There are very few pieces of gear that I couldn’t find any redeeming qualities in, but the few that I tried to bond with and just couldn’t are:
Roland MC-707. On paper, this thing seemed like a dream come true. I had the MC-101 first and despite the clunky workflow, was liking how quick it was as a sketchpad. I thought the tones that I was getting out of it were decent and upgrading to the MC-707 would be even more productive. It actually went the opposite way. As soon as I got the MC-707, I literally dreaded using it and found it to be super annoying to actually use to create. Navigating to the various pages was tedious, I didn’t like using the pads to play melodic content, the screen was too small, everything felt like it was in the wrong place, the whole machine felt too big and after a while, I barely turned it on while continuing to use the MC-101. I wish there was a machine that took some ideas from the MC-707 and some from the SH-4D and combined them into one device. Neither hit the mark for me.
Polyend Play. Another groovebox that I was incredibly excited to get after watching some demos and then just found incredibly tedious to use. The grid of buttons were too small, the OS wasn’t fully developed (this was before a few of the updates so the feature set was smaller), the effects were limited to presets only, and in general I found the way you had to select what sample you were editing every time tedious. I didn’t end up making anything worthwhile with it and regretted trading my Digitakt for it. I also thought the screen was placed in a weird position.
Akai MPC One. My experience with the MPC One came after using the MPC-1000 as my main groovebox for about five years on a near daily basis. I was incredibly excited with the possibilites of the One but again, found actually using it quite tedious. There were too many menus to sort through, I didn’t like editing the synths / plugins with just four encoders, I found many things about it needlessly confusing, and in the end, it died on me before I was about to take it on a short tour and I ended up having to go back to using Ableton, which ultimately ended up being for the better. I just feel like, as the sonic possibilities of the MPC have expanded with the plugins and all the effects, they need to update how you interact with the machine besides the touchscreen and four Q-link knobs (obviously on the larger models, this is already remedied). It felt like using an incredibly powerful tool but interacting it with it through a tunnel system I didn’t want to navigate. I did end up using it for quite a few things but it ultimately wasn’t worth the hassle.
