Roland TR505

Without a doubt the most fun I have ever had with a drum machine. The sounds are pretty much shite (imagine a mouse with a qtip tapping on the inside of a paper bag), unless run through a distortion pedal, in which case they get alot more agressive and lively. No, the sounds are not the issue here, its the sequencer-it rocks! No multipage menus and staring at displays all day long, just punch in your beats and go! In one mode , you program your beatsand in another, each pad triggers a different pattern-This is great for live use! Its so simple and intuitive and even though, step sequencing is all the rage, its good to not HAVE to sequence that way if you don't feel like it, but still have the option. What you get is a lovely little drum machine thats great for live beats and sample triggering with great midi implementation. Oh yeah and the tempo knob makes adjusting the tempo a lot easier than on most machines. I bought one of these for 15 bucks at a thrift store and sold it on ebay about a year later for 175 bucks, so a good investment and a cool machine.

RedSound Darkstar XP2

Talk about virtual analog! Basically RedSound came up with one of the most stripped down, hardcore VA synths of all time-YOU MUST LEARN HOW TO PROGRAM THIS SYNTH! You cannot "wing it" with this thing. You get 8 voices and 5 part multi-timbrality. So basically, you would have paid , like a couple grand for this thing around 1986 or so, but about a hundred bucks in 2003! Paid 129 bucks for it a few years back (still the ONLY synth I have ever bought brand new) Its a pain to program multi channel patches but you could just stack and stack until you trigger all 8 parts every time you press a key, and that aint bad. Did I mention EVERY knob , button and joystick sends midi? This means 2 things 1) You can use it as an awesome knob box controller for any vst with a learn function 2) If your sequencer is pure shite (GEM Equinox, anyone?) you will crash it! I know, I even choked up cubase sx! outputs a ton of midi info-constantly. A lot of folks say it sounds cold/digital, but its all in how you program it. A great live tool and quite versatile in the studio as well. There is some convoluted way to process audio through the filter and good luck w/figuring that out, cause I haven't and midi spec is good. There are also four outputs , if you pan your sounds l/r. Theres a sad little chorus effect but mostly this is a really "pure" sounding synththat you can/should use external effects with.

Naima-My first guitar, bought with my first paycheck from my first job.
1993. Smashed in a fit of rage in 1998. guitar players are way too emotional sometimes. I used to stick a tape recorder style mic into the soundhole and get a great distortion type sound. Maybe I'll try that again.
I named this guitar after one the most beautiful and caring human beings I have ever met in my life. Everyone should know someone like this. Its funny, I always name my guitars (naima,nicole,panya,lucia), but not my bass guitars....

E-mu MP-7

e-mu outdid themselves with this thing.TALK ABOUT CRAMMING FUNCTIONALITY INTO YOUR GEAR. 32 channel sequencer 16 knobs, 40 buttons, pitch strip 2 midi outs, usb , 4 rom slots shipping with over 1200 presets w/ 4 layers each, full full full midi implementation, a manual nearly phonebook-sized , z-plane filters , 6 outs ( 8 if you count the sp/dif ) drum pads! All backed up by a rock solid sequencerthat can send out midi internally, externally or both at once! I have used this baby extensively live and its the focal point of my studio. A true command station. I've done everything from ambient to drum n bass, hip hop, and noise on this unit and it truly transcends all that groovebox nonsense. A true instrument. If you see one, get it!mine is loaded with the mophatt,composer, xl1, and orchestra roms-not sellin' it!
Click the pic to hear it in action.

The Jerker

The Jerker is Probably the single most awesome bit of studio furniture I ever owned. Its sturdy,stable and way customizable. At one point I had a 24 channel mixer a huge equinox 61 keyboard,2 20 inch crt monitors 2 compressors, rackmount delay, rackmount submixer,a bass processor, a drum machine a yamaha qy100 a novation k station and a scanner sitting on this thing and it was all within arms reach. Now IKEA makes a seriously cutdown version called thr frederick and yeah, its as lame as it sounds. If you can score one-get it!

AKAI S20

The AKAIS20 is hands effing down, one of the greatest bits of cheapo sampling hardware ever! I used this little monster for over a decade and laid down many a track utilizing this weapon. Honestly, with the exception of one, single, solitary design flaw affecting even hardware samplers that cost multiple times more , mind you, I would still own and use this item to this very day ( I'll get to the "flaw" later).

The thing about the S20 is that its not like an electribe or one of those garish little boss sp-series samplers with all the flash and fisher price-like gaudy color schemes and a bunch of buttons w/weird names etc. NOPE! Its a real sampler-A real sampler that just works! No crappy effects-no "realtime" control (unless you know what your doing) no buttons or switches anywhere on the unit that say "dj" anything! 4 digit lcd! REAL 4 bit-4 freakin' bit-4BIT sampling! Repeat-You can sample into this machine at 4 bit resolution!

The only thing this machine does automatically is map your sample across the keys. THAT IS AWESOME. MPC4000 does not even do that! Sample a chord from your jazz lp of choice, trim a little and play it! sample a drum loop and speed it up or slow it down simply by playing it on different keys! Saves so much time. The s20 is also probably the cheapest sampler your going to find that lets you map every sample to any midi channel and note number in mere seconds.Really. Seconds. No joke, I knew a cat who controlled one of these with his mpc2000-don't ask why. I have literally sampled everything I can with this thing and its sound cannot be undrestimated. Its actually seems to ADD low end and if you need more than 16 samples and 16 midi channels your probably doin' it wrong!I used this baby in conjunction with a boss dr202 drum/bass machine and that particular combination was my poor mans mpc! and if you need to change a parameter , you don't have to scroll through a menu screen-its all printed on top of the unit!
Now the flaw (oddly enough, also one of the reasons I paid 350 bucks for the thing) - it saves....to floppy disk! In all fairness, that was a great feature back in 1997 but after going through about 700 floppy disks and finding them in every crevice of my house I'd finally had enough. I never really used more than about ten seconds of sampling in any one track (mono) and my maxed out ram would have required me to use about 6 disks if I ever wanted to save that much material at once. Floppy disks are ANNOYING and FRAGILE.I sold the unit with about 260-300 disks for 250 bucks on ebay to some jerky who only wanted the floppy drive to fix his remix16.......I searched in vain for years for some way to get a hard disk or even cf card to work in this thing, but to no avail.

All in all a true pro sampler That I would buy right now if they brought it back out exactly the way it was way back in 1994 (modern storage of course-sd card maybe?).
Here is a track called NASTY recorded in 2010 ( The AKAI S20 is what I sampled the vocal with and all the triggering tricks are done in real time using the tap button reverse button and pitch bend wheel on my keyboard)

So...here it is.

This is a site featuring reviews of gear that I've actually owned and used. Don't expect me to run off a bunch of technical specs like s/n ratios and whatnot-just some experiences and silly little details about the cheap crap I collect. anyway, I'll provide all the audio examples and links that I can, thanks for reading and remember-Its not the gear,its the man! (or woman).