and 
and 
plus 
and finally: 
..and here's why:
since almost 9 years the Putte&Edgar band, one of the best bands in the world (
), does its thingie.equipped with 2 Roland SP-808's groovesamplers that are filled with homemade samples, one voice transformer and one drum-set Edgar and me do the show.
all we need from these samplers is pads that blink when they're playing, many banks for the samples and of course storage. (in this case: zip-disks allowing for 100mb.)
the SP-808's offer us all this, and for many years we've been very very happy with our set-up. but now, after the years, our machines aren't really trusty anymore as they got old. (we have 6 meanwhile, as we bought from ebay again and again.)
so, what would one expect? well, just wait for Roland to bring out successors. and yes, they did! they brought the SP-606. the SP-505, the SP-404, and since this summer NAMM they brought the SP-555.
so one could think "oki putte, what's there to complain then?!". and here it goes:
the SP-606 doesn't feature blinking pads when they're running, so it's a no-go for us. same applies to the SP-404. the SP-505 doesn't make use of these 16 pads, so its a no-go as well. and now this new SP-555 ..
..they brought back the blinking pads, but now you only have 10 banks. yes, you can make use of 2GB-flashcards, and it even reads the samples directly from them. but: only 10 banks, and as the machine doesnt have a real display you cant name the banks to be organized. WAHHHH!
to me, its like as if these Roland people want to bug us, again and again, year after year.
Akai's MPC doesnt feature blinking pads either, and also share this silly bank-organisation, so this isnt an alternative for us. it's just frustrating to know that THE machine we need was built once, but never found any successor.
rant over
putte