Hey, I couldn’t find anything in search so sorry if this has been posted before, but I figured a lot of users would find it helpful to know about this Monoprice hard case that I’ve been using for my Octatrack for most of the last year. Other than the Monoprice logo on the lid peeling off after a week (they always do) and the softer than ideal foam (I use contact cement to glue felt to the sides of the foam where the gear sits to keep the foam from compressing or tearing and so far it’s holding up well in every case I have) it has worked fantastically so far. I’ve been using these Monoprice knockoffs of Pelican cases for a while, I’ve got a few real Pelican cases and the Monoprice versions are at least as well made if not better.
Also, it’s barely over half the price of the actual official Elektron gig bag, on top of being really strong, shock resistant and waterproof. Absolutely recommended if you ever take your dark trinity pieces out of the house (it would probably fit a Machinedrum or.Monomachine too but I don’t have either to check)
Hope this helps someone!
NICE. Im gonna have to scoop one of these. Right now my OT is living in the padded laptop compartment of this backpack I have, but the whole shebang is just too damn huge.
Could you fit ur OT and a grip of cables/ an audio interface/ a footswitch in there?
Probably not an audio interface or footswitch, but if you took the foam out of the lid and replaced it with a piece of thin plywood or something you could fit a decent number of cables up there. Even with the foam insert I can fit the manual, the USB cable and a couple of short MIDI cables in the lid with no trouble.
You could also definitely get away with putting the Octatrack closer to one of the ends than I did, and have space to pull some foam out and make a compartment for cables at the other end, but I wanted to have as much padding around it as possible and opted to carry my cables in a little backpack or a laptop bag instead.
I think they have a case for around $80 that’s a couple inches deeper and longer.
EDIT: also, there are some empty fittings on the ends that you could probably attach a strap to, although I’m not sure what the best way to mount it would be.
They just put this case on sale for 50% off for the week, so it’s under $35 USD now, I’m seriously considering getting a second one even though I don’t have anything to put in it right now, just because it’s such a good deal.
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I forgot to mention before, but there are some mounting posts inside the lid (can’t see the in the photos) with holes in them that aren’t threaded but could easily have screws screwed in to them to mount some kind of shelf or pouch or whatever in the lid to hold cables. Also, I’ve ever tried it but there are some little hex screws in the hinges and I’m pretty sure if you loosen them it makes the lid removable, so you could actually use it as the foundation to build a nice Eurorack suitcase like this.
Just grabbed one for my OT1 . Ive been keeping it ina backpack and the CF card has ejected a few times, so glad to be moving away from that. Came out to $50 usd with shipping
I got another one, it’s just big enough to fit the new Tanzmaus and my Anushri in one case with just enough room for two power supplies, so adding the Tanzmaus to the live rig isn’t going to mean an extra case. I can still fit everything in two hard cases, with the CZ101 in an old telescope case on my back, and patch cables ins a messenger bag, so I could take the bus to a show if I needed to. Next step is to look in to building some kind of compartment in the so I can fit more cables than I otherwise could.
I do highly recommend gluing all the foam together and gluing some kind of felt or cloth or cardboard around the sides of the hole where the Octatrack goes to reinforce it a bit. It should be fine without it, but the foam will start to compress after a while probably. It’s not nearly as soft as the foam in the aluminum toolboxes from Harbor Freight that I usually use for bigger things, but it’s still a bit softer than I’d like, and it’s the one thing that isn’t quite as good as the real Pelican cases I’ve had. But it’s not bad.
I wish there was a laser cutting service like Ponoko but for foam rubber, all the custom foam suppliers I’ve looked at are really expensive. It would be great if you could just send a vector file and pay $10 or something to get back a custom foam insert. I was looking at having something made for a small keyboard case for a Roland RS-09 someone traded to me a few years back and getting a custom cut high density foam insert that was around 18"x30"x4" was close to $100 from every company I could find, just insane considering the road case itself was only like $110, so I just ordered a roll of 1" foam on eBay and made my own insert. IT’s ugly but it works and cost like $25 with a few square feet of foam to spare.
Working fine over here!! Gonna glue some felt around the OT zone soon, for now just keeping it flat.
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Nice. I recommend not using self adhesive felt. I did, and the OT fits tight enough that I peel the felt off putting it in if I’m not careful. Contact cement is the way to go, and if I were doing it again I’d also reinforce the corners of the spot the OT sits with some heavy paper, like pieces of a manilla folder or something, before I glued in the felt. with that kind of treatment it should stay in good shape for years.
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