I use the Boss ES-5 effects router. It has a ton of cool features that I’ll never use because it isn’t intuitive and the manual is bad. Not surprising given their Roland ownership.
I’m surprised no one said the Roland MC-303.
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I’ll say the Roland MC-303, since no one has mentioned it yet.
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boogie board. so fun but you look like a dumbass.
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Heal yeah dude! I look like a dumbass without one, why not double down!
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I don’t think there is any hardware that meets these criteria for me, because if it has a bad UI I don’t love it.
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i love roland but their manuals all seem to be written by an organic, living form of AI produced in the 80s that constantly forgets the nomenclature it has decided on, translated by the original google translate algo
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I‘ll take the Roland mc 101.
Especially the manual. If I remeber correctly they have not updated the manual, but there is a small additional manual for each firmware update. So if you start with the basic manual half of it is not valid anymore. If you start from the last update you miss all the essentials at first.
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I looked at one of those back when they first came out as a replacement for my MOXF6. I remember liking the smoother voice switching, increased memory and a lot of other features (didn’t even know what FM synthesis was back then), but I kept fat fingering the tiny touchscreen and passed on it. Now I’ve defaced my MOXF6 to the point that I don’t want to lose all the coffee shop stickers.
That’s cold.
I have faith you’ll get it straightened out.
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RC-505MKII was scary looking at first and the manual was vague but once you dig in it’s all tap, new screen, tap, nother new screen, tap, damn how many screens this button got?
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I use the plugin. Sounds the same and its like programming the hardware with an editor. Its a great synth but with so many parameters hard to edit.
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Makes sense. I don’t use plugins though so sadly not an option for me. First hardware synth I ever bought that doesn’t allow you access to all the parameters. Must look closer in future before buying.
The thing I find funny about the Elektron manuals is the machines and their parameters, you know the part of the box that actually make the sounds you program/play on your musical instrument, are always stuck in the Appendix… how is that Appendix material??
I didn’t love it but really liked the Roland VT-4 but so many parameters were inaccessible so it becomes a preset machine (that can’t really handle chords well either) - it was a fun little box but strangely limited by Roland, and it still had weird secret combos.
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Thanks for the laugh! :]
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Several that have been mentioned:
Wavestate - it’s kind of a workstation more than a synth, in my opinion, and I couldn’t get on with it’s UI + manual at all, even though I loved the sound of it and the power. I sold it and got the Native version instead and I find it far easier (even though I like the UI of the Wavestate software editor better… they should have just used that)
Any older bit of Roland gear:
I read the manual to my XP workstation 2-3 times, cover to cover, and THEN I got it. The manual is more like a reference book… the info is there, but ouch.
Same with my old MC-303, which is the same style, though I didn’t LOVE the 303… I replaced it with a 307 and thankfully most of the muscle-manual-memory still applied. I do like the 307 still today.
I loved my old VS-890 that I got in Japan, with Japanese manuals, lol. But I got the English manuals and found that even after reading them (there were 3 I think) multiple times I just couldn’t use half of the features. Shame. It was cool, and looked cool (black) and I still regret selling it.
Wow, I could go on and on though.
I like manuals that are reference manuals IF, and only if, they give me a Quickstart that doesn’t stop after telling you how to safely turn the unit on and off 
I think this is a consequence of a broader decision I also disagree with, which is that they only say things once. An appendix is a place for details that will gum up a top-level presentation. But if they put the machine details there, they can’t talk about them at all in the top level, by their own aesthetic choice. As an educator, I’m used to repeating myself (“tell them what you’re going to say, say it, tell them what you said”) but they are operating more in reference mode (where you don’t do this), yet they want to help newcomers. The result is this odd hybrid. Once you get used to it from one Elektron device, you learn to anticipate it in others. And the quality of the writing is really quite good, for the most part. So I accept these two quirks (never repeating, and crucial info in appendices) and have learned to anticipate and deal with them.
The Elektron boxes I have do not belong in this thread. I can believe Octatrack does, but I do not have one, and never have, and probably never will.
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I think the Octatrack user manual is about as good as it possibly could be. That UI is never going to be easy to learn…
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