Electribe ES-1 vs Electribe 2 Sampler

[trynafigureout]

Hi everyone! I'm looking to buy a sampler and I've always liked the Electribe series. Can anyone help me with some pros and cons of these two units? In my gear I already have the Electribe EA-1, the Volca trio (Beats, Bass and Keys), the Arturia Microbrute and a couple of Korg Kaossilators too and wanted to consider what would fit better in my rig as well. Thanks

[meatballfulton]

The ES-1 is very similar to your EA-1, except it's a sampler not a synth.

The Electribe 2 is a multitimbral sampler/synth with a 16 track sequencer and onboard effects.

I would take E2 hands down, it's a much more powerful unit than the ES-1. It will work with both MIDI and Volca clock synch, making it a good choice for the master clock in your setup. It uses SD cards rather than hard to find Smart Media cards to store samples.

[trynafigureout]

Thanks for your answer, I think I'll move towards that after all!

[Walter Ego]

I don't own an Electribe II. From what I've seen and heard, the sound quality is high and it has a very serious state of the art analog modeler for synth sounds. And the Sampler version has all the features of the other one, which is probably a plus.

However, I own both an ES-1 and an ES-1 mk.II (sleek silver box) and I love them. They could not be simpler to use. And they sound nice and crunchy. You can compose whole rhythm tracks with them. The editing features are quite basic, using on a three character LCD to do everything. But those boxes have a lot of mojo. And they can be found fairly cheaply.

Don't discount the original electribes just because they're not as fully featured or powerful as the new ones. The new ones seem to need some menu diving to access a lot of parameters. First gen electribes are very immediate and hands-on. Some people really like them because of how easy and intuitive they are to use.