Help - Looking for a piece of equipment.

raindog.promo

I'm not overly familiar with synths and samplers so hoping someone could help me out here.

I have a midi floor foot pedal (PK5A) which is basically a keyboard controller you can play with your feet.
I originally played VSTis with it but I'm looking to take the laptop out of my setup as it's too bulky, prone to breaking and generally a pain in the ass.

What I'd like to do is be able to import wav samples of each note into a sample player piece of hardware and use the PK5A to then trigger the samples. The closest I've seen to something like this is a Roland SP808 but I don't need all the editing, effects and looping capabilities as I'd be able to do that separately on a laptop.

Is there any bit of hardware out there that can do what I'm looking for?

Any help appreciated.

TroutMask

Any sampler should do. Not sure if the MPC 500 can map the entire keyboard span, or just the pad assignments. Might be worth investigating as it's a robust unit and can import Akai Programs (what everyone else calls 'Keymaps') from an external editor.

TroutMask

on reading the manual that came with your pedal, i see that any pedal can be reassigned to any MIDI note number making the MPC a possibility, maybe? I'm pretty sure you can reasssign note numbers on the MPC too, in fact, it's probably easier on the Akai.

raindog.promo

TroutMask wrote: »

on reading the manual that came with your pedal, i see that any pedal can be reassigned to any MIDI note number making the MPC a possibility, maybe? I'm pretty sure you can reasssign note numbers on the MPC too, in fact, it's probably easier on the Akai.

Cheers. I've checked out the MPC alright, but can't really justify spending the asking price of it for what I want to do at the moment.

My backup plan is using a 2nd hand microKorg and/or one of the new Volca Bass synths (great price, great reviews) if all else fails.

TroutMask

yes, but those 2 are synths/synth modules, not samplers. i thought you were looking for a sampler

raindog.promo

Sampler is preferable but I can't afford the €350+ price tag unfortunately.

TroutMask

i'm sure you could find a used sampler cheap, lots of really awesome sounding legacy samplers out there

raindog.promo

TroutMask wrote: »

i'm sure you could find a used sampler cheap, lots of really awesome sounding legacy samplers out there

I'll check them out. Cheers.

*EDIT - Excuse my ignorance, what's a legacy sampler?
Googling returns either sample CDs or some sort of rug

TroutMask

oh sorry, i meant vintage really. They often sound great as instruments, the issue with these can be the quirky modes of communication as USB only appeared on samplers towards the end of the hardware sampler era. The AKAI S5000 S6000 series implemented USB quite well - they're huge samplers though. Older samplers often use SCSI - works great, but not exactly convenient as workarounds are required to enable them to talk to modern computers. I like the Akai MPC 500, compact and modern connections, but has the AKAI sound. I love EMUs and AKAI S950s too BTW. There are some hardware sleepers out there: the Yamaha A series samplers can be retrofitted with onboard SCSI storage via Flash card adapter for a great sampler with massive storage

raindog.promo

Thanks for that. There's a lot of old samplers for very cheap on adverts.ie alright. Floppy or zip drive type machines. As you are saying, the communication between it and new technology might be a bit of a problem and I don't think they'd last too long being regularly moved around , even in a portable rack case.

I think my best bet is to go for a cheap synth until my financial situation improves or the price of the MPCs come down a bit.

Much appreciate all the advice. Thanks!