Am I correct in thinking that the 404 sequencer can’t trigger external MIDI gear, though the pads themselves can? I was looking to do some quantized recording of external gear, but it doesn’t seem to be working.
It seems that the pattern mode does not send midi notes.
Hi, love to hear more about experiences from the guitar sims!
That feature sealed the deal for me. I have some snobbish pedals I could use but I hope I can avoid that and just go for the immediacy this unit seems to be about.
I placed the order a few days ago so btw I will likely lurk here and bother you all about miniscule details.
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Yes, correct. Only via the pads. I hope Roland will give midi some more attention for the coming firmware updates. But, it’s a really wonderful device. Sampling and re-sampling are so good and easy to master.
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Cool. I’ll share more info as I work with it more, but basically all the models sound really nice. Solid clean and overdriven sounds, so plenty to work with. I’m usually more of a clean amp person (my real amp is a 70s silverface Vibrochamp), but I was surprised with how much I liked the heavier sounds from the MKII, like the Soldano. I haven’t tried any pedals with it.
Once again, the size of this thing is really nice to work with. If you have your guitar plugged into something too small it can feel really awkward, like you are going to pull it off the table, but this felt comfortable to plug into.
The SP devours batteries though, so get rechargeable ones.
I really hope they add an Ampeg simulation for bass that works well on guitar too. That would be at the top of my guitar-related wish list along with more reverb models.
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Juno has stock again FYI! Just ordered mine, due to arrive next Wednesday. Excited to give it a spin. Having previously had an SP404 SX, 555 and digitakt.
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damn that was quick, gone with the wind
More guitar info. The amp sim EQ and input gain knobs are definitely your friend.
My tele has bright, low output (vintage-style) pickups and it is pretty much good to go. My strat has dark, high output pickups, and needs to be EQ’ed on the amp sim (mids, highs). Also, the input gain knob on the front of the unit can overdrive the amp sim (actually fairly musically). What that means though is that if you have high output pickups you’ll either need to lower the input gain knob (or your volume knob) or every model is going to sound high gain. I thought I’d mention this for people that are new to guitar, in particular.
My bass (G&L L2000) has quite high output pickups and I’m still on the fence about the best way to use it. The JC seems like the best choice from the amp sims, but is a bit fiddly to dial in with my bass. I need to play around more, but I may have better luck going straight in with no amp sim. For instance, just the slightest touch of room reverb to give it a little bit of space. I’m honestly not much of a bass player, so I’d be curious what other bass players are doing.
I haven’t gotten Loopy Pro to work well yet with my guitar. I’ve got some setting wrong and keep getting a feedback loop. This didn’t happen with Loopy Pro just using the internal samples on the mkii (ie, nothing connected to the external input). I’ll have to sort that out.
Oh, and I get a crash fairly regularly. Not constant but like once an hour or so. I’m not sure what’s causing it, but the machine locks up and even if you turn off the power switch, it doesn’t power down and is stuck in the locked state. Basically you have to take out the batteries to fix it. Thankfully it always boots up normally, so not the end of the world, but hopefully that will be addressed soon.
I’ve been burning through batteries so ordered new rechargeables today (my 10-year old rechargeables no longer hold a charge unfortunately). As @unflattered surmised, I think rechargeable batteries are a lot more convenient than the external battery pack, but I imagine you’ll probably be switching out pretty frequently. I bought a battery pack before my unit arrived, and while it will be fine for some applications, it’s not the most convenient thing to have that hanging off the machine, and you can’t sample from USB when powering it. Again, just thinking this info might be useful to people still waiting for their units.
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Happy 2022, y’all.
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I’m getting 4 hrs from a new set of Eneloop Pros. That a long time. A twelve pack will keep you going all day, tbh.
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That’s exactly what I ordered earlier today. 
Will be here tomorrow. Glad to hear you get that much time out of them!
Thank you!
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Wow, once an hour? That’s mental! I haven’t experienced this… yet! What are you doing when it crashes? Are any other user getting crashes like this?
I’m honestly not sure. I was basically going through everything yesterday, and it was some combination of button pushes. I was using the external input and effects a lot for sampling.
Today, I’ve mostly been focusing on making patterns and resampling and it’s been lot more stable. One crash this morning and nothing since. Knock wood.
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Isn’t that to be expected if Loopy Pro is monitoring the signal from the SP and also is monitored through Ext In on the SP? I guess then it feeds itself… That use would require different input or output paths I think, or something to break the loop.
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It worked great yesterday looping resampled stuff from the SP over USB C into Loopy Pro and then sampling it back into the SP. No issues whatsoever.
I assumed that it would be the same doing the exact same thing, but with the guitar connected, but I got a feedback loop.
Not sure if I changed a monitoring setting or something along the way. I haven’t tried it again since, but I’ll have another go.
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I sorted it out. I must have turned on monitoring on Loopy Pro by accident when I was changing some other settings. Works perfectly when you disable it.
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How’s Loopy Pro processing the signal if monitoring is turned off? Or did I misunderstand? I understood you wanted to use it to process your live playing of the guitar.
I have no idea how it works, but it works. You can hear everything through the SP. I guess it’s sort of like the loopback monitoring on the Zoom H6 when it’s connected to the iPhone.
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