love my MC-707. Every time I put mine up to make room on my desk for something else, I immediately start missing it and it feels like a lifelong friend just moved far away.
I second the notion that it certainly isn’t as deep, but its super straight forward and anytime I feel like I can’t get going I just flip on my 707 and stuff just starts happening. The feature that I ended up enjoying the most, much to my surprise, was the real nice velo sensitive pads. Totally changed my mind about “finger drumming”…I am a huge fan of it on the MC-707
Oxi One (when it’s released) or Torso T-1 are flexible external standalone sequencers. Then there’s the Arturia Beatstep Pro, Squarp Pyramid, Cirklon, the Korg SQ-1, Korg SQ-64, NDLR and Pioneer Toraiz Squid among many others. All of these would have come up with a Google search and there have been many threads over the years with the same question, unfortunately nobody can tell you which of these, if any, you will enjoy using.
Despite promising myself no more gear, I’ve just bought a 2nd hand squid to go with my T1. I hope they will complement each other (the squid looks really good).
When modulation-per-step is a thing, it’s hard to beat Elektron sequencers, especially for rhythm parts. And I always seem to have one around, so that’s my go-to.
For bits that are more melodic but still very modulation-per-step, trackers are great. They’re like Elektron sequencers, but you can see all the s/p-locks on-screen (at the cost of not having dedicated “16 steps/bar” buttons). The Polyend Tracker is a superstar for this.
For stuff that’s less modulaty and loopy and more long-form and composition-based, the Pyramid rocks. It’s also my go-to whenever I know I want to mess with polyrhythms or meters.
The MC-101 also deserves a shout out. Every bit as capable as the MC-707’s sequencer, but battery powered and small enough to fit in a large jacket pocket. It’s definitely more “magic key combination” dependent to make up for its lack of real estate, but feels smooth without too much practice.
The M8 should be on here for the same reasons: rechargeable and fits in a pocket. But honestly I’ve been using it too much for its own synthesis to try any external MIDI-ing with it yet. So I don’t have any practical experiences to share.
I’m still a fan of the EMX/ESX-1 for controlling external devices, with motion-sequencable midi ccs that can be assigned to pretty much any knob as well as 128 steps per pattern.
the Qunexus with the new firmware V2.0 never thought they could make it happen but they did within one year under a new developer at Keith McMillen.
3 sequencer/arp tracks with internal clock and free routing of all outputs! Official MPE implementation and now this is another and more complex device then ever.
Mine will hook up with the MPCX - best of both worlds however you could just use either or.
You can get the RM1x pretty cheap these days. Plenty of YouTube videos about this.
