Roland and Sequential Cir. Samplers

[PHK]

I own a Prophet 600 synth.
I would like to buy a Sampler/drum machine/sequencer for live performance, I have been looking at the Sequential Cir. studio 440 since it is of the same brand. does anybody have some tips to give when it comes to purchasing a (low price) sampler. Perhaps Roland or Akai?

Thanks

Peter

[HideawayStudio]

I own a Prophet 600 synth.
I would like to buy a Sampler/drum machine/sequencer for live performance, I have been looking at the Sequential Cir. studio 440 since it is of the same brand. does anybody have some tips to give when it comes to purchasing a (low price) sampler. Perhaps Roland or Akai?

Thanks

Peter

It really depends on what you're wanting to achieve with the thing and exactly what you mean by low price. The subject of buying old samplers is starting to become a little more complex as we're now entering a phase where many of the early samplers are actually worth considerably more than their later counterparts. This is bad news if you bought a later sampler for a lot of money but good news if you want something that was built as a professional product for a bargain basement prices.

Here are some of my personal experiences with older samplers I've owned which might help:

High Quality - but now very inexpensive:

Emulator IIIX - Super smooth, infinitely more reliable than EIII, digital filters but still nice, EIII library compatible
AKAI S1000 - Great for percussion, compatible with S950 but cheaper despite being better quality, built like a tank - amazingly reliable with exception of screen backlight but very sadly no resonant filers - now dirt cheap!!
Roland S-770 - fantastic UI with monitor and mouse, great filters - some can be had for silly money.
AKAI S5000 - a heck of a lot of pro sampler for nothing - I saw one for £180 on Ebay the other day!!

Good Quality but going up in value:

Emu EMAX II - Super smooth but thanks to DM connection and it's compatibility with EMAX I, starting to gain value - very nice sounding sampler, underrated and dead easy to use. SCSI support as standard. Still my personal favourite after 20 years!

Highly coloured sound and becoming expensive:

Emu EMAX I - cheaper alternative to EII but rapidly gaining value due to analog filters and DM connection.
S950 - now more expensive than S1000 thanks to 12 bit sound and great midi timing - totally reliable!!
Prophet 2000/2002 - great analog filters, stack function and arpeggiator - horrible UI, rack quite rare and becoming expensive. Can suffer from floppy disk failure and faulty memory.
EII - the beast! - lovely sound but becoming a handful due to ever increasing reliability issues - esp. oxidising IC sockets, memory faults, blown PSUs and faulty disk drives. I love it but make sure you know a friendly tech!