I’m considering picking up one these locally. Pros/cons?
Electribes offer great bang for buck value imho, very user-friendly. I never sold my EM-1 (still think has a great liquid tone) and while I haven’t owned an ES, I know lots of people on the Korg forums who were as fanatical about their ES-1’s a few years back as some people get about Elektrons. Of course it’s not going to be as capable as something modern, but assuming it still works and the price is right for it it will probably be good fun.
Is it one of the first generation ES’s with the plastic case, or the newer ones with the metal housing? The knobs on the plastic ones don’t age super well, especially the ones that you use for filter tweaking. Try all the controls out before buying.
Get the current owner to demonstrate sample loading for you. Make sure it goes smoothly from your perspective. IIRC some people had issues with this.
I had one (MkI) and enjoyed it. I thought it had a pretty nice sound, usable FX, though the sample loading is VERY SLOW. But you can have quite a bit of fun with it.
I’ve got an ES-1 MK2 (metal casing) for 2 months now and like it a lot. It’s my second groovebox (my first was the Machinedrum MK2 UW, which I’ve used intensely for 3 years).
Pros:
- Cheap
- Solo function
- Roll function
- Recording song automation, seperated from pattern automation
- Adequate sample space. Little boot time but instant auditing after that.
- Cool effects (I like them better than the KP3’s)
- Small form factor, lightweight yet sturdy casing
- Fast switching between patterns: (Pattern Set functionality lets you set up your favourite patterns to recall at the bottom row of buttons)
- Hardly any menu diving at all; nice layout.
- Lets you fast forward/backward in your compositions.
- Sounds great to my ears
Cons:
- Sample start/end time can not be set in a pattern, you have to resample or pitch shift (pitch shift affects sample playback speed as well).
- It’s not practical for outputting midi notes.
-You need to get a hold of a smartmedia card (+reader) for backing up your data or switching projects.
-The plastic knobs feel a bit weak - Nudging and copying trigs isn’t that easy (as on Elektrons)
- Has an audio slicer but won’t let you rearrange the slices.
(- Big electrical adapter)
Personal pro’s, which some might regard as cons:
- It let’s you play around with a pattern without auto-saving it.
- Stores pattern/song tempo’s
The only sampler I ever saved. excluding Elektron stuff obviously.
id go with ESX if you can… its drastically improved
I wouldn’t, as good as it is, it’s so much slower and you have to get over the noise. I sold mine but kept the ESXmk2.
Another con to the ES-1: no timestretch. I think the ESX does this.
I had an ES-1 MkII for about 15 minutes. It’s a fun little piece, but it has some obvious limitations, and I sold it almost immediately to fund an Octratrack. If I found one for a nice price again, I’d consider it because it is a pretty immediate source for fun, and I never got to try this tip to maximize the sample capacity: http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=39660&view=previous&sid=3a30c9d13b91828809997799e7ac7a62
is that the red one with the 2 tubes built in? just bought one second had 3 days ago … let me know how your workflow is and how you connect your other gear, okay? thanks
Pros
Fast and fun
Great for making beats and blips
Nice effects add character to your tracks
Cons
Slow sample loading
Not studio-quality: 32 kHz sample rate and tinny reverb
Need extra gear to control pitch if you play it as a bass or lead machine (or you could record your knob twists then step-edit the result to make sure everything is on pitch. Possible but a tedious.)
Loved mine and regretted selling it 12 years ago. But imho, the modern ES-1 is TriqTraq for iOS and Android. It’s smaller, deeper, cheaper, mobile and even more fun. If you’re into that sort of thing. 
You got my hopes up, but it doesn’t seem to available for Android 
But I should look into what else is available in the Play store, they’re probably better than what I have now (which is nothing).
Dang, dude! My bad!
I didn’t read my Google search results closely enough. Sorry!
Hope you find something you like.