Totally. My guess is they are bucking the trend and keeping the price up until they clear the older 404 stock perhaps. It’s much much more than any tax or shipping add on. Definitely some shifty exclusive price thing going on there.
Initially I thought perhaps it’s a placeholder pre order price that storeDJ sometimes do and then they lower the actual price to match when it arrives. But usually they say that clearly in their listing… which is not the case here
Perfect circuit may be an alternative option to ship internationally, got most of the way through checkout there just as a test run without pulling the trigger. A way will present itself to score one for the proper price eventually.
Yeah I can wait… 899 is a bit much.
Soundeasy also have the preorder listed for $899 btw.
EDIT:
PerfectCircuit with 75USD shipping included (so $100AUD of this is just shipping costs…):
A bit late to today’s festivities, but figured I’d chime in. I preordered one from Sweetwater, and my sales rep said his view is that these will land in December, based on “what he’s seen globally lately”. He’s been with Sweetwater for years, so I reckon he has a good sense of ship times.
With that said, I foresee using this as a complement to my DT - the Elektron sequencer running the show, and maybe routing the DT through the 404 FX seems like it might be fun.
Time to sell my MK2 Tracker….haven’t really got into it, despite its potential for mangling. 404MK2 looks dead simple to use, with just enough sampling power to be an interesting complement to my setup. I’ll know for sure by Christmas, hopefully
Definitely better. But then the shipping + international warranty is a thing. Personally I’m thinking best option is to let the hype train pass and play the waiting game for AUD pricing to catch up to the standard. Should be 675.
I’d be interested in knowing how you use the Digitakt, why you settled on the Digitakt in the first place, and how you plan to use the 404. To me, it’s just not an apples to apples thing.
Personally, I’d go as far as saying that I probably wouldn’t even be all that interested in the 404 if I didn’t already own a Digitakt. I prefer step sequencing to playing things in, let alone doing the resample thing. And I think the Circuit Rhythm is now about as far as I’m willing to stray away from Elektron style parameter locking nowadays.
If I can’t adjust my filter cutoff and envelope depth on any step I want then I won’t know what to do with myself.
If it’s a matter of something needing to go to make room and the Digitakt drawing the short straw, then that makes perfect sense to me. That’s where I thought I was going to fall with the Circuit Rhythm.
But nah, I think the 404 looks great. At the end of the day, I want one. But I’d probably use it more as an fx box and recorder than to make beats.
I love the new OS, don’t get me wrong. They way I see it (for me), the creative magic happens when the Digitakt is driving. I see the Blackbox more as a sidecar. It’s well built and really great at what it does. But this SP-404 MK2 seems to pick up where the Digitakt leaves off with the velocity sensitive pads, effects and destructive workflow. I see the two complementing each other and playing off each other really well. Just speculating of course, don’t want to be impulsive.
I have always been tempted by the SPs and recently I’ve found myself thinking I should maybe get something I can mess around with on the couch or while lying in bed as I’ve had a hard time making tracks recently since my wife has been taking over my computer in the evenings for Zoom meetings.
It even looks great for remixing tracks made on the DAW, or using the DJ function to make beat tape mixes.
I’d like to know more about the live looper function. That would be the icing on the cake for practicing/recording guitar and bass. (Edit: maybe that just meant the DJ looper function, not a big deal though)
I’m in no rush so would probably wait until they are readily available in stores. Being in Japan, I’m guessing that inventories should be a bit better than elsewhere in the world.
That’s true. It’s such a dumb choice that I can’t see it not being addressed in a firmware update. But this is the same company that decided that after the 202, the SP line shouldn’t have proper pitch control and didn’t fix that until this very device. So who knows?
Actually, come to think of it, I think the MIDI notes have always just corresponded to the pads, so there might not be a simple way to change it.
While this is undeniably a huge and welcome leap forward for the 404, it still has a long way to go to catch the MPC, Maschine+, or any of the flagship Elektron samplers for that matter.
And I’m a fan of the 404. I have an SX in my live rig as we speak. To that end, I might buy this one for the balanced 1/4" +4dB line inputs alone, so I can use it as an end-of-chain FX processor without re-amping.
And Loopop also stated that and mentioned the workaround of sampling your notes and chop them to pads, this way you will also have polyphony.
Honestly I would’ve wised to record chromatic mode in the seq too, but the sound will be cut off. Youl will need to have a send reverb or delay to mask that (like on the Circuit).
So honestly, I think having the notes on each pad, as a separate sample will allow you to have like a custom scale.
Remember that these new SPs have multiple projects. So you don’t have to have a bank for each beat.
I imagine a workflow where I have drums & shit on bank 1, chords on bank 2, notes for leads on bank 3 and so on… there’s plenty of room
I had the DT and Circuit Rhythm too and honestly I like the workflow an fx of the SP better. I’m willing to compromise because the whole package is more attractive to me.
