Archive for sampler
Akai X7000 Question From Carl
Posted by: | CommentsCarl F. writes…
Hi Al,
Came across your 11/19/09 post on the Akai X7000.
I have one and 25 sampler discs that I’m looking to sell. Would you be interested or would you know someone who is?
My asking price is $ 450.
I’m not in the market for one right now, but if anyone out there is, please leave a comment and include how Carl can get ahold of you.
Note: I do not know Carl and I cannot offer any endorsement or guarantee of either his character or the quality of the gear he is offering for sale.
Akai X7000 Keyboard Sampler
The Akai X7000 – One Of The Coolest Vintage Sampling Keyboards
Posted by: | CommentsAkai X7000 Keyboard Sampler
This was the first sampling keyboard that I owned, and what a blast it was! I must have sampled everything within ten miles of my house and all my friends and relatives too!
If you can find this vintage piece (street price around $300 – $400) I know you’ll have a lot of fun as well. There are a few things to watch out for though.
It uses an outdated 2.8″ format disk drive that records to Quick Disks. If the drive is broken or wears out it could be very hard to find a replacement. As for finding blank disks, a quick search on Google didn’t turn up much. There were some hardware word processors that used this same disk format so that might give you some leads.
Also, the keyboard itself wasn’t very heavy duty. I’m a hard player and I had to replace the entire keyboard assembly every sixteen months or so.
However, you have to keep in mind that I was gigging and rehearsing five to seven nights per week, so it saw a lot of use and abuse. In your studio environment that probably wouldn’t even be an issue.
Other hardware samplers you might like to look at would be the Ensoniq Mirage and EPS, the Emu Emax and the Roland S10.
The Roland U220 – My Favorite ROMpler
Posted by: | CommentsAh, this is the first rack-mounted sample playback unit I ever owned, and I still have two of them here in the studio today.
The Roland U220 Sound Module
These type of units were known as ROMplers because they came preloaded (in ROM memory) with all the sample libraries it needed to make up its patches. You could also expand some of them with ROM cards that added new samples and new patches. The U220 has two of these slots. (I believe there was a library of about 12 different cards available.)
Some of the sounds are classics that I still use today. Some of my favorites are the piano, the overdriven B3 organ, the muted trumpet, the soprano sax, the smooth tenor sax and the Benny Hill-ish, honky, rock-n-roll tenor sax. Another handy thing was that it had 30-voice polyphony for all these voices.
There were two great playback demos in the U220. Here are both of them for your listening pleasure. 
Now, this one has a couple of interesting tidbits I have to point out. First, the bass line is cool and demonstrates the unit’s ability to set different pitch bend values for bending up and bending down. Second, this demo was created by Eric Persing, the genius behind all the Spectrasonics plugins; Omnisphere, Stylus RMX and Trillian (formerly Trilogy). I wish this guy would put out a whole album!
Eric Persing - U Might Be The OneYou can pick up a U220 on the used market for just a couple of hundred bucks these days. It’s well worth a look if you’re thinking about adding to your rack!
