I came at it from reverse, started with hardware in the late 80’s, when x0x machines were still available for peanuts, I had a 606, 303, 202, 101, electric mistress flanger, watkins copycat tape echo, Yamaha VSS-200 sampler and a Amstrad Studio100, I was really happy with that little setup.
Then eventually I sold it off due to wanting money to party etc.
In the few years in between I had various setups and access to studios, and was fortunate enough to enjoy a moderate amount of success.
Then a few years later in the mid 90’s got a Amiga 600 and Octamed sound studio, this was my first real experience of trackers, I loved the per step parameter control but missed having some synths, so I started buying a few more bits of gear, the old x0x stuff by this time had skyrocketed in price, so I made do with things like a TX-81z, Roland MV-30 and a few other bits.
Then the internet became available in the late 90’s, I found out about a gameboy cart for making music called nanoloop and bought it, it was pretty capable but a bit cryptic to use I thought.
I eventually happened upon a new Swedish company who were building a synth based on the Sid chip, I got in contact and made arrangements with Daniel to buy one of the first available public batches, I ended up doing some presets for it, and some of my patches used the table function like a mini 3 track sequencer, Daniel really liked the idea and my patches were even mentioned favourably in the Sound on Sound review.
I had some quite nice email exchanges with Daniel, and when the Machinedrum came out I was really excited to see such a great and impressive machine being made by this small company.
I was not in a position to buy one because I had recently become a father, but I always intended to as soon as I was able.
Well, right around the time I had got the money together for the MD the Monomachine SFX-6 was in development, I immediately fell in love with the look and concept of it, I bought one of the very first units and became a beta tester and again contributed presets and ideas for features, I can’t remember all of them which were implemented but definitely the step mode was one.
The Monomachine was a game changer for me, combining as it did multiple synthesis types, with a configurable almost modular setup, and of course per step parameter locks, and the joystick. It only made me want a MD even more, the UW model was announced and again I didn’t have the money, so I waited for a while to get the money together, eventually the mkII came out and finally I got one!
Obviously ever since then I have bought most of the Elektron machines, and did beta testing on the Octatrack and Analog 4.
I think that @ess nailed it when saying that Elektron machines are like trackers, and I also think that they are like playing a video game too.
I also have a collection of gameboys with various nanoloop carts, LSDJ etc. which I have collected in recent years, I’m tempted to try out renoise because of my fondness for the tracker interface, but I don’t think it is a good idea for my productivity as I already have far too much gear and far too many projects on the go,
So for me the Octatrack is my tracker, but with the advantage of no hexadecimal and lots of nice realtime control, the best of both worlds. I often think it is probably the greatest electronic musical instrument ever made, certainly one of them.
I’d love to see Elektron take the tracker idiom further though, I’m certain that there are interesting concepts as yet unimagined, I have some great ideas for a new Elektron product which kind of ties all of this together, but maybe it is a tad ambitious and possibly a tad too niche