-01 :grin:

Misses : None

1 Like

Hits
Digitone
MPC Live

Misses
OPZ
Moog Mother 32
Moog Subharmonicon

2022 will be heavily Elektron focused!

3 Likes

That’s cool, but that looks more like a piano roll sequencer view, which is cool in itself but still not a step sequencer. Sorry if I’m being unclear, but what I mean is the kind of 16 button view that you see on 606’s, 707’s etc, or the Digitakt. Meaning, super simple toggles for the 16 steps of a beat per pad in a finger-friendly format. :blush:

That said, this is probably close enough and I assume you can view just one bar at a time, making the “buttons” shown here twice as wide. :ok_hand:

2 Likes