Yay and yay from me. I have both the A4 and the AK, and love them to bits. Just so vast and flexible. At the price their going for, as been previously said, a no brainer.
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As the soon-to-be recipient of @obscurerobot’s Mk 1 Analog Four, this thread had some serendipitous timing for me. I guess I have to say “yay”, haha. Here are my reasons for getting an A4 mk1.
- The form factor. I don’t have a lot of space to setup gear nor store it, and the mk1 fits perfectly in my desk cubby and should fit in my tiny corner setup.
- Bang for the buck. The mk1 seems to have all features of the mk2 that I’d need minus the larger display. I hope I can live with that. I think I’ll be fine.
- Something like seller’s remorse. Life is not without irony, it seems. I had an A4 mk2 early this year, built some patches on it and recorded a jam using it along with an OT. I sold it thinking I had gone too far all in with Elektrons and needed to diversify. Flash-forward to this past month (and after selling a Digitone too
), I have realized that I am detecting a gap in my setup. There are a ton of options, but I feel that the A4 would be the best piece to fit the puzzle for the current plans (MPC One | eurorack palette | A4 | model:cycles as required). The versatility and options of the A4 being key.
I hope this plan works out.
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Totally get you - I recently bought a 2nd one here in Sweden due to its price. It’s an incredible sleeper, IMO.
And I also fully agree with the form and colour 
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Do it! I don’t think there is a more bang for your buck synthesizer available.
And by using the performance macros you can kind of make it into most other analogue equipment.
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Actually I already have an Analog MPK Mini Play !
Edit : I just need a standalone midi host, hoping mpk’s arp is perfectly synced.
Tried it tonight, using 2 voices and inputs, it’s actually already fun, general midi paraphonic analog synth !
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And a joystick 
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Speaking of the form factor, the AK is big. I wish I had taken a photo of it next to the A4. Here it is with the UltraNova and the UltraNova next to a Mk2 OT.
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A joystick I can assign to 4 macros ! 
(each axis can be assigned to 2 CCs)
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We aren’t far off the 10 year anniversary of the OG Analog Four. The AnalOG. if you will.
It would certainly be a cat amongst the pigeons if elektron released a Mk 1 anniversary edition in 2022 in its same svelte & tight beautiful rectangular form with a few of the perks of the Mk 2, just not the large ‘office machine’ angled Mk 2 case…
All I can say on yay-or-nay is that I recall somewhere between 10 and 7 years ago absolutely loving the A4, then drifting off into GAS madness with the RYTM and forgetting it like an unwanted puppy. More GAS followed, but that A4 puppy is still sitting on my to-do shelf and for the past few weeks I’ve been planning on sensible re-consummation.
This weekend it’s happening. So long as the weather is bad and I don’t have to assemble the 500 piece metal garden shed kit that arrived in the post.
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They’re almost an inch wider than the AK
As for “yay or nay”, I couldn’t get over the lack of a retrig on the A4, which eventually ruled it out as an all in one Bass machine for me, and the workarounds for that are a waste of my time. If I’d had my SquarpPyramid at the time I would have kept the A4 though, and probably let the AR go, using the A4 for Drums and Bass 
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A4 mk1 purchased for $650. Feels like theft. Yummy.
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I should be getting my hands on a MK1 next week. Ive currently got the DT/DN in a side by side stand.
Does anyone have the dimensions for the MK1?
Wondering if it will it fit in the same stand on its own.
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I think when I bought my MK1 brand new they were only £779 direct from Elektron. It’s crazy how much they now charge for the MK2, almost twice the price. Inflation can’t have gone up that much. I just bought a second hand MK2 for £800. Seemed to be worth a few hundred more than a second hand Mk1 for me anyway. Better screen, multi coloured trigs, more outputs etc.
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You should be good. Two digis are wider than a single mk1 A4.
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3 Digis ≈ 2 MKIs ≈ 1 AK
(3x215mm, 2x340mm, 660mm)
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Imo after having owned the MK2 units and the digis. I could not get down with the low res encoders, thinner bass, and screen that legit made my eyes hurt. Having to twist the encoder three or more full rotations to max out some parameters made sound design a lot slower. And I know it’s a DCO which might explain the loss in transient punch (?) but I’ve been getting much more low end out of my Minibrute 2 than I ever managed to get out of one track on the A4 mk1.
I’d also toss something out there that I haven’t seen talked about much which is that I felt like the main and headphone outputs were…and I can’t explain this at all…lower resolution? Lol.
I know it’s a fully analog signal path but it just sounded thinner, or lofi, or less dynamic. And I couldn’t seem to get rid of that thin feeling completely. Even with feedback, drive, and high-pass resonance. (Maybe this is headroom related?)
It’s not deal-breakingly thin. It can still get bassy-er than a lot of synths, but the problems that I’d had with it’s low end reminded me of the issues that I’ve had with some microfreak algorithms or the behringer deepmind (owned that one quite a while ago at this point though). The A4 is less harsh, sounds better in higher octaves, and offers far more ways to address this than the microfreak, but still worth noting.
And call it what you want, but the thing that sent me over the edge was the screen. I might have sold the AH and kept the A4 if it hadn’t been so hard to look at. I’m 27 and I have good vision, but I felt like I was gazing into a gray/blue sun.
It’s a great machine for sure, still more powerful than most analog synths out there, and there are a definitely realistic scenarios where I would have kept it. But that’s my little dose of anti-gas in case you think those things would bother you, or if you’re considering saving up for a MK2, which slaps.
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Sounds like I need to figure out how to get the MB2s and AK onto the studio desk at the same time this weekend. They are sufficiently different that I haven’t thought to A/B them.
My recollection is that the MB2s is a bass monster, and the A4/AK require a little more coaxing. But it’s there. IT IS THERE. The A4 series might be a crossword puzzler’s Elektron. Rewarding if you invest time and thought into it.
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Yeah in retrospect the A4mk2 may have been the most inspirational elektron box that I’ve owned. Ideas just seem to fall out of it. I can’t quite articulate why yet, or even say for sure, but time will tell. I’m fickle like that 
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