Korg Electribe ER-1

[alterboy]

i normally dont review gear i havent had for atleast a month, but i've pretty much got this thing down already and am confident in what i can get out of it so here goes.

1. Tell us how much you paid for the unit.
$269

2. How long have you had it?
2 weeks

3. Rate it on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the best.
8
4. Things you like about it
REAAAAAAALLLLLY easy to use, good solid sound. bass for miles.

5. Things you don't like about it.
cant get a good snare sound out of it. just sounds like hits of distorted sound, knobs can be chinsy.

6. Anything else you wish to add--for example, compare it to other similar gear, tell us your tips, sites with free patches, problems, list your website that has info specific to this piece, etc

I was in search of a drum machine for a while, because my xl-1's drums are completley and utterly pathetic. i needed some real punchy kicks and bass and it does deliver. i fell in love after reading in the manual to use the bass boost with caution because of the damage done to speakers. (real cut.rate.box like). i was originally getting a yamaha dx200 but after they went out of production i went with this, which actually sounds better. you cant get anywhere near a real snare drum sound with this. its more like short distorted sounds. theres a seperate handclap for every program which i like but most of the handclaps are the same and you cant tweak some of them much. one thing that bugs me is that some of the knobs kinda scrape when turning and they really arent precise at all. sometimes i'll have to have the knob pointing in between 2 wavelengths to get the one i want. thats not good for live tweaking, but i'm sequencing everything anyway. what is cool is the little led that turns on when youve reached the original value of a setting. this helps in a live situation. i really cant complain though. its a down to earth simple drum machine and i've almost mastered the thing in 2 weeks. this has been so great i'm looking into getting a few more electribes.

[Tweak]

Thanks for the review!

[Aaron]

I've had the ER-1 and the EA-1 for 2 years now... Once you get a chance to play with them and get all your own custon beats in there they can become invaluable... How many times to you sit down to write a track and you start off your beats with a general structure... If you save that in your ER-1 you can use it to trigger midi notes in your fav VSTi or Sequencer... Say you get a great groove on the ER-1 but the samples just aren't up to par... Hook it up to say, Battery and hit play... The midi notes will trigger Battery just like you programmed it... Very Cool...

[Dane_Xoth]

1. $120 Can
2. over 1 year
3. 8+ /10
4. Case is Plastic, yuck.
5. Mod Sequence is awesome. 2 input Channels! (saves mixer channels, and good for industrial strength sound mangling).
Drum Synthesis Rocks. Build your own. Don't conform. Electro as you want.Synth architure is sufficent. Filters are great.
6. Don't compare this to.... NO don't even mention them..... i just don't want to hear it anymore...... classic Rola ..... SHUT UP ...x0x......
this thing has enough character, playability(had it hooked to MIDI trigger pad), and BALLS. It's Fun. Solid Fun. I used this alot. Sure it doesn't do everything, but looking at it did you expect it to? I never found myself in a situation with it where it failed me. I pushed and it took it.

FUN FUN FUN.

[angura80s]

a question to those who own the Korg Electribes and MicroKorg

i noticed the ER-1 and EA-1 are supposed to be bought as a connected pair, but what about using the ER-1 with the MicroKorg instead? Would this be a better combination? If the EA-1 is limited in its analog teakability?