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I'm interested in picking up some old sampler's with interesting features. I hadn't heard about the Yamaha VSS-30 until recently and thought it was pretty cool. They're starting to clime in price though, unfortunately. What other samplers are there with ADSR and other sampler manipulation features, that can be had for $150 or less.

Roland S-330 is neat, but the disk drive and floppies are kind of a pain (They are way old school single sided). It takes a system disk and you'll also need a sound disk too. You can hook a monitor up to it too. It has neat filters and Envelopes though. You might be able to pick up its big brother S-550 for cheap too. I went down that road and just gave up haha.

Korg Volca Sample

blakestree wrote:Korg Volca Sample

It doesn't sample in that sense though, ya? Its that the Volca has samples in it which you can load into the slots to compose Rhythms. Right?

Sorry to be that guy but I recommend you save some more money and get cooler shiz.
$300-400 tier is full of much more interesting stuff. Get something that doesn't just output what you input; something that has a sound whether lofi, hifi or somewhere in between.

Highly recommend shopping around for Akai s900, s950, s1000. MPC2000. They probably wont be "maxed" but you may luck out with a pawn shop score.
There are also deals to be had on Ensoniq Mirage, EPS...Roland MS-10, Casio FZ-1.

rustywire wrote:Sorry to be that guy but I recommend you save some more money and get cooler shiz.
$300-400 tier is full of much more interesting stuff. Get something that doesn't just output what you input; something that has a sound whether lofi, hifi or somewhere in between.

Highly recommend shopping around for Akai s900, s950, s1000. MPC2000. They probably wont be "maxed" but you may luck out with a pawn shop score.
There are also deals to be had on Ensoniq Mirage, EPS...Roland MS-10, Casio FZ-1.

Yup. Mirage is really nice and I totally agree. Messing with these old samplers, while cool sometimes, is way more of a pain than it is worth. I had a 10 year deal with the s-330 that never result in anything other than a few moments of fun every few years while suffering frustration any other time I messed with it.

Dang, I forgot about the Mirage.

Faldoe wrote: It doesn't sample in that sense though, ya? Its that the Volca has samples in it which you can load into the slots to compose Rhythms. Right?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZZCop8U4gE[/youtube]

EMU ESI series. I did a ton with these babies back in the day. Check out the ESI-2000, very good value, easily expandable to max ram. Has SCSI, has some built-in FX if you get the Turbo board. 16 different filter types. With 64-voice polyphony you can't beat it.

http://www.vintagesynth.com/emu/esi2000.php