Not gonna lie, I started skimming that manual again for old times sake - still probably have my printout around somewhere from back then - and started thinking, huh … never got into this feature, or that feature. It really is killer.
I got my 1k right at the time that they were being universally shit talked as if they were a some kind of abomination - I got it cheap. Was so funny to see the revival when the current gens came out and the 1k/2500 suddenly stopped being treated as a complete joke online - have even seen the JJOS 1k described as vintage lol.
A lot of it comes down to simple maths - would love to try it out again from where I am now, but the prices here have gone way past what I’d pay even without pad upgrades and the other stuff they’re likely to need. 2kxl even more so, especially when I also have a S3000XL that I got for like €100, got a gotek and replaced the screen. Makes no sense to take a financial hit to swap out the Live when 2.15 does all the same stuff in pretty much the same way - give or take - and then some. Looking forward to the cycle starting again and seeing this generation of MPCs going for 2 or 3 times what you’d pay right now.
For all my bitching about the direction Akai have chosen, imho until 3.0 they actually did a pretty good job in the of keeping the core MPC DNA intact and siloed away from all the other stuff. If you don’t care about plugins or branded packs, then probably it’s all you’d ever need. Think the Live will do me just fine for as long as it keeps switching on, but will definitely be keeping an eye on whether prices for an X hit a point where it’s too good to resist.
Haha i remember the mpc 2000xl was crapped on as well compared to the mpc60, sp1200, mpc3000 etc. And now its vintage. Tale as old as time.
People that whine don’t see that the people that used mpc60s and 3k back in the day were using the latest technology they had available just like we have now with the current mpcs. But somehow people will talk about how those older machines sound better (subjective) or how limitations inspire creativity etc. But the truth is those specs on the older machines were not seen as limitations back then, but were new tech.
the generation of musicians before the early sampler era were most likely complaining about how those artists didn’t play real keys, drums etc and instead used sampling as a crutch
Don’t speak for all the people from back then as if they were in total unison. The Hip-Hop beat-makers kept asking Dave for more sample time & he made the SP1200, that gave it more time, but at a lower sampling rate.
Even if they didn’t see something as a limitation, they were limited to them when making music & had to find creative workarounds like speeding up records when sampling to save space which also adds a distortion that some people like to this day.
