PSA: Model:Cycles price increase (US)

I’ve been pricewatching the M:C recently. This morning I checked some sites, and Sweetwater had already bumped it from $349 to $399. Perfect Circuit bumped it while it was in my cart. I managed to grab one from Guitar Center for $349. Musician’s Friend also still has them in-stock at $349 at time of writing. If you’ve been planning on grabbing one, you might want to do so now.

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Oh they finally bumped up the US price? Europe price has been 399 euros for weeks already.

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Interesting. I still have mine from the announcement day. The second-hand market prices the Cycles so low, there’s no point for me to sell. Not that I’d want to, I do enjoy using it and it’s very handy in many ways. I’m looking forward to seeing if either of my kids ever wants to do some electronic music stuff.

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Yes Agreed, there are so many Model:samples and Model:cycles in second hand market that I believe elektron increasing the price basically means nobody will ever buy these products brand new again…

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i’m currently waiting for one that i purchased on reverb for about $250 which is a no-brainer.

i was considering the syntakt but wanted something simpler / more immediately gratifying (i get stressed out by self-imposed obligations to use everything the machine is capable of with my DT).

i wouldn’t say it’s not worth it, but $400 definitely places the M:C closer to mid-tier pricing when it comes to gear (at least for me).

at almost half the price of the ST, one might expect the M:C to have half of the ST’s features (this doesn’t seem to be the case). hopefully less informed buyers will be aware of this.

Just took a quick look at B&H and Sweetwater and it looks like Elektron has had a flat 50 USD increase across the board. It has the biggest impact on the Models as it’s a bigger percentage of the previous price, but everything’s affected.

Actually, I’m not certain as I wasn’t familiar with flagship pricing, but I think the Analogs may have gone up by $100.

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Guitar Center ended up pulling some pretty slimy stuff with my order, so I cancelled it and picked one up for $250 + $15 s&h on Reverb. Not bad.

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sheesh, yeah, i just checked it out myself.

$1,049 for a new syntakt :no_mouth:.

Yeah just picked up a used one on reverb for 250 from chicago music exchange.
They didnt include the power supply tho, pretty shady

I kinda agree but also disagree. I think the M:C has very unique sound character, even the syntakt cannot 100% replicate it, which I believe help its case.

At the same time, It seems a bit harder to justify the price increase for the M:C vs the other digi-boxes as they all have been updated quite a lot since their release with the most recent update adding song mode to all of them.

On the opposite side, both models have been abandonned since the Power Handle situation, and have not received any significant update since the sample lock firmware update for the Model:Samples in 2020 (I think?).

The market has also evolved when it comes to low price point grooveboxes.
A 400 dollar Model:Samples is only 99 dollars away from a Roland SP-404 mk2 and is about twice as expensive as a Sonicware Liven Lofi-12 at 239 dollars which can actually sample,resample and has a lot more features than the M:S.

Same can be said about the M:C, it was very unique and cheap when it first released at 300 dollars in 2020. Now in 2023 at 400 dollars, it starts to look much worse competing against FM grooveboxes like the Liven Sonicware XFM which offers full FM synthesis on top of a elektron-like sequencer for 239 dollars pretty much being a digitone-lite. You can also find second hand digitones for around 400 to 500 dollars and get a much deeper groovebox with almost infinite sound design potential.

While I believe there are ways to update the M:C and refresh the interest for the product (tho from the selling ranks on online sellers it still seems very popular), it seems to me like the M:S limitations are much harder, if not impossible to improve on and therefore makes it a “dead” product right now.

Which would explain why I can find on average much cheaper M:S than M:C on second-hand market .

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That’s annoying. I’ve had good luck with this brand:

I think SP-404 mk2’s are $550, so about $150. Still, not that far, but at the same time, I would say that they are very different devices.

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Thanks, just ordered one, ive heard good things

Model:Samples
399 Euros on Official elektron website.

Roland SP-404 mk2
499 euros on Thomann

Model:Samples
399USD on Official elektron website.

Roland SP-404 mk2
444USD on Thomann.

So that is actually a 45 dollars difference between the two products.

They are indeed very different, the model:samples is just completely outclassed by both the sonicware liven lofi-12 and the Roland SP-404 mk2. It was already pushing it at 345USD, but at 399USD there is absolutely no reason to buy it brand new.

For reference, the liven lofi-12 is 239USD on official website:

When you said “dollars”, I assumed you meant USD. My mistake. For what it’s worth, Thomann aren’t allowed to ship Roland products to the USA, so we can’t take advantage of that sweet deal. :man_shrugging:t2:

And I didnt know thomann did not sell USD priced products to the US lol.
To be fair, the lofi-12 is 160USD cheaper than the model:samples and does way more. So even if you’re not considering the SP-404 mkII, the model:samples is still overpriced compared to similar products.

I wouldn’t put more than 250 euros into it, which is basically the price of the lofi-12.

For anyone in the UK, Anderton’s still have both Models in stock for £285.

Can’t recommend it as a cheap Elektron anymore. That said it was selling well, so they did the logical thing and shoot themselves in the foot!

OTOH maybe this means a juicy firmware update is coming … :shushing_face:

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Sonicware liven pretty much became the cheap elektron-lite devices now.
I can actually see an update maybe in the horizon now that they fully updated all digi boxes.
Esp considering the other topic mentions a mail reply from elektron saying they plan on adding sensitivity profiles for pads on a future firmware update… have faith :smiley:

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Let the speculation begin!

I want glide and a VA machine!

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