. It was though! I had one for a while. It got stolen when I left a bag of gear on a Dart train in Dallas like a dumbass. The thief was probably mystified by it. 
Edit: Right before he pawned it for meth.
Edit 2: To complete the story, I lost the following items that day: Korg Volca Modular, Korg Volca NuBass, Korg Volca Mix, and the NTS-1. I plan to re-buy the NTS-1, and maybe the NuBass, but would never repurchase the Volca Mix or Modular.
Love my Volca Modular.
Meme is accurate.
Think Model:Samples officially is bad gear actually, one of the few products I agree on being actual bad gear.
It has its limitations, which are frustrating for sure, but I absolutely love mine.
Edit: And the headroom (Lol at your username) does leave a lot to be desired. However, run it through a cheap compressor and you’re golden.
Love my Model:Samples.
My first Elektron Indeed.
Willing to bet there’s a cheap noise gate pedal out there that wicks tone and adds noise to your signal.
It’s hard to justify a place at the TE Field Desk for utility fails.
But yes, cheap, shitty instruments can be inspirational. Sampling is fun 
Not trying to say its unlovable. But being marketed as a jam-ready product that cannot sample, does not have a line-in, cannot slice samples accurately, has a very low memory and suffers from a fair amount of menu-diving, does not even have a performance mode… and having a life-threatening Power battery Handle support… Yes this does not sit right to me.
Does not help that it now costs about 400 euros vs 300 euros when it first launched, for 100 euros less you can get a lofi-12 which does pretty much everything the Model:Samples wants to be doing but better (you do lose 2 tracks though).
Also still absolutely have no clue as to why both Models do not have any Attack control parameter.
I believe the Model:Cycles did the jam-ready design in a much more satisfying way.
Yep. I sold mine not too long after I got my Digitakt. But I liked it a lot. I wouldn’t have picked up a Digitakt if I didn’t.
As for genuinely bad gear, the only thing I felt was actually unusable was the IK Uno Drum. I like the Uno Synth a lot. I’m now the proud owner of an Uno Synth Pro as well. I think those are great. But the Uno Drum was just noisy as hell. And not in a nice lofi way. And it went beyond just ground noise. All that said, I would be interested if they gave it another go and put out an Uno Drum Pro.
There’s been plenty of other stuff that I kind of hated but I wouldn’t call bad. The SP-404 for example. I didn’t like the sequencer. I didn’t like that you couldn’t get a metronome without running the sequencer. You couldn’t resample patterns. And what the hell was Roland thinking with the pitch control? All that said, the fact that it’s integral to so many people’s set ups, especially in the little corner of hip-hop that I’ve involved myself in makes me think I’m the one who’s wrong about it.
As far as Bad Gear the show goes, I think it’s great. I think most of what I own has been featured on the show. And I look forward to the day when my beloved Zoom Sampletrak gets roasted. He can even include this bit from me. The sequencer is broken. It has maybe the most bizarre MIDI implementation that I’ve ever seen. There’s no velocity and 24 pads just isn’t enough.
Makes me realize i’m in the same boat, but he did’nt do the 0-Coast yet.
I imagine that some people were disapointed with it but it’s going to be a tough one for
ticking all the boxes.
I know i had a moment of doubt when i got it but then something clicked…
…thanks to the Volca Modular.
I bought a Strat style guitar from Musicyo.com for $90 new.
I could strum it a couple of times and it would go out of tune. Didn’t matter now many times I’d tune it up. heck just looking at it would make it go out of tune.
I agree with pretty much everything you said. It’s actually the instrument I am most likely to replace to be honest. I love that a lot of the functionality has its own dedicated knob (for the most part), but I cannot wait to replace it with a more fully-featured sampler. I just can’t decide which one to get. Digitakt, Octatrack, or SP-404 MKII. Also looking forward to see what drops at NAMM which could change everything. I also have a brand new KP3 and an SP-303 on layaway. One thing is for certain, the Model Samples will soon lose it’s spot on the altar. But I won’t sell it. I need to replace the stupid ass function button though. Ugh. That should be at the top of the list of why it could be considered bad gear.
Are you talking about the SP-404 MKII? Or an earlier incarnation?
The original. That’s the one I had. Not the SX or the A. Just the plain old 404. I want to eventually try the mk2.
There is no bad gear, just bad people, who should be shipped to Australia.
Yeah although lofi-12s din midi backup and din midi sample transfer is pretty questionable on any modern device… although maybe I put too much weight on ease of backups.
Curious if the models with ever see a feature update… giving them attack would indeed go a long way. I found just setting up an lfo lock at the beginning of a phrase of notes is good enough to give that initial attack and then your lfo is free for whatever after that but it does slow down the workflow.
Bad Gear vids made me buy Waldorf Rocket, and made me eventually buy Electribe EA-1 (but mine is Mk2) 
If you see the lofi-12 as a jam instrument, imo, it does not really matter. The point is : it does what the model:samples supposed to do but like ten times better for a cheaper price.
As for the future of the Models, I am a bit disappointed at this point. The fact that Elektron never went and tried to make things right for the Models after the Power Handle fiasco is very telling.
Adding to that, the last updates which gave Song Mode and Portamento and More machines to the digi boxes and the Syntakt but completely ignored both models…
Add to that the price increase.
Add to that Ess Q and A hinting at future updates…
Yes this smells like a really cheap move on Elektron part. I don’t think giving attack control to the models will cannibalize the sales of the Higher price point products…
Or one extra machine for the Cycles making people not buy the Syntakt…
But here we are !
A long time ago I bought a Korg Electribe ES-1. It was a great box except it sounded like absolute garbage. (In hindsight I should have gotten an ER-1). Fast forward 20 years and I get a Model Samples. It’s been everything that Es-1 should have been and a whole lot more. I might swap the es-1 track buttons for the samples’ dicey pads though as I have little interest in finger drumming.
Roast away but if we’re talking about an actual bad gear list the Samples doesn’t belong anywhere near it. Fantastic machine.
I happen to really like the ES-1 and one of the few live gigs I ever done, was with one of those. Even recorded parts of it. I had the champagne edition though, maybe that matters 
Just skimmed through this and noticed that the Volca Modular gets some hate, (which has been the case since it was released), and I honestly don’t understand why? It’s as close as one can get to sounding like an actual Buchla, for a fraction of the price. Granted, it does have a small window between beautiful and grating, but within that space you can find some truly convincing (slightly altered, but nuanced) horns, flutes, and oboes, and cellos. Try doing that with any other synth on the market?