A basic sampler for live shows?

[iC]

if you're looking to use a computer (not the OP, anyone else)
http://figure53.com/qlab/

[Paul Fury 161]

almost forgot, the Zoom takes Smart Media cards (not Compact Flash, my bad). 16Mb is the largest you can use in this machine.
Cheers,
P

[thethingwiththestuff]

haha! i was joking with my bandmates about just loading the whole show into QLab. When they didn't laugh, I explained what it was.

[austingreen]

SP-404/Dr Sample. Done.

You can also find the SP202 or SP303 as well for cheap used/online.

http://www.daddys.com/detail.php?itemTi ... r=BOS01090

cheap, cheap

[terryb]

I second BEATMAKER for iphone/itouch.

It's absolutely amazing what it can do for just a $20 app.

[trodden]

SP-404/Dr Sample. Done.

You can also find the SP202 or SP303 as well for cheap used/online.

To give you an idea, I have 3 of these for my theater sound gigs, and they were bulletproof. I even ran them through Ernie Ball volume pedals for foot control.

totally. I've used the 202 and 303 for over 10 years in the live set up for my old band. They saw all the abuses of the road/gigs, and i'll never get rid of them.

Even running an emu e-IV i still found the need to have the 303 along for the ride for 808 hits, etc..

[trodden]

SP-404/Dr Sample. Done.

You can also find the SP202 or SP303 as well for cheap used/online.

http://www.daddys.com/detail.php?itemTi ... r=BOS01090

cheap, cheap

awesome. and the 202 is battery or AC powered! the 303 is not.. so not so "take it on the bus and sample away" I think the 404 may be battery compatible though..

Some day i will have an iphone.

[SethD]

totally. I've used the 202 and 303 for over 10 years in the live set up for my old band. They saw all the abuses of the road/gigs, and i'll never get rid of them.

Even running an emu e-IV i still found the need to have the 303 along for the ride for 808 hits, etc..

Trodden, what do you give to the FOH from your 303?

[trodden]

totally. I've used the 202 and 303 for over 10 years in the live set up for my old band. They saw all the abuses of the road/gigs, and i'll never get rid of them.

Even running an emu e-IV i still found the need to have the 303 along for the ride for 808 hits, etc..

Trodden, what do you give to the FOH from your 303?

My live rig consisted of one or two 202/303's, Emu E-IV, cd deck, Korg MS2000 all tied into a mackie 1202 which I'd send to FOH. No direct boxes needed since you can select mic/line from the main's of the 1202. Sometimes i'd get stereo options in live venues.. which was cool, cause a lot of my textures/sounds coming out of the emu E-IV were created with a stereo field, but if a mono only option, just panned it all Left on the mackie.



But for a single 303, i'd just go from your rca outs to a direct box, using a cable with RCA male on one end, and 1/4" on the other into the direct box.

[kayagum]

To clarify slightly: the 1202 needs to be the VLZ model or later for the mic level output option via the mains. The original 1202 does not have that option: line level only.

Either way, trodden pointed out a brilliant swiss army knife use of a Mackie board. I have a 1202 and a 1402 for the same reason, and they have never failed me. Ever.

[SethD]

This opens up a whole new world. Thanks! And to the OP, it's worth checking out the Boss/Roland SP series for your applications.

[trodden]

To clarify slightly: the 1202 needs to be the VLZ model or later for the mic level output option via the mains. The original 1202 does not have that option: line level only.

Either way, trodden pointed out a brilliant swiss army knife use of a Mackie board. I have a 1202 and a 1402 for the same reason, and they have never failed me. Ever.

ahhh good to point out! yeah man, i've had the 1202 VLZ for about ten years now, bought used as well.. that thing has had so much beer spilled on it, lived in the dingiest rehearsal spaces, and seen many many miles and cities while on the road. It shows its use, but everything operates just fine, hell even been dropped from drunken load outs a few times, while stored in a soft lap top case.

a common phrase muttered drunkenly while on tour many many many many times.. "ANYONE REMEMBER LOADING THE MACKIE?" I had so much freakin' crap, i'm amazed my drunk ass never left much behind besides a mic stand and cable here and there.. hell i think i outfitted some crappy venues with "better" mic stands and cables due to me leaving some behind.. sucked carrying all that crap on the road, but with five vocalists and a few keyboard rigs, extra gear meant many times we got to play rather than everyone sharing two mics...

[Brett Siler]

Boss Sp-202 is solid. I have toured with it for the past five years. The only down side is the limited memory space.

[CFB4]

Roland SPD-S is cool - like the drum pads but lets you map your own samples to CF card. AKAI MPC 500 is cool too - rock solid mini-MPC format. There's a neat editor for mac/pc which lets you assign samples to the pads painlessly. MPC 500 can run off batteries too, so it's righteous for live.

[tdbajus]

Is the new Korg Microsampler our of your budget?

I've had mine a couple of weeks, and love it. I also have a Boss Dr Sample, which I found too frustrating to use.

The worst thing about the Microsampler is the memory is internal, so you can't swap out cards to carry a whole bunch of stuff with you.

The MIDI/USB (which may mean you can use it as a MIDI controller, but I have not tried it) works very well with the built in sample editor- which is, by and large, pretty intuitive. Documentation is kinda crappy, but it is easy enough to make backups of your work.

the sampler is super limited, but you can really ring a lot of functionality our of it.

It runs in 2 modes simultaneously- Sample mode for assigning on sample to a key (drum loops, drum hits, etc etc), and Keyboard mode, which allows you to stretch a sample across the whole board.

The secret trick I have found is this- if there are keys that are not assigned samples, the next sample above it is pitched down. So if you have, say, and Acetone Top5 that is kind of a pain in the ass to carry around to use one or two times a set, you can place on the highest key a melody sound which sounds great pitched down an octave. You can resample the organ an octave down, for the next octave, and sample a totally different sound for the 3rd (and lowest octave), for a bass sound. Or you can have the top two octaves a lead sound, and the bottom octave be your old analog drum machine loop collection.

I'm still in the middle of getting a handle on the box, but it seems like the tiny little thing will allow me to have a reasonable facsimile of 4 or 5 analog drum machines, and just about every sound on my acetone in a 2 pound package.

If you are a real keyboard player (which in my book is someone who can use more than 2 fingers at a time, so my standard are pretty low) i'm sure you'd find it to be really limited. For me though, the built in vibrato sounds killer through the other input of my guitar amp, I'm setting up banks of my favorite sounds on my old analog organ, loading significant portions of my rather vast library of clunky analog loops, and it all goes into a box that fit easily in my bike messenger bag.

$500 ain't cheap, but it's not expensive either, and my incompetence/lack of patience for all things MIDI/Non-patchable has not been much of a problem. There are a couple of things I wish it had (more knobs, fewer sub-menus, sample layering and/or more sophisticated looping options) but there is plenty of room use the keyboard improperly and give it some of your own flavor.